Postscript: Robert Coover 1932 - 2024

Robert Coover

I see in the Times that Robert Coover died (“Robert Coover, Inventive Novelist in Iconoclastic Era, Dies at 92”). A long time ago (late 60s, early 70s), I used to read novels. I developed a taste for experimental American fiction, e.g., Don DeLillo’s End Zone, Thomas McGuane’s Ninety-Two in the Shade. My favorite was Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968). It’s about an accountant named J. Henry Waugh, who is fascinated by the laws of chance and probability. He invents a baseball game whose every action is determined by a throw of the dice. “I also keep financial ledgers for each club,” he explains. “And a running journalization of the activity, posting of it all into permanent record books. Politics, too. Every four years the Association elects officers. I have to keep an eye on that. And then there are boxscores to be audited, trial balances along the way, seasonal inventories, rewards and punishments to be meted out, life histories to be overseen.... People die, you know.”  

One death, in particular, that of the great rookie pitcher Damon Rutherford, hits Waugh hard, to the point that he appears to lose his grip on reality. It’s a memorable story, a sort of parable illustrating the perils of living too deeply inside one’s own head. 

I bought The Universal Baseball Association when it first came out, in 1968. It’s a first edition. I treasure it – one of my favorite books. 

Credit: The above portrait is by Suzanne DeChillo.