Gerald's Party by Robert Coover
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Playing Monsters

As with life, the purpose of the eponymous party is unclear. A celebration? A recurrent fixture? The start or finish of something? The narrative starts without context. So the point seems to be the revelation of the character of the party-goers, of which there are many. A genealogical chart would certainly have helped to relieve a relationship complexity worthy of Tolstoy.

Events in the party pass very quickly from trivial chit-chat to the far more serious matters of sex and death. The apparently much used and abused body of young Ros is discovered lying just below the level of conversation. Police are summoned who, while conducting a somewhat bizarre investigation, beat Ros’s hysterical husband to death with croquet mallets.

Meanwhile the party re-gains lost momentum. Drinks are distributed, canapés prepared and served, splattered blood from Ros’s wound washed, wiped and laundered. Vignettes of the various flirtations, copulations and other sexual adventures throughout the house are described in detail.

I’m guessing there is a large metaphor lurking just beyond my conceptual reach. Perhaps this party is the world for Coover, with all its damaged inhabitants. Or is Ros a sort of goddess of language, passed around and exploited mercilessly? Time puts in an appearance as a sort of running joke. The incompetence of the police team suggests a criticism of the institutional establishment of society. Or is it that Coover wants to shake the reader Into “the restless paralysis that always attends any affront to habit”?

“We’ve been playing monsters,” the title’s Gerald says to his young son at one point in order to explain his disheveled appearance. And that seems to me the key to the book. People are more or less monsters. This only becomes clear when you get to see them drunk and in large groups. In vino veritas indeed. Or is it just too sophisticated for my rustic temperament?

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