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Antkind
The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York.
B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, film-maker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he's convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius.
All that's left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to recreate the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of "likes" and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bete noire and his raison d'etre.
A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.
B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, film-maker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he's convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius.
All that's left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to recreate the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of "likes" and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bete noire and his raison d'etre.
A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.
720 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 7, 2020
About the author
Charlie Kaufman
17 books812 followersCharles Stuart Kaufman is an American playwright, film producer, theater and film director, and an Academy Award, BAFTA, and Independent Spirit Award-winning screenwriter. Often regarded as one of the finest screenwriters of the 21st century, his work explores themes of death, insecurity, the artistic process, and the passage of time.
In 2003, Kaufman was listed at #100 on Premiere's annual "Power 100" list. He was also identified by Time Magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.
In 2003, Kaufman was listed at #100 on Premiere's annual "Power 100" list. He was also identified by Time Magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most powerful people in Hollywood.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,181 reviews
October 23, 2022
I’ve already read three great postmodernistic novels about cinema: The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, Blue Movie by Terry Southern and Zeroville by Steve Erickson. This is the fourth and it is the most original one.
Antkind is an absurdist comedy written in the unhinged style of deranged postmodern:
A fraud movie critic…
Passing through the modern fake reality…
Watches a three-month-long stop-motion film and his life is changed for good. He wants to write an epochal monograph about this mammoth movie but the film perishes in the fire.
In despair he keeps moving through the trashy modern existence:
It’s what goes as philosophy these days…
And it’s what now stands for wisdom…
Using all possible means he attempts to remember the details of the movie but with every new recollection everything around becomes more and more preposterous. There are neither causes nor effects anymore. The world literally turns into a cinematographic cacotopia…
Reality imitates bad movies and bad movies imitate absurd reality. Life becomes a travesty of vulgar pop culture and pop culture becomes a travesty of nonsensical life…
With the loss of individuality, with all the forced mental uniformity, mankind is slowly turning into a global anthill of social insects.
Antkind is an absurdist comedy written in the unhinged style of deranged postmodern:
A fraud movie critic…
My beard is a wonder… defiantly heterosexual, unkempt, rabbinical, intellectual, revolutionary. It lets you know I am not interested in fashion, that I am eccentric, that I am serious. It affords me the opportunity to judge you on your judgment of me. Do you shun me? You are shallow. Do you mock me? You are a philistine. Are you repulsed? You are… conventional.
Passing through the modern fake reality…
The city is, as is everything now, just more Disneyland. Magic castles. Quaint architecture. That the buildings are authentic somehow does not change the sense of falseness, of fetishization. I grieve for us, a world of tourists, for cities in drag, for our inability to be real in a real place.
Watches a three-month-long stop-motion film and his life is changed for good. He wants to write an epochal monograph about this mammoth movie but the film perishes in the fire.
In despair he keeps moving through the trashy modern existence:
It’s what goes as philosophy these days…
Let’s face it, animals make noise. They demand attention. They make more noise than vegetables, which in turn make more noise than minerals. So the animals, especially the humans, are inherently dramatic. They are not more important but believe they are. This is something one learns almost immediately when one studies Linnaeus.
And it’s what now stands for wisdom…
I think about tires, how they’re round and have holes in their centers. It’s analogous to the missing film. Yet the empty space in the center of a tire is useful; it allows the tire to attach to the wheel, which allows it to turn on the axle, which allows the car to move forward. This gives me some hope. Perhaps this missing film will allow me to move forward. Perhaps the missing film is the hole in the tire that is my brain.
Using all possible means he attempts to remember the details of the movie but with every new recollection everything around becomes more and more preposterous. There are neither causes nor effects anymore. The world literally turns into a cinematographic cacotopia…
Everything is reviewed, analyzed, hated, loved, puked back at us in endless iterations, multiplying, replicating, repeating itself, repeating patterns, echoing…
Reality imitates bad movies and bad movies imitate absurd reality. Life becomes a travesty of vulgar pop culture and pop culture becomes a travesty of nonsensical life…
There is horrible violence, but then we take a break and have dinner. This is life.
With the loss of individuality, with all the forced mental uniformity, mankind is slowly turning into a global anthill of social insects.
October 5, 2020
I have been such a well-behaved reader this year, ploughing my way through many throbbing mountainous classics and hardly reading anything written less than a hundred years ago, so I thought I’d have a holiday and frolic with something almost guaranteed to put a smile on my fizzog and rescue me from the sturmy drangy skies over Petersburg.
But look what happened.
I would say by the time page 200 came into view I was just about approaching Bitterness with this damned annoying book. Charlie Kaufman, a guy who has an almost flawless film career (Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – just those two – gets him the P Bryant Lifetime Achievement Award ™ – all right I wrenched it out of his hands when he produced the portentous wretchedness that is Synecdoche, New York but then I broke in to his house and stuck it back on his shelf after Anomalisa and I’m Thinking of Ending Things) has written a giant 700 page self-loathing self-referential unfunny comic novel because that’s what white male novelists love to do and having been buffeted and gashed by several previous giant unfunny postmodern novels* I had pitifully hoped good old Charlie would be the one who could do it right but that hope faded as fast as a rainbow with toothache as all these sub sub Woody Allen whiny routines began flooding forth, all about this moaning complaining failed film lecturer and critic who has an African American girlfriend and discovers that an African American guy who is over 100 years old and is living in a nearby apartment has made an unknown and unseen except by himself stop-motion film which lasts for three months (ha ha take that Guinness Book of Records) which is the best film ever – is all this sounding silly? That’s because it is.
Also our first person protagonist B Rosenberger never stops banging on about how everyone thinks he’s Jewish because he looks Jewish but hey, he isn’t Jewish. Okay, you’re not. I got it. Rosenberger, I GOT IT. But no, this becomes something that has to be repeated ten trillion times. And because Charlie is clever, he thinks – aha, along about now, my readers will be getting irritated with my book because of its many erudite cinephile references and haven’t-we-been-here-a-thousand-times-before main character and cruel contemptuous thoughts will be bubbling up in their minds right at this point, so let’s have the main guy go into a bitter rant about how Charlie Kaufman is a self-deluded fool of no importance, that will defang them all :
From p 148
Stranger than Fiction is the film Kaufman would’ve written if he were able to plan and structure his work, rather than making it up as he goes along, throwing in half-baked concepts willy-nilly, using no criterion other than a hippy-dippy “that’d be cool, man”. Such a criterion might work if the person making the assessment had even a shred of humanism within his soul. Kaufman does not, and so he puts his characters through hellscapes with no hope of them achieving understanding or redemption… leaving an audience depleted, depressed, and, most egregiously, cheated. … Kaufman is a monster, plain and simple, but a monster unaware of his staggering ineptitude
Well, I personally wouldn’t go that far, and I admit it’s kind of neat to try to tickle all nasty commentators like me by slagging himself off like that, but no Charlie, it won’t work – I see through your ploy!
To all the fans of this book who would like to assure me that it gets way better after page 250 may I say with regret and sorrow that I will probably never find out.
*****
*The Instructions by Adam Levin
Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Tunnel by William Gass
To name but three
But look what happened.
I would say by the time page 200 came into view I was just about approaching Bitterness with this damned annoying book. Charlie Kaufman, a guy who has an almost flawless film career (Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – just those two – gets him the P Bryant Lifetime Achievement Award ™ – all right I wrenched it out of his hands when he produced the portentous wretchedness that is Synecdoche, New York but then I broke in to his house and stuck it back on his shelf after Anomalisa and I’m Thinking of Ending Things) has written a giant 700 page self-loathing self-referential unfunny comic novel because that’s what white male novelists love to do and having been buffeted and gashed by several previous giant unfunny postmodern novels* I had pitifully hoped good old Charlie would be the one who could do it right but that hope faded as fast as a rainbow with toothache as all these sub sub Woody Allen whiny routines began flooding forth, all about this moaning complaining failed film lecturer and critic who has an African American girlfriend and discovers that an African American guy who is over 100 years old and is living in a nearby apartment has made an unknown and unseen except by himself stop-motion film which lasts for three months (ha ha take that Guinness Book of Records) which is the best film ever – is all this sounding silly? That’s because it is.
