Larry McCaffery and Robert Coover meet at a sports bar (with loud noise and a football game on television in the background) to discuss Coover’s 1977 novel The Public Burning. Coover discusses in detail the genesis of the book, the research he undertook and the work he engaged in during its composition. Coover also explains the long delay between the book's actual composition and the publication of it. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 115-125 of Critique-Studies In Contemporary Fiction, 2000 Fall, Vol.42(1).