Robert Coover was an experimental author and educator who co-founded the nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization.
- Died: October 5, 2024 (Who else died on October 5?)
- Details of death: Died in Warwick, England at the age of 92.
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Robert Coover’s legacy
Born in Charles City, Iowa, Robert Coover served four years in the United States Navy in the 1950s between two stretches of college, first at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Indiana University Bloomington, then the University of Chicago. His first novel, “The Origin of the Brunists,” was published in 1966 and explored the creation of a cult following a mining disaster. Two years later, “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.” explored the thin border between fantasy and reality by way of a baseball league that only exists in the protagonist’s head.
Such offbeat approaches to storytelling became the norm for Coover, who dealt extensively with non-traditional techniques, indirect narratives, and other means of exploring fiction outside of mainstream styles. Other works of his include “Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears?” and the short-story collection “A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This,” among over two dozen novels and tale collections overall.
Coover was T.B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University, teaching there from 1978 to 2013. A proponent of electronic literature, he co-founded the Electronic Literature Organization, a nonprofit group dedicated to the promotion of works that utilize the power of digital tools, such as interactive stories. He also established the MFA program in Digital Language Arts at Brown.
Notable quote
“Language is the square hole we keep trying to jam the round peg of life into. It’s the most insane thing we do.” — excerpt from “Gerald’s Party”
Tributes to Robert Coover
Full obituary: The New York Times
