by Robert Coover
The author, who shocked readers three years ago with a violent, iconoclastic epic titled The Public Burning, has written a sharp, funny and extremely nasty little book about the nomination of the Cat in the Hat for President of the United States. Yes, it's the same feline as in the popular children's books—that saucy, irreverent, egomaniacal creation of Dr. Seuss. The Coover fable is told by an old hack politician who is swept along when the Cat in the Hat and his mysterious adviser take their party's convention by storm. The book is the broadest possible satire but, for all its rawness, effective and telling. "The trouble with the democratic process is that the campaigns are too much fun," the hack says, "the jobs themselves too goddamn boring." Coover, who earlier wrote The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., has one of the strongest and most original imaginations in contemporary writing. (Viking, $5.95)
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