Coover was a supporter of early electronic literature, and was one of the founders of the Electronic Literature Organization. He taught electronic literature at Brown University and organized events such as the Technology Platforms for 21st Century Literature (TP21CL), held at Brown in 1999.[18] In 1992 he published the essay "The End of Books" in The New York Times,[19] making a mainstream audience aware of the new genre for perhaps the first time. The "now infamous" essay[20] "roiled the literary scene and declaimed the imminent demise of the novel".[21] Many scholars of electronic literature reference the essay, for instance J. Yellowlees Douglas in the title of her book, The End of Books–Or Books Without End? Reading Interactive Narratives.[22] In 1993, Coover published a second New York Times essay on electronic literature: "Hyperfiction: Novels for the Computer"[23]
Coover established the MFA program in Digital Language Arts at Brown University,[24] and helped bring a string of writers of electronic literature to the university, including John Cayley, Talan Memmott, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, William Gillespie[25] and Samantha Gorman.[26][27] Talan Memmott was Brown University's first graduate fellow of electronic writing.[28]