Also our first person protagonist B Rosenberger never stops banging on about how everyone thinks he’s Jewish because he looks Jewish but hey, he isn’t Jewish. Okay, you’re not. I got it. Rosenberger, I GOT IT. But no, this becomes something that has to be repeated ten trillion times. And because Charlie is clever, he thinks – aha, along about now, my readers will be getting irritated with my book because of its many erudite cinephile references and haven’t-we-been-here-a-thousand-times-before main character and cruel contemptuous thoughts will be bubbling up in their minds right at this point, so let’s have the main guy go into a bitter rant about how Charlie Kaufman is a self-deluded fool of no importance, that will defang them all :
From p 148
Stranger than Fiction is the film Kaufman would’ve written if he were able to plan and structure his work, rather than making it up as he goes along, throwing in half-baked concepts willy-nilly, using no criterion other than a hippy-dippy “that’d be cool, man”. Such a criterion might work if the person making the assessment had even a shred of humanism within his soul. Kaufman does not, and so he puts his characters through hellscapes with no hope of them achieving understanding or redemption… leaving an audience depleted, depressed, and, most egregiously, cheated. … Kaufman is a monster, plain and simple, but a monster unaware of his staggering ineptitude
Well, I personally wouldn’t go that far, and I admit it’s kind of neat to try to tickle all nasty commentators like me by slagging himself off like that, but no Charlie, it won’t work – I see through your ploy!
To all the fans of this book who would like to assure me that it gets way better after page 250 may I say with regret and sorrow that I will probably never find out.
*****
*The Instructions by Adam Levin
Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Tunnel by William Gass
To name but three
February 1, 2020
A literary apocalypse of compulsive cinematic ungendering.
More Kafkaesque than Kafka. More borgesian than Borges. Less Shakespearean than Homer. These accolades mean everything and nothing. Because accolades, in any form, tell partial half-truths, like any communicable piece of information, as Kaufman shows us ad nauseam, in this Rabelaisian charade of a novel of a singularity, of a Big Bang, of a black hole. Or is it a white hole?
Hilariously obscure references and arcane film and literature shaggy dog jokes were a few of the defining moments. Let me clarify: This is about the hollywoodization of real life. It is about externalizing the internal. The fetishization of film. Bringing filmic techniques into fiction, then bringing mental puzzles into fiction and merging the two. Atemporality, non linear time. Non linear narrative. It is about chronology and human relationships to time and other humans. Each human has their own point of access and mental timeline. The possibility of living in a film. Or never escaping it. The possibility that life is film and film is life, and vice versa. Visa versa.
It is a novel about film. Obviously.
The plight of the unseen. Also obvious. The unfilmed actors, not the extras. The ones who weren't in the film. Those are the people who people this novel.
Literal manifestations of psychological aberrations and metaphorical concepts. The nature of genius, the excuses of the brilliant. The selfish pursuit of art. Gender, class, race. The macrocosm within the microcosm within the macrocosm. Hazy definitions of reality, blurring those edges, and crossing the line so many times the line takes on new dimensions.
An exploration of Outsider art, which is a pet obsession of many artists. The Darger-esque character, Ingo, is fascinating, even though characters in this novel are all reflected through the narrator's lens. Rosenberger, the narrator, as separate from the character, Charlie Kaufman, who is also in the book, as a lampooned filmmaker, who made the exact films the real Kaufman made.
This book is Hyper-metafictional, as any Kaufman fan probably expected. Similar in spirit to Synecdoche, New York. But more far-reaching, dense, and neurotic than any other book I've read. It's narrator shares many similarities with that in Adam Levin's Bubblegum, but Kaufman's fictitious persona is more readable and not simultaneously. He embodies countless dichotomies.
What allows me to control my annoyance at the constant backtracking, second-guessing, triple-guessing, and justification, qualification and inquisitive mania of Rosenberger is an appreciation for the style of excess, and a high tolerance for meta-fictional bullshit. It's taken to an art form and then it's overanalyzed on the page. Which is all fine, once you see how he does it.
The ideal love illusion. How characters constantly fall in love at the drop of a hat. This is a plot device in Rosenberg's own life. Non binary double binds - there are so many of them that it goes far past political correctness into obnoxious self-reference. The sad lonely inevitability of aging, the so-described irreducible tragedy of old age and attendant biases. The symphonic loneliness and depression of Rosenberg is both poetic and infinitely self-inflicted. The recursive propagation of further complexities, the consistent appearance of competitors, the dramatic and cinematic tropes of rivalries, foils, and predictable outcomes. Character non-development. Rebels and conformists. The evolution of cinema. The evolution of inclusivity. Fascinating sub cultures which respond to social injustice and become cults. (These were extremely interesting, but will get on some peoples' nerves, I expect - but if you have any functioning nerves left after finishing this book, they will be frayed.) The social justice inquisition. That is also what this book is about. The crusade of artistic abasement. Clandestine and overt pandering, pondering, wandering, intellectual masturbation, onanistic romance, infatuation both with art and unattainable true molecule-to-molecule contact. Social contracts, pet peeves, insurmountable personal obstacles.
Rosenberg succumbs to the same biases he abhors. The abhorrence of bias are everywhere, the inevitability of bias is omnipresent, the infinitude of biases... the differences between cultures around the world and their various standards. The all-encompassing impossibility of an inclusive America. Of course, it's about that too.
The ethnic and economic injustice inherent in our culture. Exploring derangement and infinite regress. Social politics. The end and means and the never-ending, always mean suffering of any possible minority.
The only way it could be more meta would be if they made a film of the novel and then novelization of the film and then a film of the novelization and so on and so on, which Kaufman includes as a possibility, of course. This book contains its own macrocosmic universe, as I said. The whole universe can be extrapolated from its first few pages. The skeleton housing the set-pieces are all expertly in place from Kaufman's inconspicuous method. With enough suspension of disbelief you can get away with just about anything. Keep increasing that suspension. Dangle unbelievable things in front of the reader long enough, and in the right way, and it's almost brainwashing.
A dream within a dream under hypnosis inside a remembered film that could be a figment of his imagination. Are you bothered by dream sequences? Well, there are a lot of them.
Pointing out continuity errors in a film can be fun, Rosenberg does this but with his real life, and there are so many continuity errors that the director must have put them there on purpose. He knows this. He knows he is a fictional character. And it shows.
The function of memory. How many functions does it actually have? The function of false memories. The fallacy of memory authenticity. The curse of eidetic memory. The possibility of Total Recall. And not just the remake. The concept. Buried memories, Freud, Jung and the sub sub sub sub sub sub "et chetera" conscious and conscience and nescience and the aesthetics of neuroscience, neuroses, and the art of forgetting.
There are built-in excuses for anything which might be considered a flaw in this novel. Everything I could say about it could easily be refuted by a super-defensive ultra-qualified Inner Kaufman. It creates recursive intentionality. Everything is intentional because it can be explained within context, no matter how insanely absurd it is. Every. Word.
Escapism. The novel functions within its constraints and without them. The novel escapes. The characters are escaping, and so is the reader. They merge and then propagate downwardly.
The Deterioration of Reality. Capitalized. That is a big theme. Maybe The Theme.
Every film technique Kaufman ever used, he uses again in this book. He invents new ones. He even invents many film ideas he may or may not make.
All of Kaufman's films are contained in this book in one form or another.
I read the screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for film class. At least that had human limitations. The limitations of this novel are almost superhuman. A proper analysis would requires theses. The thesis is contained in the novel, though. So no one will write it, except maybe Kaufman at a later date. And he will do so in the form of a film. Probably.
No one could have written this book except Charlie Kaufman. If I were given it without the author revealed I think I would've guessed even before the self references occurred.
This book has the capacity to take the pleasure out of reading.
Like, have a cup of tea. Settle down man. Super analysis of the environment is a rabbit hole we don't need to always follow down. It's rabbit holes all the way down to the edge of the universe. There are always more sub-atomic particles. I'm sorry. Our puny lifetimes are too short to maintain the hope that we can learn everything there is to know.
