Going for a Beer: Selected Short Fictions


Going for a Beer: Selected Short Fictions is a collection of short fiction by Robert Coover, published in 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company. These stories were originally published in periodicals.
The pieces in Going for a Beer are selections from previously published volumes: Pricksongs & Descants, In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters, and A Night at the Movies, Or, You Must Remember this: Fictions.
The collection includes Coover’s most anthologized story, “The Babysitter.”

Stories

Those stories first appearing in literary journals or magazines are indicated.
  • Introduction by T. C. Boyle
  • ”The Brother”
  • ”The Elevator”
  • ”The Wayfarer”
  • ”The Hat Act”
  • ”The Gingerbread House”
  • ”The Magic Poker”
  • ”The Babysitter”
  • ”Beginnings”
  • ”The Dead Queen”
  • ”The Fallguy's Faith”
  • In Bed One Night”
  • ”The Tinkerer”
  • ”You Must Remember This”
  • ”Aesop's Forest”
  • Cartoon”
  • ”Top Hat”
  • Inside the Frame”
  • ”The Phantom of the Movie Palace”
  • ”Lap Dissolves”
  • ”The Early Life of the Artist”
  • ”The New Thing”
  • ”Punch”
  • ”The Invisible Man”
  • The Return of the Dark Children”
  • Riddle”
  • ”Grandmother's Nose”
  • ”Stick Man” McSweeney’s , 2005 )
  • ”Going for a Beer”
  • ”The Goldilocks Variations”
  • ”Invasion of the Martians”

Reception

Critic Dwight Garner at the New York Times, places Coover among “the postwar generation of postmodern experimental writers,” and regards the collection as the best of Coover’s short fiction. He warns readers that “When Coover’s stories don’t work, which is about half the time even here, they’re dreadful—arid experiments that are the equivalent of lighting the wrong end of a filtered cigarette.”
Kirkus Reviews notes that the material in volume appear dated: “What was once daring may now seem a little tame, but Coover’s influence endures, and this collection provides good evidence for why that should be so.” https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-coover/going-for-a-beer/
Novelist T. C. Boyle in his Introduction to the collection compares the stories metaphorically to healthy bivalves: “ysters that are growing in fresh new beds and regenerating their pearls over and over again…”