We kick off an exciting Spring 2017 season with major
American author Robert Coover who will present Huck Out West. The book is a rollicking adventure tale, an homage to Twain,
and-- at the same time-- a scathing satire of American racism, greed and
brutality.
January 31 (Tuesday): Robert Coover, award-winning fiction
writer
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Robert Coover, pioneer of experimental and electronic
fiction, is celebrated for work that reinvents and reimagines the art of
storytelling. The New York Times has called him “a one-man Big Bang of
exploding creative force.”. His new novel, Huck Out West (2017), picks
up where Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn leaves off – on the
eve of the Civil War. In a starred review Booklist described the book as “a
near-masterpiece…a surprisingly tender, touching paean to the power of
storytelling and the pains of growing up.”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s English Department to inaugurate
its new Creative Writing minor
Following Huck west as he rides shotgun with the Pony
Express, mines for gold, and lives with the Lakota, the novel explores a
formative period in American history, from the Civil War to the
centennial year
of 1876. In the West, it’s a time of grand adventure, but also one of greed,
religious insanity, mass slaughter, virulent hatreds, widespread poverty and
ignorance, ruthless military and civilian leadership, and huge disparities of
wealth.
For more information about the upcoming Spring Series, visit
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html
or call 518 442 5620.
