Ed. note: I just learned that Robert Coover died on October 5, 2024. I read and loved several of his books. I had a terrific chapbook of his short-short stories "In Bed One Night and Other Brief Encounters". One of the "encounters" describes a rolicking night in a convention hotel that makes me wonder if he was describing an experience at the MLA or AWP. Unfortunately, the chapbook went the way of books that are loaned to friends: I no longer have it. Here's a post I wrote way back in 2009. Don't forget to read the comments:
A Tale (Tail) of Two Covers [by Stacey Harwood]
David Yezzi’s post a few days ago about Philip Larkin prompted this post by Jim Cummins, which prompted a comment string about Robert Coover’s Spanking the Maid, a book I read and loved when it was published in 1982 (Grove). I was living in Albany, NY at the time and Coover came through to promote another book. When I asked him about Spanking, he told me that the book was really about “language.” I was confused, felt dumb. The book I read was about the S&M relationship between a man and his maid. Oh well.
Anyway, Jim Cummins hasn’t read the book, though he would like to, so I did a quick search to see if it is still in print. It most certainly is, yet with a different cover than the Coover I read and loved. Check this out. On the left is the book I read in '82; on the right is the cover as it appears today.
Which cover would you like, Jim?