SOURCE: "A Hell of a Party," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4335, May 5, 1986, p. 486.

In the following review, Montrose faults Gerald's Party for being uninspired and for failing to attain Coover's "usual standard of excellence."

Robert Coover on the Evolution of the Universal Baseball Association:

After the story (which is, essentially, the second chapter of the book) was written, I felt that I hadn't gotten everything out of the metaphor, that I hadn't yet fully understood it. So over the years that followed I set about playing with the images, working out the Association history, searching out the structure that seemed to be hidden in it.

Even though structure is not profoundly meaningful in itself, I love to use it. This has been the case ever since the earliest things I wrote when I made an arbitrary commitment to design. The reason is not that I have some...