The Universal Baseball Association by Robert Coover REVIEW
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- I cheated in the video's title but hey, come on, it's ridiculous.
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Thank you. My father told me about this book when it was just out. I was a teenager, and I had my own baseball league that I created with playing cards. He was concerned about my neglecting homework and being social. There were a few occasions when I felt I was getting emotionally attached the the league - and I would throw it out. ( only to restart a few months later ). I have always feared that part of me. And driven to associate with society and nature. And yet my nerdy - imaginative inclinations remain just below the surface. While trying trying - to find my place in this world.
So finally fifty years later, I read Robert Coover's intense novel. Your take is so true. Sometimes it is gripping, often times I felt buried in a detailed mind numbing fantasy. And I realize that this is a book that needs to approached in multi-reads. There is a depth that needs time and so much patience.
Your review was valuable - for me to get that this is a Post Modern novel - as we all deal with emersion into created worlds. AI appreciate your saying to that there is of deeper contemplation here. Of life and of death.
I love this book. It's been years since I've read it, but the moment where he rolls the dice, and must follow his own rule set, is surprisingly thrilling. And the themes are more relevant today than when he wrote them.
You should check out Ghost Town by Coover, it's a short western styled book...with a bit of a twist. (May or may not cause the same experience as taking LSD)
Sounds fun :D
Only just watching the review - and it's great to see some Coover on this channel! Had a rollicking good time with UBA. Surely one of the most deranged sports novels ever written! - just shy of Don DeLillo's 'End Zone.' Surprised there's no mention of the 'Pricksongs and Descants' collection in the comments - definitely a good place to go next for a High Definition blast of Coover at his best. Also 'Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears?' is enormously underrated and a breezy, hilarious read!
Oh, I love Coover, but I think The Universal Baseball Association is a minor work. Have you read The Public Burning and Pinocchio in Venice? Or even Huck Out West, his latest (and somewhat saddest) novel which is a sequel to Huck Finn? I think you should try them.
None of these - UBA is my first! I have the Public Burning though and I've been willing to read it since ages ago (also I'm very curious about Pinocchio in Venice on the basis of its title alone!)
Pinocchio in Venice is also a sequel (to Pinocchio as you may guess), others sequel (or something like that) are in the short-stories collected in “A Child Again,” of which one story is written on 13 cards that you can shuffle and read in the order you want, with one opening card fixed as first and the joker as the last. If you wanna try a much realist Coover, go with "The Brunist Day of Wrath," sequel to his first novel, and a novel with something like 160 characters in 1000 pages...
Wow, such a great & unexpected review! Love this book. Was the first to make me realize books could be literature. Looked it up, it's from 1968! There actually used to be 2 baseball board games in the US (that peoples' dads played) quite similar to the game in the book. I'm impressed you enjoyed it so much without a north american baseball background. I read the Origin of the Brunists by Coover, didn't pull me in quite as much. If you want something somewhat similar, you might try The Great American Novel by Philip Roth. At least you'll have finally read TGAN. Great review, I finally read a book that you've read.
So weird you wrote this comment considering I read TGAN shortly after Universal Baseball Association :) I was a big baseball fan as a kid even though I've never played a game!! I sometimes tried to catch games on ESPN America at night but eventually just gave up :P
cool, Coover. he's too cold for me in general, like an ice cream migraine