New Yorker Fiction 2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.
Robinson Jeffers
Born January 10, 1887

Fabulous?

Edel Rodriguez

January 12, 2015, Robert Coover, “The Crabapple Tree”: This is the tale of three people who are buried under a crabapple tree located next to a farmhouse. ¶ I realize Coover’s important position in contemporary literature, but if you take this story on its face value, it must seem a rather weak version of his earlier work. You have a difficult time caring about any of the characters, none of whom seem developed, more like explained to the reader. If a male writer is going to create a female first-person narrator, her voice ought somehow to sound as if it is a female voice (in its multifaceted portrayal). Who is the narrator? She’s telling the tale from such a distance (friend of the wife buried under the tree because she’s died in childbirth) that we have a hard time caring. ¶ Coover’s seems to be a sad, wandering tale that tells more than it shows.
Edel Rodriguez, Illustrator

NEXT TIME: Behind the Book—MLPR, "Men at Sea"

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