I really couldn't get into these stories, maybe because I was reading this for school along with several other books for other classes, but this style of writing just didn't interest me. I get that it's satire, but the stories were too jumpy, some nonsensical, and parts vulgar. I couldn't wait to be done with it.

We get it, Robert Coover. You like to experiment with conceptual ideas and what characters would do that we don't see on screen. Most of these stories don't nescesitate their (relatively short) lengths, and continue to (in the case of "You Must Remember This", literally) bang you over the head with his cool idea. The concept is great, just not very gratifying to read.

I love watching art-house films and I enjoy books about movies. I’ve already read three great postmodern novel of this kind: The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, Blue Movie by Terry Southern and Zeroville by Steve Erickson so A Night at the Movies is an excellent addition to this series.Similar to ghost towns there is somewhere a ghost movie palace – there are no viewers but the ghostly movies keep running nonstop. And similar to King Solomon's Song of Songs there now is Robert Coover’s Movi...

What kind of play is this? Who took the light away? And why is everybody laughing? I'm in awe at the power of Richard Coover not only to capture in words the magic of an eminently visual medium, but also at his dismantling and reassembling the sacred monsters of the silver screen that have become such an integral part of our cultural landscape. Every sequence in this collection starts with a bit of nostalgia and homage to the genres depicted (western, big historical epic, noir crime, slapstick

Remember those times when going to a movie was an occasion worth anticipating & dressing up for? First day, first show & if you happened to have access to a premiere - wow! that would be cinematic nirvana.Remember when cinema halls were grand affairs - a foyer with a fountain & a huge chandelier, marble staircase, red velvet curtains...Hard to conjure that scenario in these times of multiplexes, drive-ins, Netflix, movie-on-demand & so on.But the sad emptiness of a magnificant cinema hall could

FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: Warning: These Movies Have Not Been Approved for Adult Audiences (Potentially Illegal, Immoral or Infringing)Inside the Oval Orifice (You Must Remember This)Agent one uses an axe to cut his way through the front door and get into the lobby. Agent two rushes into the office, where he is hiding behind the gold curtains. It's easy to find him, because his shoes are pointing out beneath the curtains. “This is outrageous,” he says, like so many of his helpless victims bef...

”It’s like watching the pictures and being in them at the same time, as though one might be able somehow to eat the world with one’s eyes, if that’s not too idiotic.”Well this was pretty much insane, in a very good way. Coover takes the tropes, cliches, stereotypes, slang, conceits, customs and conventions of the world of movies and the movie theater and amps them up, blows them out, writes them into an übersurrealnonstoptrainofimagemotiondreamfilm-prose in these connected short pieces that, whi...

Anybody paying even the scantest attention would be aware that I am leaning hard into a Coover completist kick this year. Now, for a long time I have seen what Coover does in the same way most people do: merry postmodern play of a metafictional / intertextual nature. Reading A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES, which is most of the time as seemingly playful and light-hearted as anything he has produced, it dawned on me that the word "play" might not be a strong enough for what I was encountering. It may also

I'd like to write that this was a truly fantastic book, but it wasn't. Like Coover's Pricksongs and Descants--and unlike his wonderful, propulsive, and thoroughly immersive Ultimate Baseball Association--A Night at the Movies struck me as a text that was intended for the aspiring writer, not the avid reader. In that sense, it's quite useful--there's a lot to learn here, and Coover's techniques are easy enough to grasp, even if their execution, however skillful, can be quite tedious--but I expect...

Oh, this collection is delightful! It's structured like a night (or, more aptly, a whole glorious day) at the movies, complete with features, short subjects, and an intermission. Coover moves gracefully through, between, and around genres; he also uses the language and logic of dreams to capture the feeling of being deep within a movie and within the culture of the cinema. Stories like "Charlie in the House of Rue" and "You Must Remember This" seem to exist in the spaces between frames--familiar...

Should I write that the title story's pretty smutty? Or can you just guess that from the name on the cover? How about that that same story is also pretty great (though, yeah, again, that name on the cover), not because of the smuttiness, but because of the melancholia that is always its wake, that desiccating House of Rue just beyond the pleasures of the local Palace? By that part of the program, of course, Coover's patrons are shuffling out of the theater, the only smacking sounds their shoes f...

The Charlie Chaplin story sounds like its worth the price of admission. Not the Vincent Price of Admission which is your mortal soul, frog! Wait. Did V.P. try to steal Kermit's soul? No. That was Alice Cooper. And he bought Gonzo's. Alice Cooper, Robert Coover. Alice Coover, June Cleaver, John Cheever. June, John. John, Alice. Alice, June. Robert, John. Vincent! Vincent, you already know Alice. June, this is Vincent. Vincent, John and Robert. Oh, all those holiday party introductions.

Coover's collection is highly experimental. I don't profess to understand everything that I read in this, but I can say that I am in awe of his opening two stories, "The Phantom of the Movie Palace" and "After Lazarus." All the stories in general capture some aspect of film- from its absurdity and immersion to its genres and violences, yet these two stories in particular speak to humanity's relationship with film and how narrative may emulate film techniques. Some of the satire here seems a bit

Around 1987, the concept of multimedia was more a case of rock stars like Bowie or Jagger appearing in films, or books with an audio CD shoehorned into the inside flap. We people back then only had 5 senses, 2 ears and 10 fingers. Here, from that year, we get an experimental novelist using the grammar of the Hollywood movie to drive a story collection.The classic in this postmodern short story selection is the last piece (You Must Remember This), a lusty and sharply-written imagining of the miss...

Have you ever wondered what kind of steamy erotic exchanges might have transpired between the characters of Casablanca had they been reunited somewhere down the road? What about Charlie Chaplin's sadistic imprisonment in an inescapable slapstick routine? As the camera moves, so does the narrator; as the film reel skips, so does the narration. Coover takes metafiction to the movies.

I did not love this book. The stories were clever enough, but Coover seemed to hit the same notes in each one. Maybe it just seems dated; I'm sure if I'd read this in grad school, I would've enjoyed it a lot more.

Another shining example of the ambitious innovations of Coover. Aware of and challenging usual patterns of storytelling, Coover will take expectations and twist them, leading the reader down a rabbit hole of his own devising. And the ride is gloriously entertaining.