Polymathic. Maybe. Monomaniacal. Definitely. Maximalist. In extremis. Pynchonian. Sure. DFW-esque. Obviously.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind within eternal sunshine of the spotless mind etc. He constantly lampoons his own films. Which was appreciated. Eternal darkness of the clouded psyche.
Excess in a void. He lampoons other films too, which will be great for film buffs. You probably won't get much enjoyment out of the book if you aren't to some extent a film buff. Or at least film conversant. If not buff then built, or chiseled or comfortable with your self-image, I guess.
Obsessive compulsive disorder combined with molecular Legos in a sandbox of infinite dimensions. That's Kaufman.
The book appeals to ocd if you have it and you likely won't be physically able to stop reading because you will need to see what happens. But isn't any good book putting you in the same boat?
The hilarious digs at Nolan and Inception. Well done.
Time reversal. Time extension, dissension, dissection, and general clowning. The literal clowns. Are they supposed to be symbolic? Everything is symbolic. That's the first assumption you should have made. Time malleability, the marketability of memories, the market value of genius. The perception of genius. The mind-f-- shenanigans are unconscionable as they pile up. And they keep going on long after you want them to stop. Kaufman is that kid in the back of the interminable car ride signing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, and he always starts over when he gets to zero and he has perfect pitch and tremolo and a megaphone, and you are too polite or considerate to ask him to stop, not that he would listen anyway.
I am disillusioned or heavily influenced or intoxicated. Yes there is a toxic quality to his brand of semantic overload. Over capacity synaptic sputtering. Shock treatment for your humor glands. Over medication, the book rewards binge reading and rereading and memorization. It is a perpetual positive feedback loop. A negative one as well. A heady doctoral thesis on human madness, on mad humanness. It contains our multitudes and eludes your grasp, it hinges on fringes of acceptability and outrage. It is prescient and analog. It is insensate and utterly nonsensical. It is uberdescript.
This book ruined Kaufman movies for me. At least until I recover a little of my sanity. The inevitability that art will always surpass itself. If it does not surpass its predecessors, is it real art? Is this a 720-page ruler by which all metafictional novels must be measured? Is it a ruler by which Kaufman is measuring his intellectual qualifications? Or is it a simple artistic experiment?
I think it's more accurate to say that this is the absolute or near absolute expression of the genre, that the human heart, spirit, and mind can only tolerate so much meta before it projectile vomits miniature selves projectile vomiting miniature selves. See Kaufman, anyone can write weird metafiction. I just did. Metafiction for Kaufman may be a form of medication and he is most certainly addicted to it.
Fiction bleeding into reality in every conceivable way. This happens all the time in movies. It happens here too. A lot. I caught the subliminal Philip k. Dick reference. He put it in the book for me. I just know he did. As I am a PKD fan. He also put other things about paranoia in the book for me too. Because I have thought those things previously, and now I'm reading them in a book. I think.
I'll leave it to you to find the reference. The constant contradictions between Rosenberg's memories and factual accounts and reality. This is another Dickian trait. I'm assuming Kaufman read Dick, instead of just watching Blade Runner, like most people.
Philosophical conceptions of comedy and human dimensions of history. It's nice that he decided to include those too. What didn't he include? Humility? Humbleness. No that's in there alright. I can't think of anything actually. It does contain everything. One of the footnotes contains Infinite Jest. Wait that was a mismemory. All it needs is 800 footnotes to contain Infinite Jest.
Harlan Ellison or Descartes would say: I have a mouth, therefore I am a scream.
I have a brain, therefore I am a stream of consciousness.
Kaufman you should either be incredibly ashamed of yourself or incredibly proud. I'm not sure which.
Thank you to the publisher who provided an advanced copy through NetGalley.
More Kafkaesque than Kafka. More borgesian than Borges. Less Shakespearean than Homer. These accolades mean everything and nothing. Because accolades, in any form, tell partial half-truths, like any communicable piece of information, as Kaufman shows us ad nauseam, in this Rabelaisian charade of a novel of a singularity, of a Big Bang, of a black hole. Or is it a white hole?
Hilariously obscure references and arcane film and literature shaggy dog jokes were a few of the defining moments. Let me clarify: This is about the hollywoodization of real life. It is about externalizing the internal. The fetishization of film. Bringing filmic techniques into fiction, then bringing mental puzzles into fiction and merging the two. Atemporality, non linear time. Non linear narrative. It is about chronology and human relationships to time and other humans. Each human has their own point of access and mental timeline. The possibility of living in a film. Or never escaping it. The possibility that life is film and film is life, and vice versa. Visa versa.
It is a novel about film. Obviously.
The plight of the unseen. Also obvious. The unfilmed actors, not the extras. The ones who weren't in the film. Those are the people who people this novel.
Literal manifestations of psychological aberrations and metaphorical concepts. The nature of genius, the excuses of the brilliant. The selfish pursuit of art. Gender, class, race. The macrocosm within the microcosm within the macrocosm. Hazy definitions of reality, blurring those edges, and crossing the line so many times the line takes on new dimensions.
An exploration of Outsider art, which is a pet obsession of many artists. The Darger-esque character, Ingo, is fascinating, even though characters in this novel are all reflected through the narrator's lens. Rosenberger, the narrator, as separate from the character, Charlie Kaufman, who is also in the book, as a lampooned filmmaker, who made the exact films the real Kaufman made.
This book is Hyper-metafictional, as any Kaufman fan probably expected. Similar in spirit to Synecdoche, New York. But more far-reaching, dense, and neurotic than any other book I've read. It's narrator shares many similarities with that in Adam Levin's Bubblegum, but Kaufman's fictitious persona is more readable and not simultaneously. He embodies countless dichotomies.
What allows me to control my annoyance at the constant backtracking, second-guessing, triple-guessing, and justification, qualification and inquisitive mania of Rosenberger is an appreciation for the style of excess, and a high tolerance for meta-fictional bullshit. It's taken to an art form and then it's overanalyzed on the page. Which is all fine, once you see how he does it.
The ideal love illusion. How characters constantly fall in love at the drop of a hat. This is a plot device in Rosenberg's own life. Non binary double binds - there are so many of them that it goes far past political correctness into obnoxious self-reference. The sad lonely inevitability of aging, the so-described irreducible tragedy of old age and attendant biases. The symphonic loneliness and depression of Rosenberg is both poetic and infinitely self-inflicted. The recursive propagation of further complexities, the consistent appearance of competitors, the dramatic and cinematic tropes of rivalries, foils, and predictable outcomes. Character non-development. Rebels and conformists. The evolution of cinema. The evolution of inclusivity. Fascinating sub cultures which respond to social injustice and become cults. (These were extremely interesting, but will get on some peoples' nerves, I expect - but if you have any functioning nerves left after finishing this book, they will be frayed.) The social justice inquisition. That is also what this book is about. The crusade of artistic abasement. Clandestine and overt pandering, pondering, wandering, intellectual masturbation, onanistic romance, infatuation both with art and unattainable true molecule-to-molecule contact. Social contracts, pet peeves, insurmountable personal obstacles.
Rosenberg succumbs to the same biases he abhors. The abhorrence of bias are everywhere, the inevitability of bias is omnipresent, the infinitude of biases... the differences between cultures around the world and their various standards. The all-encompassing impossibility of an inclusive America. Of course, it's about that too.
The ethnic and economic injustice inherent in our culture. Exploring derangement and infinite regress. Social politics. The end and means and the never-ending, always mean suffering of any possible minority.
The only way it could be more meta would be if they made a film of the novel and then novelization of the film and then a film of the novelization and so on and so on, which Kaufman includes as a possibility, of course. This book contains its own macrocosmic universe, as I said. The whole universe can be extrapolated from its first few pages. The skeleton housing the set-pieces are all expertly in place from Kaufman's inconspicuous method. With enough suspension of disbelief you can get away with just about anything. Keep increasing that suspension. Dangle unbelievable things in front of the reader long enough, and in the right way, and it's almost brainwashing.
