GOING FOR A BEER by Robert Coover
Channel: Manifest Dust-in-yer-eye
Date: 2021-07-19

Many would call this story--somewhere around a thousand words--a "perfect" one. I'm one of those people. 

But it's not a "story" narrative as we usually think of and enjoy. Nor is it just a clever amusement. Look (or listen) deeper, or at an angle when your reflexive guard is down, and you might find something else. How life really seems, when we aren't storytelling it into a tidiness of meaning and purpose. But that seeming-ness is in the sophisticated structure of the piece... not in gabble about its subject.

Coover's work--pretty nearly all of it, in fact--is about the ground of our existence, the evanescent impulses that compel us to construct coherent lives. But which aren't fooled by the constructions. The outcome is funny in a cosmic way, which means tragic in a sense underneath, too.

Doesn't this all seem somewhat self-indulgent, the presumption of an artist of the majority, where nothing about his existence is challenged daily by a minority status? Well, Coover isn't the kind of artist that addresses social issues in their most comprehensive range. But he can get at the epiphanies accessible to ANY of us who are human, even if that's in the brief lacunae of our daily lives. And believe me: the citizens of Wakanda would have no trouble admitting, "Yeah, this is the real deal."

Robert Coover is one of my favorite writers--so I'll be returning to him in future, though not right away. As I will with Ligotti, and may with any other writer I want to share my enthusiasm for, or provoke the listener with. 

Coover himself has read this story--in a delightfully authoritative style no one should try to imitate. Including me among them. You can find his reading here: https://youtu.be/mBdH1VuIesI.

My now-standard admonition applies: Best listened to with earbuds or headphones. Those tinny little speakers in our media devices just don't cut it for me.