In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters is a collection of short fiction by Robert Coover. The stories originally appeared in periodicals and were first collected in 1983 by Burning Deck Press, issued in a limited edition.Kennedy, 1992 p. 68: 1200 copies printed. And p. 145: Bibliography
The pieces in the volume may be classified as prose poems ("proems") or "metafictional exercises".Kennedy, 1992 p. 68
Stories All the stories were first published in periodicals as indicated below.Kennedy, 1992 p. 92-93: For periodicals see footnotes in "Notes to Part 1."
"The Debris" (Panache, 1971) "The Old Man" (Panache, 1973) "In Bed One Night" (Playboy, January 1980) "Getting to Wichita" (Oink!, 1976) "The Tinkerer" (Antaeus, Winter 1976) "The Fallguy's Faith" (TriQuarterly, Winter 1979) "An Encounter" (Panache, 1971) "The Convention" (Panache, 1977) "The Beginnings" (Harper's Magazine, March 1972)
Retrospective appraisal Journalist and critic Caryn James writes:
Essayist and novelist Thomas E. Kennedy notes that this collection, though the "lightest" and "slightest" of Coover's first three short story collection, contains works of "genius and originality".Kennedy, 1992 p. 68
Footnotes
Sources Coover, Robert. In Bed One Night and Other Brief Encounters. Burning Deck Press, Providence, R. I. . James, Caryn. 1983. "In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters." Voice Literary Supplement (VLS), no. 22 (December 1983). in Robert Coover: A Study of the Short Fiction. 1992. Pp 139–140. Twaynes publishers, New York. Gordon Weaver, General Editor Kennedy, Thomas E.. 1992. Robert Coover: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twaynes publishing, New York.