A dream within a dream under hypnosis inside a remembered film that could be a figment of his imagination. Are you bothered by dream sequences? Well, there are a lot of them.
Pointing out continuity errors in a film can be fun, Rosenberg does this but with his real life, and there are so many continuity errors that the director must have put them there on purpose. He knows this. He knows he is a fictional character. And it shows.
The function of memory. How many functions does it actually have? The function of false memories. The fallacy of memory authenticity. The curse of eidetic memory. The possibility of Total Recall. And not just the remake. The concept. Buried memories, Freud, Jung and the sub sub sub sub sub sub "et chetera" conscious and conscience and nescience and the aesthetics of neuroscience, neuroses, and the art of forgetting.
There are built-in excuses for anything which might be considered a flaw in this novel. Everything I could say about it could easily be refuted by a super-defensive ultra-qualified Inner Kaufman. It creates recursive intentionality. Everything is intentional because it can be explained within context, no matter how insanely absurd it is. Every. Word.
Escapism. The novel functions within its constraints and without them. The novel escapes. The characters are escaping, and so is the reader. They merge and then propagate downwardly.
The Deterioration of Reality. Capitalized. That is a big theme. Maybe The Theme.
Every film technique Kaufman ever used, he uses again in this book. He invents new ones. He even invents many film ideas he may or may not make.
All of Kaufman's films are contained in this book in one form or another.
I read the screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for film class. At least that had human limitations. The limitations of this novel are almost superhuman. A proper analysis would requires theses. The thesis is contained in the novel, though. So no one will write it, except maybe Kaufman at a later date. And he will do so in the form of a film. Probably.
No one could have written this book except Charlie Kaufman. If I were given it without the author revealed I think I would've guessed even before the self references occurred.
This book has the capacity to take the pleasure out of reading.
Like, have a cup of tea. Settle down man. Super analysis of the environment is a rabbit hole we don't need to always follow down. It's rabbit holes all the way down to the edge of the universe. There are always more sub-atomic particles. I'm sorry. Our puny lifetimes are too short to maintain the hope that we can learn everything there is to know.
Polymathic. Maybe. Monomaniacal. Definitely. Maximalist. In extremis. Pynchonian. Sure. DFW-esque. Obviously.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind within eternal sunshine of the spotless mind etc. He constantly lampoons his own films. Which was appreciated. Eternal darkness of the clouded psyche.
Excess in a void. He lampoons other films too, which will be great for film buffs. You probably won't get much enjoyment out of the book if you aren't to some extent a film buff. Or at least film conversant. If not buff then built, or chiseled or comfortable with your self-image, I guess.
Obsessive compulsive disorder combined with molecular Legos in a sandbox of infinite dimensions. That's Kaufman.
The book appeals to ocd if you have it and you likely won't be physically able to stop reading because you will need to see what happens. But isn't any good book putting you in the same boat?
The hilarious digs at Nolan and Inception. Well done.
Time reversal. Time extension, dissension, dissection, and general clowning. The literal clowns. Are they supposed to be symbolic? Everything is symbolic. That's the first assumption you should have made. Time malleability, the marketability of memories, the market value of genius. The perception of genius. The mind-f-- shenanigans are unconscionable as they pile up. And they keep going on long after you want them to stop. Kaufman is that kid in the back of the interminable car ride signing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, and he always starts over when he gets to zero and he has perfect pitch and tremolo and a megaphone, and you are too polite or considerate to ask him to stop, not that he would listen anyway.
I am disillusioned or heavily influenced or intoxicated. Yes there is a toxic quality to his brand of semantic overload. Over capacity synaptic sputtering. Shock treatment for your humor glands. Over medication, the book rewards binge reading and rereading and memorization. It is a perpetual positive feedback loop. A negative one as well. A heady doctoral thesis on human madness, on mad humanness. It contains our multitudes and eludes your grasp, it hinges on fringes of acceptability and outrage. It is prescient and analog. It is insensate and utterly nonsensical. It is uberdescript.
This book ruined Kaufman movies for me. At least until I recover a little of my sanity. The inevitability that art will always surpass itself. If it does not surpass its predecessors, is it real art? Is this a 720-page ruler by which all metafictional novels must be measured? Is it a ruler by which Kaufman is measuring his intellectual qualifications? Or is it a simple artistic experiment?
I think it's more accurate to say that this is the absolute or near absolute expression of the genre, that the human heart, spirit, and mind can only tolerate so much meta before it projectile vomits miniature selves projectile vomiting miniature selves. See Kaufman, anyone can write weird metafiction. I just did. Metafiction for Kaufman may be a form of medication and he is most certainly addicted to it.
Fiction bleeding into reality in every conceivable way. This happens all the time in movies. It happens here too. A lot. I caught the subliminal Philip k. Dick reference. He put it in the book for me. I just know he did. As I am a PKD fan. He also put other things about paranoia in the book for me too. Because I have thought those things previously, and now I'm reading them in a book. I think.
I'll leave it to you to find the reference. The constant contradictions between Rosenberg's memories and factual accounts and reality. This is another Dickian trait. I'm assuming Kaufman read Dick, instead of just watching Blade Runner, like most people.
Philosophical conceptions of comedy and human dimensions of history. It's nice that he decided to include those too. What didn't he include? Humility? Humbleness. No that's in there alright. I can't think of anything actually. It does contain everything. One of the footnotes contains Infinite Jest. Wait that was a mismemory. All it needs is 800 footnotes to contain Infinite Jest.
Harlan Ellison or Descartes would say: I have a mouth, therefore I am a scream.
I have a brain, therefore I am a stream of consciousness.
Kaufman you should either be incredibly ashamed of yourself or incredibly proud. I'm not sure which.
Thank you to the publisher who provided an advanced copy through NetGalley.
February 28, 2020
THIS BOOK! Truly difficult to describe, but I'd call it The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Twitter Era, or Chuck Palahniuk on a cocktail of mind-expanding future-drugs. If there were a Criterion Collection for books, this would be the first inductee. Over 700 pages of intolerable bloviation from literature's most punchable narrator - and I loved every moment. Absolutely bonkers, but overall an incredible reading experience! I found myself highlighting passages and forcing my husband to read them because I just couldn't believe how hilarious the writing was. An absolute must-read for any arthouse film buff (especially fans of Kaufman's movies- they will eat this up!!), but readers who enjoy satire or surrealism or dark humor will enjoy it as well. I expect reviews will be extremely polarizing, but the quality of the writing is undeniable. Antkind will stay with me for a long time.
September 28, 2021
The Burdens of Privilege
Ideas lead to further ideas. Obvious, right? It’s how the world progresses. Or at least the human part of it.
But this is a scam, a con job of cosmic magnitude. It’s the way that demon Language has his (or her, or its, or thon’s) way with us.
We call it ‘thinking’, or the even more solitary activity of ‘imagination’. But it might more accurately be called ‘following’, or the even more communal ‘serving’. We are swept along in a current of ideas. They pop up out of nowhere, demand attention, and direct behaviour. Think about it: who is really in charge here?
Facility with language is how we get on in the world. Those who ‘master’ language or some significant part of it - doctors, lawyers, finance types - generally get on best. These are the folk who can connect ideas (that is to say, words) in acceptable, and sometimes innovative ways.
B (short for Balaam, like the biblical character with the ass) Ruby Rosenberger Rosenberg is just such an aspiring word master, a film critic who makes his living (as well as his life) by connecting ideas. His stream (or train) of consciousness is more a torrent (or freight load) of miscellaneous facts, celebrity names, hearsay events, random metaphors, and potential opportunities. He is obsessed by the correctness (political and otherwise) of the words he uses, even those he with himself (befitting a graduate of Harvard, of course). He wants everyone to know that he is kindly disposed towards African-Americans, that he is not Jewish, and that he can really make a contribution to the world by commenting (driveling?), in articles and at book-length, about the cinematic world. This he calls “monetizing” his ideas.
