SOURCE: Cioffi, Frank L. “Coover's (Im)Possible Worlds in The Public Burning.” Critique 42, no. 1 (fall 2000): 26–37.

In the following essay, Cioffi explores the problematic representation of real and fictive worlds in The Public Burning, particularly as evident in the character of Richard Nixon, whose fictional persona in the novel subverts his actual historical identity, thus unsettling the reader's assumptions about American history and fiction itself.

Even without the reminding analog of the recent, ritualized executive pillorying, Robert Coover's The Public Burning still resonates like a venerable B-52 pressed into service. It still comes loaded with chaos and destructiveness, with a version of bottled lightning not usually available in stores—nor even over toll-free phone numbers or on the Internet. Indeed, even after the latter-day “public burning” cum impeachment of the current American president, there is still something disjunctive, unintegratable, and disturbing about Coover's world view, about his novel's development...