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.Coover, 2018 p. 415-416: Acknowledgments

The pieces in Going for a Beer are selections from previously published volumes: Pricksongs & Descants (1969), In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters (1983), and A Night at the Movies, Or, You Must Remember This: Fictions (1987).Kennedy, 1992 p. 145: BibliographyCoover, 2018 p. 415-416: Acknowledgments

The collection includes Coover's most anthologized story, "The Babysitter."Boyle, 2018 p. x: "'The Babysitter,' Coover's best known story."Kunzru, 2011: "Pricksongs & Descants contains his most anthologised story, 'The Babysitter.'"Garner, 2018: "'The Babysitter,' his influential story from 1969…"

Stories Those stories first appearing in literary journals or magazines are indicated.Coover, 2018 p. 415-416: Acknowledgments Introduction by T. C. Boyle (2018) "The Brother" (Evergreen Review, 1962) "The Elevator" (Cavalier, 1966) "The Wayfarer" (New American Review, 1968) "The Hat Act" (Playboy, 1968) "The Gingerbread House" (Playboy, 1969) "The Magic Poker" (Esquire, 1969) "The Babysitter" (1969) "Beginnings" (Harper's Magazine, 1972) "The Dead Queen" (Quarterly Review of Literature, 1973) "The Fallguy's Faith" (TriQuarterly, 1976) "In Bed One Night" (Playboy, 1980) "The Tinkerer" (Elements of Fiction, 1981) "You Must Remember This" (Playboy, 1985) "Aesop's Forest" (Iowa Review, 1986) "Cartoon" (TriQuarterly, 1987) "Top Hat" (Frank, 1987) "Inside the Frame" (Linden Press, 1987) "The Phantom of the Movie Palace" (Linden Press, 1987) "Lap Dissolves" (Linden Press, 1987) "The Early Life of the Artist" (Conjunctions, 1991) "The New Thing" (Iowa Review, 1994) "Punch" (2000) "The Invisible Man" (The Invisible Man, 2002) "The Return of the Dark Children" (The Harvard Review, 2002) "Riddle" (Kenyon Review, 2005) "Grandmother's Nose" (Daedalus, 2005) "Stick Man" (McSweeney's , 2005 [titled "A Child Again"])Kunzru, 2011: "In 2005, McSweeney's published 'A Child Again,' a collection which included a story in the form of playing cards, which had its origin in these early punchcard experiments." "Going for a Beer" (The New Yorker, 2011) "The Goldilocks Variations" (The American Reader, 2013) "Invasion of the Martians" (The New Yorker, 2016)

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.Garner, 2018 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."

Novelist T. C. Boyle, in his Introduction to the collection, compares the stories metaphorically to healthy bivalves: "[O]ysters that are growing in fresh new beds and regenerating their pearls over and over again…"Boyle, 201: p. xiii: "These are the best of his stories…"

Footnotes

Sources Boyle, T. C.. 2018. Introduction to Going for a Beer. pp. ix-xiii. W. W. Norton & Company, New York. Coover, Robert. 2018. Going for a Beer: Selected Short Fictions. W. W. Norton & Company, New York. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/03/14/going-for-a-beer Accessed 25 December 2025.

Kennedy, Thomas E.. 1992. Robert Coover: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twaynes publishing, New York.