Researching his latest tome, B encounters the ancient part-time cinematographer (and former full-time caretaker at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in Saint Augustine), Ingo Cutbirth, a black man who is one of the great number of Unseen in the industry as well as society in general. From his position behind the camera, Cutbirth has made a film that takes three months to watch (and took ninety years to make). B senses an opportunity that is personal as well as professional. Cutbirth is a way out of B’s unexpressed but gnawing feeling of inauthenticity (and obscurity): “My privilege shelters me, and Ingo is the ax with which to hack away at the shelter that is the privilege which I have had,” he thinks. Ah, those pesky ideas, illusory, apparently self-serving but leading us down the garden path of perdition.
Hence the title Antkind: “Just as the Campotini ant is enslaved by the fungus O. unilateralis, so I have been enlisted to monomaniacally do the bidding of Ingo’s movie.” Among ants, the mind is communal. And, so B discovers, is his: “Where does the movie end and my mind begin?” Culture is something we consider as being possessed by ‘us’ when, being essentially linguistic, it actually possesses us. And yet we fight for it as its loyal minions, almost always at someone else’s expense. These are the Unseen who have less facility with language, but who are actually exploited to create the scenes we see. We call the result ‘reality’ but the Unseen are clearly not part of that.
Things quickly go awry for B. Cutbirth dies; his film is accidentally destroyed by fire; and B himself is physically transformed from the same cause. But, obsessed with the film, B is on a downward slide. “I feel a slippage; things are not steady,” he worries. It is language itself that he feels unravelling: “It is the slippage of my thoughts, my definitions, my mental landscape that terrifies me.” The stability of his life has been lost and “Everything is mysterious now.” Is this a mental illness or a process of awakening? Or perhaps just a dream?
Read it to find out. Be prepared for surprises.
Ideas lead to further ideas. Obvious, right? It’s how the world progresses. Or at least the human part of it.
But this is a scam, a con job of cosmic magnitude. It’s the way that demon Language has his (or her, or its, or thon’s) way with us.
We call it ‘thinking’, or the even more solitary activity of ‘imagination’. But it might more accurately be called ‘following’, or the even more communal ‘serving’. We are swept along in a current of ideas. They pop up out of nowhere, demand attention, and direct behaviour. Think about it: who is really in charge here?
Facility with language is how we get on in the world. Those who ‘master’ language or some significant part of it - doctors, lawyers, finance types - generally get on best. These are the folk who can connect ideas (that is to say, words) in acceptable, and sometimes innovative ways.
B (short for Balaam, like the biblical character with the ass) Ruby Rosenberger Rosenberg is just such an aspiring word master, a film critic who makes his living (as well as his life) by connecting ideas. His stream (or train) of consciousness is more a torrent (or freight load) of miscellaneous facts, celebrity names, hearsay events, random metaphors, and potential opportunities. He is obsessed by the correctness (political and otherwise) of the words he uses, even those he with himself (befitting a graduate of Harvard, of course). He wants everyone to know that he is kindly disposed towards African-Americans, that he is not Jewish, and that he can really make a contribution to the world by commenting (driveling?), in articles and at book-length, about the cinematic world. This he calls “monetizing” his ideas.
Researching his latest tome, B encounters the ancient part-time cinematographer (and former full-time caretaker at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in Saint Augustine), Ingo Cutbirth, a black man who is one of the great number of Unseen in the industry as well as society in general. From his position behind the camera, Cutbirth has made a film that takes three months to watch (and took ninety years to make). B senses an opportunity that is personal as well as professional. Cutbirth is a way out of B’s unexpressed but gnawing feeling of inauthenticity (and obscurity): “My privilege shelters me, and Ingo is the ax with which to hack away at the shelter that is the privilege which I have had,” he thinks. Ah, those pesky ideas, illusory, apparently self-serving but leading us down the garden path of perdition.
Hence the title Antkind: “Just as the Campotini ant is enslaved by the fungus O. unilateralis, so I have been enlisted to monomaniacally do the bidding of Ingo’s movie.” Among ants, the mind is communal. And, so B discovers, is his: “Where does the movie end and my mind begin?” Culture is something we consider as being possessed by ‘us’ when, being essentially linguistic, it actually possesses us. And yet we fight for it as its loyal minions, almost always at someone else’s expense. These are the Unseen who have less facility with language, but who are actually exploited to create the scenes we see. We call the result ‘reality’ but the Unseen are clearly not part of that.
Things quickly go awry for B. Cutbirth dies; his film is accidentally destroyed by fire; and B himself is physically transformed from the same cause. But, obsessed with the film, B is on a downward slide. “I feel a slippage; things are not steady,” he worries. It is language itself that he feels unravelling: “It is the slippage of my thoughts, my definitions, my mental landscape that terrifies me.” The stability of his life has been lost and “Everything is mysterious now.” Is this a mental illness or a process of awakening? Or perhaps just a dream?
Read it to find out. Be prepared for surprises.
March 23, 2020
Reading this book made me fantasize about how wonderful it might be to watch paint drying on the wall. My tolerance for pretentious, pseudo-intellectual stream-of-consciousness is less than zero. Please understand that this only represents my own personal opinion which is contra-balanced against the masses who find brilliance in this bloated mess. I guess it's like some of the modern art that the critics love and ordinary folks just shake their heads at, wondering what all the fuss was about.
April 10, 2024
Many a novel I've come across with the tagline of being 'Pynchon-esque', but a 700+ page debut novel by an Oscar winner now in his 60s is something of a rare bird. (Or should that be a symbolic giant ant?). Being a screenwriter as Kaufman is, it's evident to see that he sure does know how to write, and the ideas and sheer imagination put into this novel along with what he is actually trying to say about the world by means of this is nothing short of genius. However, I'd be lying (yep, just like good old Pynchon) if I said there weren't chunks of the novel where I felt like being lost in a maze. (Unsurprising to me that some readers just gave up). However again, you have to view the novel as a whole (obviously that includes the ending), and although everything doesn't all come together on its last few pages where it left me with a big beaming smile on face thinking 'Yes! I see it now, it all becomes clear!', it certainly didn't leave me scratching my head thinking 'what the hell?' either. Read between the lines and Kaufman's important themes are staring you right in the face the whole way through. (Well, it's more like putting their arms around you seeing as two big themes are kindness and compassion). It all starts off rather straightforward and easy to follow as a man with a big bushy beard and small round specs (B Rosenberger Rosenberg: somewhat of a loser: both loveable and at times unlikeable) heads off from New York to stay in St. Augustine, Florida, to write about a film. He there befriends his neighbour, a reclusive African American called Ingo Cutbirth (who is well over 100 years-old), and who had been working for 90 years on a stop motion picture some three months long. B. gets to watch it (that's a lot of toilet breaks!) but along the way Cutbirth dies, leaving B. feeling his one mission in life (despite the fact Cutbirth wanted the film destroyed) is to get it back to New York, show it, write about, and bask in the glory of this newly discovered out-and-out masterpiece, that might just take away that loser status and, hopefully, make it easier to find love. Travelling back, and in the parking lot of a Slammy's roadside diner, there is a fire in his truck (old nitrate film stock and open air don't mix well) which ultimately leads to B. ending up in hospital and, on awakening, with a serious case of memory loss. Now, knowing Kaufman for the likes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich and Synecdoche, New York there was always going to come a point when we take a trip down into his rabbit hole so to speak. And once here (which comes around the first third) there isn't any going back. From here on, it's classic Kaufman that really takes hold, as we go on a journey through the fragmented memories of B. who tries to recall Cutbirth's film. In terms of its length, It felt like Kaufman loved to write this, but never had a clear goal when to end it. It goes on and on and on. Length is not the problem, its what you do with it that counts. There are some novels I've read that are longer than this and that I didn't want to end, meaning I wanted more, but I can't say the same here. It's too long. One thing where Kaufman absolutely nails it though is with its quirky and comical nature. Make no bones about it, Antkind is extremely funny. Another plus is the great dialogue (easy peasy Japanesey for someone like Kaufman), and how he refers to films, directors (Judd Apatow among others comes up quite a bit), and film stars (sometimes tweaking their names a bit which was a nice touch) and even taking the piss out of himself. Overall, I found so much to like about this novel, but it didn't come without its problems. Kaufman is clearly having a dig at Trump (here it's Trunk) and it's OK to start with, but this just turns stale as time goes on. Also, there is this whole thing about pronouns going on. You see this a hell of a lot when B. is referring to people he doesn't know and hasn't met as 'him, her or thon' (thon being non-binary) rather than just assume. I get it, as I also sensed B. had something of a so-called white privilege guilty conscience (he likes to let everyone know he has an African American girlfriend: he actually did, but never calls her by her name), but when it's persistent throughout the novel like this it just gets irritating. I do hope this remains his one and only novel, but not because it isn't any good. I just don't see how he could top this. I've heard some critics say it's disturbing in parts (Holy wackermoly! I mean, is it just me or does it seem like everything is disturbing these days?). I'd sure love to know what they were drinking and/or smoking. It's a whole lot of fun mostly, but that's not to say it doesn't echo with a sadness and a seriousness too. And in B. Rosenberger Rosenberg (do I detect a trace of Vonnegut here?) we get a character that's such a great creation.
