SOURCE: Petitjean, Tom. “Coover's ‘The Babysitter.’” Explicator 54, no. 1 (fall 1995): 49–51.

In the following essay, Petitjean argues that the narrative design of Coover's short story “The Babysitter” is intended to elicit multiple readings and interpretations.

Robert Coover's short story “The Babysitter” is not fiction, but fiction(s). Coover presents to the reader all the expository information required of fiction: characters and action. However, it is an impossibility for the reader to organize the action(s) into a cohesive, linear plot; it is also undesirable. “The Babysitter” exploits the art of fiction, the notion of a story, to its full potential, exploding a given situation beyond the limits of linear plot and past the ordinary storytelling conventions of time and space. Coover's tale gives new meaning to reader response, as each permutation and possibility that exists in it is limited only by the imagination of the reader. Narrative development is at...