{"id":10751,"date":"2014-01-20T03:56:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T07:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=10751"},"modified":"2014-05-13T23:51:20","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T03:51:20","slug":"robert-coover-the-frog-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/01\/20\/robert-coover-the-frog-prince\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Coover: “The Frog Prince”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here<\/a> to read the abstract of the story on The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0webpage (this week\u2019s story is available only for subscribers). Robert Coover\u2019s \u201cThe Frog Prince\u201d was originally published in the January 27, 2014 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a>
Click for a larger image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trevor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I read this piece on Sunday night. It’s only three columns long, and it goes down easily. I liked it very much. And yet after a few days sitting on it, rereading it, I have almost nothing to say. Betsy’s post was in my inbox Monday morning, and I didn’t open it until I’d written the brief thoughts below. Betsy, I think that this is the first time we’ve had so little to say :-) .<\/p>\n

“The Frog Prince” is, just like the title leads us to believe, a fairy tale. Only this being Coover it’s slanted — quite a bit. Yes, there’s a frog prince, and the story begins with a kind of “they lived happily”:<\/p>\n

At first, it was great. Sure. It always is. She cuddled the frog, wishing for more, and — presto!<\/em> A handsome prince who doted on her. It meant the end of her marriage, of course, but her ex was something of a toad himself, who had a nasty habit of talking with his mouth full and a tongue good for nothing but licking stamps.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a fun slant, setting the story up as a\u00a0rather mundane, ordinary thing that sometimes happens\u00a0in a discontented marriage.\u00a0The sly innuendo at the end sets the tone.<\/p>\n

To be honest, and I do not mean this as a slight, that slant and tone are pretty much what this story has to offer. We get an account of the affair.\u00a0The frog that turned into a prince\u00a0was, literally, a drug for the woman. The frog himself is not so keen on the situation, and the eventual end plays out as something that was inevitable and, hey, it was good while it lasted. Now on to the “ever after.”<\/p>\n

Betsy:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Frog Prince,\u201d by Robert Coover, is a clever confection, an ecstatic adventure, a bawdy fairy tale with a nod to Chaucer, and a short short story.\u00a0A riff on a wife\u2019s affair, \u201cThe Frog Prince\u201d has, like all fairy tales, its scare factor. I thought it was snappy and wise at the same time\u00a0— I loved it.\u00a0Coover\u2019s tale is a five out of four, as is the accompanying illustration.<\/p>\n

The illustration is done in cut-out black and white silhouette, and its tantalizing use of a green line is terrific. But I pause. Any silhouette-style illustration now has to be an echo of Kara Walker\u2019s shocking, fabulous representations of the sexual violence and generalized violence of slave life.\u00a0Her cut-outs mimic the way we sweeten our national memory of the horrific.<\/p>\n

Coover\u2019s confection, of course, is a similarly sweetened tale of marital violence.<\/p>\n

There is a unique aura of the holy to Kara Walker\u2019s work: her imagination is so original that to appropriate her style seems risky. Is it use or abuse?\u00a0That her work would be imitated is inevitable. At this point, though, Walker\u2019s art is so well-known, so iconic, that using her style could be rightly called homage.\u00a0Descendants of slavery might disagree. To me, the violence in Walker\u2019s slave depictions is echoed by the emotional violence that Coover implies is present in many a marriage. But descendants of American slavery might disagree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s New Yorker<\/em> fiction is Robert Coover’s modern fairy tale, “The Frog Prince.” Trevor and Betsy share their thoughts. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,241],"tags":[560],"coauthors":[505,504],"class_list":["post-10751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-robert-coover","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Coover-Frog-Prince.jpg?fit=209%2C290&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-2Np","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10751"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12785,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10751\/revisions\/12785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10751"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}