August 20, 2020
I didn’t finish this book, I escaped it. This is such a fascinating reading experience because, as you trudge through all 700+ pages, you’re actively watching a writer, who was obviously winging it from beginning to end and making it up as he went along, run out of ideas. I genuinely loved the first hundred or so pages despite some uncomfortable jokes about gender that your young-people-today-are-too-sensitive uncle would make (which don’t really slow down until 600ish pages in), but as it goes on it feels like the book gradually falls apart until it fully becomes a Trump-joke-fueled death march to the end. The editors were clearly afraid to mess with Charlie’s work or tell him to cut it down— after all, he’s basically never missed when it comes to filmmaking so why should they not trust his novel to be brilliant?— and because of that the whole thing just feels like a rambling 700-page sketch of a 150-page book. Because Charlie clearly went into this with no idea of where the story would lead, it’s just a series of loosely connected tangents built upon tangents built upon tangents, and as it goes on the digressions become less clever and increasingly, gratingly unfunny. By the end it’s well past the point of humor and into just throwing Robot Trump jokes at a wall and seeing what it sticks. None of it does and I genuinely am in awe of myself for getting through it all. An ordeal.
September 10, 2020
For the 1st couple hundred pages I was thinking this might be a 5* jobbie. But as the pages roll by any pretense to a coherent plot goes out of the window. Don't get me wrong - it still a fun ride but by the end I had no idea what was going on and I wonder if Kaufman himself did.
An interesting reference in the book is to a chap called Henry Darger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_D...) an outsider artist who I think was a real person (you can't be too sure these days) and whose huge 15,000 page book "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" has many similarities to events in Antkind and Darger died in St. Augustine's Home for the Aged (St Augustine is the place in Florida where B discovers Ingo's 3 month movie
Anyway it was a blast
An interesting reference in the book is to a chap called Henry Darger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_D...) an outsider artist who I think was a real person (you can't be too sure these days) and whose huge 15,000 page book "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" has many similarities to events in Antkind and Darger died in St. Augustine's Home for the Aged (St Augustine is the place in Florida where B discovers Ingo's 3 month movie
Anyway it was a blast
December 11, 2020
Balaam Rosenberger Rosenberg is a writer or film critic or something. He goes by B. “so as not to wield my maleness as a weapon”. He has an African American girlfriend, as he tells us about a thousand times. I assume this is meant to be ironical. He meets Ingo Cutbirth, an “ancient, reclusive, eccentric, likely psychotic African American filmmaker“ who has created an animated film that takes three months to watch (including bathroom breaks). It is undoubtedly a masterpiece which Rosenberg is destined to introduce to the world, until he unfortunately destroys it.
I knew from the first chapter that I would not be able to finish this book. The writing style was not for me. I recognize how some readers will see this as a string of clever observations. Unfortunately, I see it as stream of consciousness babble that repetitively goes on for over 700 pages. The author also takes occasional shots at filmmakers he deems beneath him: “...backdraft (also a dismal movie, by the way, directed by Ronson Howard, which somehow manages to make fighting fires both tedious and inexplicably colorless). "
This is the second book I tried this week in which the protagonist/author just spent too damned much time thinking about himself. In each case, the author actually mentioned himself in the book. “ had [Charlie] Kaufman written this film, it would have been a laundry list of ‘clever’ ideas, culminating in some unearned emotional brutality and a chain reaction of recursional activity wherein it is revealed that the author has an author who has an author who has an author who has an author, et cetera, thus leaving the audience depleted, depressed, and, most egregiously, cheated. What Kaufman does not understand is that such ‘high concepts’ are not an end in themselves but an opportunity to explore actual mundane human issues. Kaufman is a monster, plain and simple, but a monster unaware of his staggering ineptitude....”. Amazingly, each book also had doppelgängers.
I’m sure there is an appreciative audience for this book (maybe cineastes), but it’s not me. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
I knew from the first chapter that I would not be able to finish this book. The writing style was not for me. I recognize how some readers will see this as a string of clever observations. Unfortunately, I see it as stream of consciousness babble that repetitively goes on for over 700 pages. The author also takes occasional shots at filmmakers he deems beneath him: “...backdraft (also a dismal movie, by the way, directed by Ronson Howard, which somehow manages to make fighting fires both tedious and inexplicably colorless). "
This is the second book I tried this week in which the protagonist/author just spent too damned much time thinking about himself. In each case, the author actually mentioned himself in the book. “ had [Charlie] Kaufman written this film, it would have been a laundry list of ‘clever’ ideas, culminating in some unearned emotional brutality and a chain reaction of recursional activity wherein it is revealed that the author has an author who has an author who has an author who has an author, et cetera, thus leaving the audience depleted, depressed, and, most egregiously, cheated. What Kaufman does not understand is that such ‘high concepts’ are not an end in themselves but an opportunity to explore actual mundane human issues. Kaufman is a monster, plain and simple, but a monster unaware of his staggering ineptitude....”. Amazingly, each book also had doppelgängers.
I’m sure there is an appreciative audience for this book (maybe cineastes), but it’s not me. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
April 10, 2021
English: Antkind
This novel is a rabbit hole into the mind of B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, a neurotic middle-aged film critic who finds, then loses, then tries to re-construct a cinematic, well, masterpiece... it's a three-month-long movie produced over the course of 90 years. If you're now getting Infinite Jest vibes, you're on the right track, as this book is obsessed with media, mental gymnastics, and the general conditio humana in its most absurd form. It's highly entertaining if you got a) enough time on your hands to really appreciate this tome and b) an inclination to go with the narrative flow, as the free-flowing plotlines will test the patience of those readers who are looking for stringent composition and even pacing, not to mention the challenge of a main character who is clearly not meant to be the most endearing guy ever. Plus: Movie references abound (seriously, guys, step up your Judd Apatow game before reading this).
Author Charlie Kaufman is the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, and his debut novel shares some traits with the film, a fact that will certainly lead to a number of essays and scientific papers comparing both stories. "Antkind" is a book readers can vanish in, getting lost on purpose, wandering through sentences and ideas. It's not an easy read, but an interesting experimental feat.
You can learn more about the novel in our new podcast episode (in German).
This novel is a rabbit hole into the mind of B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, a neurotic middle-aged film critic who finds, then loses, then tries to re-construct a cinematic, well, masterpiece... it's a three-month-long movie produced over the course of 90 years. If you're now getting Infinite Jest vibes, you're on the right track, as this book is obsessed with media, mental gymnastics, and the general conditio humana in its most absurd form. It's highly entertaining if you got a) enough time on your hands to really appreciate this tome and b) an inclination to go with the narrative flow, as the free-flowing plotlines will test the patience of those readers who are looking for stringent composition and even pacing, not to mention the challenge of a main character who is clearly not meant to be the most endearing guy ever. Plus: Movie references abound (seriously, guys, step up your Judd Apatow game before reading this).
Author Charlie Kaufman is the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, and his debut novel shares some traits with the film, a fact that will certainly lead to a number of essays and scientific papers comparing both stories. "Antkind" is a book readers can vanish in, getting lost on purpose, wandering through sentences and ideas. It's not an easy read, but an interesting experimental feat.
