Pricksongs & Descants

In his carnivalesque and riotously inventive Pricksongs & Descants Robert Coover remakes old stories: of Red Riding Hood Hansel and Gretel and Beauty (who married her Beast and spends a lifetime suffering his doggy stink). And he reshapes his own: a man makes repeating re-imagined journeys in an office elevator (while his fellow riders taunt and tempt him) and in the seminal fractal 'The Babysitter' every moment in a single night is played and replayed every hope and threat of sex and violence done and undone. Coover's dark wilfil comic imagination revels brilliantly in contradictions a master of chaos.