'She arrives at 7.40, ten minutes late...' She babysits for Mr and Mrs Tucker. She has left a boyfriend alone for the evening. From this seemingly simple start Robert Coover masterfully explores the subtle barrier between 'reality' and thought. As the babysitter triggers the men's sexual fantasies, their erotic imaginations twist into alternative narratives simultaneously experienced by the reader: she does or does not take a bath; she does or does not invite her boyfriend over; she does or does not get caught unawares by Mr Tucker. In a profusion of happenings and imaginings, Coover layers moment upon moment, narrative upon narrative, to shatter the timeline of one evening into a multiplicity of events - contradictory, simultaneous, but all equally 'real'.
Robert Coover is widely regarded as one of America's most influential living writers, author of some fifteen groundbreaking books of fiction, including Pricksongs & Descants, The Public Burning, and most recently Ghost Town. Coover has for the past decade been teaching experimental courses in hypertext and multimedia narrative at Brown University. His 1992 essay on hypertext in the New York Times Book Review, 'The End of Books,' galvanized electronic literature fans around the world.