You can learn more about the novel in our new podcast episode (in German).
June 10, 2020
I've read this book 7 times, including an upside-down reading & a back-to-front reading. There's a lot going on in this novel, which probably has the most going on of any book I've read this year, but in the end, it might be about how writing can be bad for you.
July 9, 2020
Literally every other postmodern novel
If I wanted to read a white dude navel gazing about how fought privilege is while obsessively discussing obscure topics, I would just read reddit for free.
It really doesn’t have enough flair in the prose to make it worth reading and definitely not enough plot to make this anything more than “author takes on the perspective of someone toxic purposefully” but without any flair or a hook.
Such a shame since Kaufman is one of my favorite screenwriters.
If I wanted to read a white dude navel gazing about how fought privilege is while obsessively discussing obscure topics, I would just read reddit for free.
It really doesn’t have enough flair in the prose to make it worth reading and definitely not enough plot to make this anything more than “author takes on the perspective of someone toxic purposefully” but without any flair or a hook.
Such a shame since Kaufman is one of my favorite screenwriters.
May 14, 2022
"A algunas películas las quiero como se quiere a un amigo, a otras de un modo más intenso."
Voy a intentar no enrollarme mucho en esta reseña porque realmente me ha costado escribir sobre esta novela porque no sabía como enfrentarme a ella. Charlie Kaufman toca tantos temas, aborda tantas cuestiones, que lo mejor es leer la novela y dejarse llevar; sin embargo, sí que quería escribir algo sobre ella, porque es una novela que he disfrutado muchísimo, aunque también es cierto que hubo momentos algo repetitivos e irregulares.
¿Es necesario haber visto las películas de Charlie Kaufman para entender y/o conectar con esta novela tocho de 900 páginas? Es una pregunta que me han hecho e imagino que esto está producido por el hecho de que Kaufman es un personaje lo suficientemente influyente en el mundo del cine de autor como para que la novela se venda bajo esa premisa. Es cierto que si has visto sus obras reconoces enseguida a Rosenberg, que es el protagonista absoluto de Mundo Hormiga. Y lo reconoces en su angustia existencial, en su obsesión por el arte y la memoria, por su eterna búsqueda del amor (real o eternamente platónico) y por esa dualidad siempre presente en sus historias. Pero también tengo que decir que esta novela, por muy tocho que sea, es mucho más accesible, divertida y cercana que sus películas, que en mi opinión no tienen para nada el sentido del humor que Kaufman despliega aquí como autor de su primera novela.
"La mayoría de nosotros somos invisibles. Vivimos nuestras vidas sin que quede registro. Morimos, y al poco es como si no hubiésemos vivido. Pero no somos intrascendentes, ya que por supuesto, el mundo no funciona sin nosotros."
El protagonista de esta novela es B. Rosenberger Rosenberg un crítico y profesor de cine medio fracasado, escritor de libros de cine autocomplacientes donde siempre parece elogiar y alabar lo que nadie ha visto todavía y derribar lo ya conocido (algo muy muy habitual en el mundo de cierta crítica cinematográfica, por cierto). Rosenberg está obsesionado con lo politicamente correcto y vive continuamente angustiado con demostrar ante los demás que no es judío, que no es racista, que no es homófobo y por supuesto que su masculinidad no es nada tóxica, lo que convierte su personaje frente al lector en un personaje inseguro, patético y en un pedante redomado. Cuando comienza la novela, Rosenberg conoce a su anciano vecino, afroamericano, Ingo Cutbirth. Cutbirth afirma que fue el niño invisible en una película muda, “A Florida Enchanentment” (una pelicula real, como casi todas las que menciona aquí Kaufman) y va más lejos al afirmar que la pelicula se contaba desde la perspectiva de ese niño invisible, que no aparecía en el plano pero estaba junto a la cámara. Ingo Cutbirth es un personaje fascinante porque representa lo que hay de misterio en el cine y el ejemplo está en la revelación que le hace a Rosenberg: es el creador de una película que lleva 90 años realizando y cuyo visionado puede durar 3 meses y medio. A partir de aquí Rosenberg piensa que ha descubierto una mina de oro: una obra maestra de un personaje al que se podría comparar con Henry Darger, misterio, negocio y arte, todo en uno, y por supuesto ser el único en controlar el presunto legado de Ingo Cutbirth. Al mismo tiempo, Rosenberg quiere mostrar esta pelicula al público y ser reconocido como la élite en el mundo de la intelectualidad cinematográfica.
"-¿Le ha enseñado la película a mucha gente?
Por favor di que no.
-No es para la gente. Es para mí. Nadie más la ha visto- dice.
¿Cómo me he topado con esto? Da igual lo rudimentaria, lo amateur, da igual lo infernal que resulte verla, esto lo puedo convertir en oro antropológico. Puedo comer de esto lo que me queda de vida. Al fín podré abrir las remilgadas piernas de los Cahiers du Cinema."
A partir de aquí la historia se convierte en un tobogán de giros, personajes, dualidades, chistes socarrones sobre el mundo del cine, reflexiones sobre el arte y sobre la conciencia de estar vivos en un mundo donde la mayoría somos invisibles. Rosenberg está obsesionado por convertir su invisibilidad en notoriedad, por eso me parece tan fascinante la forma en que Kaufman aborda a su personaje y a todos los personajes que se va encontrando en su camino. La visualización de la película le hace penetrar en una especie de túnel donde la realidad se confunde con la película, y llegado un punto me resultaba imposible discernir dónde estaba la realidad y donde la ficción en la vida de Rosenberg. Charlie Kaufman juega con nosotros y al mismo tiempo reflexiona sobre la memoria en una pelicula que hay que recrear una y otra vez, porque cada vez que piensa en la película de Ingo Cutbirth es distinta y diferente
"¿La película fue creación de Ingo? ¿O estoy a punto de crear la película al recrearla? ¿Es el acto de recreación el verdadero acto de creación?, y, de ser así, ¿demostraría de una vez por todas que la recreación antecede a la creación?"
Charlie Kaufman convierte su novela en un entretenimiento de referencias, muchas de ellas sobre cine, pero también literarias y más generales, un despliegue de arte en cada página, sazonado con momentos divertídisimos en torno al personaje de Rosenberg que se va convirtiendo en una autoparodia dejando a su paso un despliegue de títeres sin cabeza, así que la carcajada está asegurada por lo menos en la primera mitad. Pero a medida que la novela avanza, la reflexión sobre la soledad, sobre la conciencia de estar vivos, pueden llegar a ser desoladores. Mundo Hormiga aborda tantas cuestiones que es imposible resumirlas en una reseña, lo que sí puedo decir es que Charlie Kaufman parece obsesionado por el conflicto artístico de
hasta qué punto una única obra puede ser tu vida, tu conciencia y tu memoria.
La traducción es de Ce Santiago.
"...la tragedia de mi existencia se ha convertido en un entrenimiento para un público no visible, con otra persona haciendo de mi."
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
Voy a intentar no enrollarme mucho en esta reseña porque realmente me ha costado escribir sobre esta novela porque no sabía como enfrentarme a ella. Charlie Kaufman toca tantos temas, aborda tantas cuestiones, que lo mejor es leer la novela y dejarse llevar; sin embargo, sí que quería escribir algo sobre ella, porque es una novela que he disfrutado muchísimo, aunque también es cierto que hubo momentos algo repetitivos e irregulares.
¿Es necesario haber visto las películas de Charlie Kaufman para entender y/o conectar con esta novela tocho de 900 páginas? Es una pregunta que me han hecho e imagino que esto está producido por el hecho de que Kaufman es un personaje lo suficientemente influyente en el mundo del cine de autor como para que la novela se venda bajo esa premisa. Es cierto que si has visto sus obras reconoces enseguida a Rosenberg, que es el protagonista absoluto de Mundo Hormiga. Y lo reconoces en su angustia existencial, en su obsesión por el arte y la memoria, por su eterna búsqueda del amor (real o eternamente platónico) y por esa dualidad siempre presente en sus historias. Pero también tengo que decir que esta novela, por muy tocho que sea, es mucho más accesible, divertida y cercana que sus películas, que en mi opinión no tienen para nada el sentido del humor que Kaufman despliega aquí como autor de su primera novela.
