SOURCE: "Coover's Comedy of Conflicting Fictional Codes," in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, Winter, 1990, pp. 85-99.

In the following excerpt, Ames discusses the variety of narrative codes in Gerald's Party, including "the patterns of detective story, slapstick comedy, masquerade, dream tale, and ritual sacrifice."

Gerald's Party, Robert Coover's most recent novel, is a bruising book. Gerald, the host, ends up with numerous literal bruises, as do most of the surviving guests, who collide, trip, and fall throughout the novel and are beaten with nightsticks, croquet mallets, and fists. The reader also emerges somewhat battered, worn away by the assaults upon time, coherence, and verisimilitude. The bruising shocks of Gerald's Party, however, are in keeping with its essentially carnivalesque nature, which is exemplified in the festive setting of the party and the interplay of different fictional codes or conventions. The novel's excitement and tension arise from...