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Employing both fact and fiction (including some magic realism), The Public Burning is a novel of black humor that satirizes Cold War paranoia.

That Coover's novel included a liberally fictionalized (the modifier is intended quantitatively, not politically) Richard M. Nixon as a major character was a fairly significant issue when the work appeared in 1977. These days, particularly in what is coming to be termed the "post-truth" era, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can publish fictions naming real people and representing them as implicated in any range of activities, and can do all of this anonymously. Back then, though, Coover had trouble getting his book published due to the legal challenges that could have arisen in response to his satiric depictions of Nixon and other actual persons (for those interested in literary caricatures of Nixon, check out Philip Roth's 1971 book Our Gang with its main character Trick E. Dixon).

Also significant is that while the novel appeared at a time when Watergate and Nixon's disgraced presidency was still a recent memory, the action of Coover's work is set much earlier, during Nixon's vice-presidency, and specifically during a three-day period in June 1953 that ended with the execution for espionage of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (both of whom are also major characters in the book).

Like Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow and Don DeLillo in Libra, Coover includes a lot of historical detail in his novel. As I read it, I did not worry too much about separating fact from fiction (in general, it seems fairly obvious where in his narrative Coover is exercising artistic license). These days, readers have any number of online resources to explore the period and people upon which Coover has based his work. (The year I read it, 2001, was the same year that Wikipedia was launched).

The Public Burning is one of those "Big Fat Books Worth the Effort." I read it once, and would definitely read it again.

Acquired May 30, 2000
Used book store in Buffalo NY