Annotation: Robert Coover 'Prick Songs And Descant'
Julia Van Middlesworth
Annotation: Robert Coover “Prick songs & Descants”
To read Pricksongs & Descants is to travel through the dark myths of childhood—not the scrubbed down Disney “rip-off” versions—but the Brother’s Grimm with a Robert Coover triple twist of sex, death and terror.
“The Gingerbread House,” is transformed into a journey of sexual discovery. In “A Winter’s Scene” the camera lens focuses tightly, then pulls back for the depth of field shot. The reader watches as the latent image, black and white, floats to the surface and with it a sense of doom and foreboding. In “The Baby Sitter” we take a funhouse spin through the suburbs where anything and everything and nothing happens.
The reader new to metafiction, as I am, is perplexed at times, but engaged. Disoriented at first, but grounded by the rich tapestry of his sentences and the vibrant …show more content…
“The dove is a soft lustrous white, head high, breast filled, tip of tail less than a feathers thickness off the ground.” And at the end of section 11 I love the way he ends with:
“Only its small beak moves. Around a bread crumb.” (Pg.65)
I love the rhythm of these two sentences and the way the second comes to a stop and adds a sort of an inside joke. We all know the birds in the original “Hansel and Gretel” eat the breadcrumbs and it also adds a sense of the dread to come.
The dove figures prominently. It is a symbol of innocence and spirit, Christ, but here Coover’s witch rips out the heart of the dove and in doing so turns the myth inside out.
“She holds before him the burnished cherry-red heart of a dove. The boy licks his lips. She steps back. The glowing heart pulses gently, evenly, excitingly.” (Pg. 71)
Coover uses the dove as a traditional and familiar, even cliché metaphor for innocence but then he tears it apart and adds a twist of sexuality, the boy licks his lips, the glowing heart pulses as does the
Annotation: Robert Coover “Prick songs & Descants”
To read Pricksongs & Descants is to travel through the dark myths of childhood—not the scrubbed down Disney “rip-off” versions—but the Brother’s Grimm with a Robert Coover triple twist of sex, death and terror.
“The Gingerbread House,” is transformed into a journey of sexual discovery. In “A Winter’s Scene” the camera lens focuses tightly, then pulls back for the depth of field shot. The reader watches as the latent image, black and white, floats to the surface and with it a sense of doom and foreboding. In “The Baby Sitter” we take a funhouse spin through the suburbs where anything and everything and nothing happens.
The reader new to metafiction, as I am, is perplexed at times, but engaged. Disoriented at first, but grounded by the rich tapestry of his sentences and the vibrant …show more content…
“The dove is a soft lustrous white, head high, breast filled, tip of tail less than a feathers thickness off the ground.” And at the end of section 11 I love the way he ends with:
“Only its small beak moves. Around a bread crumb.” (Pg.65)
I love the rhythm of these two sentences and the way the second comes to a stop and adds a sort of an inside joke. We all know the birds in the original “Hansel and Gretel” eat the breadcrumbs and it also adds a sense of the dread to come.
The dove figures prominently. It is a symbol of innocence and spirit, Christ, but here Coover’s witch rips out the heart of the dove and in doing so turns the myth inside out.
“She holds before him the burnished cherry-red heart of a dove. The boy licks his lips. She steps back. The glowing heart pulses gently, evenly, excitingly.” (Pg. 71)
Coover uses the dove as a traditional and familiar, even cliché metaphor for innocence but then he tears it apart and adds a twist of sexuality, the boy licks his lips, the glowing heart pulses as does the