236
PARTISAN REVIEW
The story crazily unfolds
in
his monologues, and most of the other
leading actors-Eisenhower, the Rosenbergs, Judge Kaufman, Su–
preme Court justices, politicians, and a supporting cast of thousands
are revealed through his feverish consciousness. Authorial reflections
provide additional commentary on the developing nightmare as do
Coover's dramatic "Intermezzos." The president delivers a fireside chat
on "The War Between the Children of Light and the Sons of Darkness"
and later turns down Ethel Rosenberg's plea for clemency; the Rosen–
bergs, in "A Last-Act Sing Sing Opera," refuse to cooperate with the
government and protest against their illegal and vindictive penalty as
the "Chorus" of public opinion assails the two culprits . At various
points the National Poet Laureate,
Time
magazine personified, deliv–
ers his messianic messages based "on inner vision and imaginary
'sources' " and articulates in racy
Time-ese
the vision of the Republic.
Presiding over the entire extravaganza is Coover's mighty incarna–
tion of America, Uncle Sam, a composite of Sam Slick and Sut
Lovingood. Uncle Sam is Coover's
Deus ex machina.
He harangues his
children with floods of vicious, exuberant, and scatological tall talk
when their spirits sag. Randy, hard, rapacious, bigoted, violent,
revengeful, he is the essence of frontier humorist with a dash of Lyndon
Johnson and the Texas of Mailer's
Why We Are in Vietnam.
When he
passes into the souls of his chosen political heirs, they absorb his
manifest unpleasantness. Only the Phantom, felt but never seen, dares
stand up to him, and the struggle between these two titanic powers
locked in comic book contention is not decided until the public
burning of the Rosenbergs. Will Nixon become Uncle Sam's annointed
son and assume the presidency? Or is Uncle Sam too disgusted with his
vacillating and pusillanimous servant who tries to be all things to all
men? Only after Nixon is violently and redemptively sodomized by his
angry but forgiving paterfamilias is doubt dispelled.
The Public Burning,
among other things, is a study in the
excremental grotesque and a jaundiced version of the Rosenberg case.
It
is history as "happening" with real performers drafted to act in a
Coover Spectacular. Here is Ike looking like his Norman Rockwell
portrait, blue eyes, sandy hair, the face America loves. He has reading
problems and troubles with Mamie. He is the uncomplicated yet canny
fellow who is only comfortable drinking and playing poker with his
cronies and watching cowboy movies. And there is Nixon, lover of
cottage cheese and ketchup, a caricature right out of a Herblock
cartoon or
Mad
magazine. His eyebrows meet. He is afflicted with
afternoon shadow. He is forever sweating and stinking. Yet Coover's
