Pinocchio In Venice - Softcover

Arms and legs askew, puppet with a nose problem and a yen to be human, Pinocchio is back, and Coover--wordsmith par excellence, sly storyteller, master maker of such fictions as Pricksongs and Des cants, The Universal Baseball Assoc., and The Public Burning --has him in his crafty, string-pulling, postmodern mitts. Poor Pinocchio, his wish granted, is an aged, much-honored scholar who returns home to complete a book on the Blue-Haired Fairy and to die: He is returning to wood. In Coover's version, anything can, and does, happen, as Pinocchio's human self relives its twig-hood adventures. Coover is at his best in this wildly comic fable. Highly recommended.
- Vincent D. Balitas, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mr. Coover's work has long occupied a place of honor. . . . He goes at his task with an almost alarming linguistic energy, a Burgessy splatter of vocabulary, and a ferocious love of everything comic and grotesque. This is a spectacularly scatalogical work. . . . Often erotic and frequently hilarious.