A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This

by Robert Coover

Book Overview

From Hollywood B-movies to Hollywood classics, ?"A Night at the Movies"?invents what "might have happened" in these Saturday afternoon matinees. Mad scientists, vampires, cowboys, dance-men, Chaplin,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671617966
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Linden Pub
• Length: 187 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great selection of short stories with cinematic themes...

You must remember this features the love of Rick and Ilse as you've never imagined it before. Other stories offer a colorfulthough often sadistic portrayal of the place where realitymeets the celluloid imaginings that too often seem to dominateour lives. Wonderful, clear, easy to read prose. Bitingly honest.

Coovers book is a masterpiece that reflects today's society.

A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES by Robert Coover is a bunch of short stories within a story, these stories are based on movie sterotypes. This story is based on sex and violence which increase within the story. This story shows the purpose of the increase in sex and violence within society from the 40's to the present. Coover strength in most cases is how he uses various movie sterotypes to display the ending that is not your typical ending. A western movie would overall include the "good guy" winning, however its not in this case. Overall A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES by Robert Coover is a good read that display the way in which modern society has changed its openness and view on sex and violence and how people typically think a certain movie will end. This book is designed for a more mature audiance.

This is truly a Night at the Movies!!

A Night at the Movies is a well structured view of movie scenes fanagled together to represent a post-modernistic production. What is most interesting about Coover's book is how he incoporated all the "movie" scenes together to create a certain affect, and yet you have to remember you're just reading a book! One of Coover's overall strengths is the way in which he lays out a scene for you that is not quite verbatim (or an exact replica of) the an actual movie or sitcom, yet you can make rather accurate assumptions as to the movie or scene he may be portraying. One example of this is one of my favorite scenes with the mischievious children which reminds me of the famous Little Rascals. Although the book is very outstanding in the way it is written, A Night at the Movies can still be quite overwhelming. However, Coover is very effective in writing short stories and holding them together by movie scenes and titles, as well as the different segments within the book (previews, movie, intermission, etc.), along with addressing questions of identity rather than answering them - leaving that up to the reader. A Night at the Movies is a wonderful work for a more mature audience with a touch of movie suspense that is very effectively written, high above its class.

Coover's book is a great postmodernist reading.

"A Night at the Movies" by Robert Coover is a book partitioned into chapters each representing different film genre with sex and violence being the most dominant. One of the overall strength in Coover's text is that it is as close to reality as it is to fiction. That is considering the ideas and not necessarily the stories. For example, he explicitly describes sexual encounters which represents the unconscious thought of human beings. Coover makes a lot of references to multiple specific movie titles which a number of readers may not have seen or even heard of; however, his main intention is the general genres. The structure of the plot of this text is hetrogeneous with no clear cut shifting points. He takes the reader flying, sailing, riding, walking.. in a short moment. This can leave the reader confused and feeling a sense of ambiguity. However, Coover does a good job in recapturing the reader's attention. Especially when he reminds the reader between now and then that he/she doesn't belong in the story. He/she is only watching or reading the events. The reader is an outsider looking in. Coover plays with the elements of fiction very well to make this book a great piece of postmodernism.