"La mayoría de nosotros somos invisibles. Vivimos nuestras vidas sin que quede registro. Morimos, y al poco es como si no hubiésemos vivido. Pero no somos intrascendentes, ya que por supuesto, el mundo no funciona sin nosotros."
El protagonista de esta novela es B. Rosenberger Rosenberg un crítico y profesor de cine medio fracasado, escritor de libros de cine autocomplacientes donde siempre parece elogiar y alabar lo que nadie ha visto todavía y derribar lo ya conocido (algo muy muy habitual en el mundo de cierta crítica cinematográfica, por cierto). Rosenberg está obsesionado con lo politicamente correcto y vive continuamente angustiado con demostrar ante los demás que no es judío, que no es racista, que no es homófobo y por supuesto que su masculinidad no es nada tóxica, lo que convierte su personaje frente al lector en un personaje inseguro, patético y en un pedante redomado. Cuando comienza la novela, Rosenberg conoce a su anciano vecino, afroamericano, Ingo Cutbirth. Cutbirth afirma que fue el niño invisible en una película muda, “A Florida Enchanentment” (una pelicula real, como casi todas las que menciona aquí Kaufman) y va más lejos al afirmar que la pelicula se contaba desde la perspectiva de ese niño invisible, que no aparecía en el plano pero estaba junto a la cámara. Ingo Cutbirth es un personaje fascinante porque representa lo que hay de misterio en el cine y el ejemplo está en la revelación que le hace a Rosenberg: es el creador de una película que lleva 90 años realizando y cuyo visionado puede durar 3 meses y medio. A partir de aquí Rosenberg piensa que ha descubierto una mina de oro: una obra maestra de un personaje al que se podría comparar con Henry Darger, misterio, negocio y arte, todo en uno, y por supuesto ser el único en controlar el presunto legado de Ingo Cutbirth. Al mismo tiempo, Rosenberg quiere mostrar esta pelicula al público y ser reconocido como la élite en el mundo de la intelectualidad cinematográfica.
"-¿Le ha enseñado la película a mucha gente?
Por favor di que no.
-No es para la gente. Es para mí. Nadie más la ha visto- dice.
¿Cómo me he topado con esto? Da igual lo rudimentaria, lo amateur, da igual lo infernal que resulte verla, esto lo puedo convertir en oro antropológico. Puedo comer de esto lo que me queda de vida. Al fín podré abrir las remilgadas piernas de los Cahiers du Cinema."
A partir de aquí la historia se convierte en un tobogán de giros, personajes, dualidades, chistes socarrones sobre el mundo del cine, reflexiones sobre el arte y sobre la conciencia de estar vivos en un mundo donde la mayoría somos invisibles. Rosenberg está obsesionado por convertir su invisibilidad en notoriedad, por eso me parece tan fascinante la forma en que Kaufman aborda a su personaje y a todos los personajes que se va encontrando en su camino. La visualización de la película le hace penetrar en una especie de túnel donde la realidad se confunde con la película, y llegado un punto me resultaba imposible discernir dónde estaba la realidad y donde la ficción en la vida de Rosenberg. Charlie Kaufman juega con nosotros y al mismo tiempo reflexiona sobre la memoria en una pelicula que hay que recrear una y otra vez, porque cada vez que piensa en la película de Ingo Cutbirth es distinta y diferente
"¿La película fue creación de Ingo? ¿O estoy a punto de crear la película al recrearla? ¿Es el acto de recreación el verdadero acto de creación?, y, de ser así, ¿demostraría de una vez por todas que la recreación antecede a la creación?"
Charlie Kaufman convierte su novela en un entretenimiento de referencias, muchas de ellas sobre cine, pero también literarias y más generales, un despliegue de arte en cada página, sazonado con momentos divertídisimos en torno al personaje de Rosenberg que se va convirtiendo en una autoparodia dejando a su paso un despliegue de títeres sin cabeza, así que la carcajada está asegurada por lo menos en la primera mitad. Pero a medida que la novela avanza, la reflexión sobre la soledad, sobre la conciencia de estar vivos, pueden llegar a ser desoladores. Mundo Hormiga aborda tantas cuestiones que es imposible resumirlas en una reseña, lo que sí puedo decir es que Charlie Kaufman parece obsesionado por el conflicto artístico de
hasta qué punto una única obra puede ser tu vida, tu conciencia y tu memoria.
La traducción es de Ce Santiago.
"...la tragedia de mi existencia se ha convertido en un entrenimiento para un público no visible, con otra persona haciendo de mi."
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
February 7, 2020
This book is 'Gravity's Rainbow Framed/Censored Roger Rabbit' AND Punch and Judy in the Marx Bros' script-doctored 'Waiting for Godot' AND 'Barton Fink' directed by the Zucker Bros. AND The Last 20-odd minutes of '2001' as a Pigs in Space sketch ALL wrapped up in one anthill. It's highbrow AND lowbrow. It's UNIBROW, like Bert and Ernst. It's comedy punches up AND down, like Intendo's 'Punch Out' (pun nintended).
All silliness aside: There was an episode in season 2 of the 1990-92 show 'Get a Life' called '1977 2000' which was written by Charlie Kaufman. Say what you want about that show, but 1990-92 (7th-8th grade nerd) me loved it. To read 'Antkind' at this point in my life was like slowly sipping on a 25plus-year barrel-aged version of that episode. [hic]! [sic].
All silliness aside: There was an episode in season 2 of the 1990-92 show 'Get a Life' called '1977 2000' which was written by Charlie Kaufman. Say what you want about that show, but 1990-92 (7th-8th grade nerd) me loved it. To read 'Antkind' at this point in my life was like slowly sipping on a 25plus-year barrel-aged version of that episode. [hic]! [sic].
May 24, 2021
I think I just read something brilliant, but it was so drawn out it lost some of its sparkle. Antkind is a book about a lot of things, but its primary story is about a film critic who finds the masterwork of a reclusive auteur who created a three-month-long stop-motion film that took him 90 years to complete. Unfortunately all that remains of it is a single frame of film, and that is the starting point of his journey. Along the way there are some odd characters, a futuristic ant named Calcium, and plenty of observations of modern society and politics, properly skewered by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who wrote this novel.
It took me about 10 weeks to read this 700-page novel. I kept putting it down. But I did return to it for one reason. It is consistently funny. I've always believed writing humor is the most difficult writing task. To be truly funny in print, especially when sustained over 700 pages, is a remarkable achievement. That said, this book would have been an instant classic at 450 pages. So the five-star brilliance only gets four stars from me because it was just too long for its own good. If you don't mind a long novel, I would highly recommend Antkind.
It took me about 10 weeks to read this 700-page novel. I kept putting it down. But I did return to it for one reason. It is consistently funny. I've always believed writing humor is the most difficult writing task. To be truly funny in print, especially when sustained over 700 pages, is a remarkable achievement. That said, this book would have been an instant classic at 450 pages. So the five-star brilliance only gets four stars from me because it was just too long for its own good. If you don't mind a long novel, I would highly recommend Antkind.
November 9, 2020
Antkind is so huge, complex and diverse that I feel as if I should give it five separate star ratings: a one-star, a two-star, a three-star, a four-star, and a five-star.
Then I hate myself for being such a smartarse.
Then I realise that this is exactly how the book's narrator proceeds, then I hate him as much as I hate myself, then I can't stop laughing, then I realise this bloody book has given me a brain virus.
The book's central thesis is the block theory of space-time, according to which past, present and future all coexist. Imagine that you could make a four-dimensional film of that block of space-time. That's what Antkind sets out to do.
An impossible task, and therefore an impossible book.
Its attempt to complete that impossible task inevitably throws up a whole slew of subthemes.
There's the problem of free will: if your past, present and future are all equally "present" in the block, then all of your choices are already made, no matter how you much agonise while you make them.
There's the problem of representation: you can't step outside of the block, so you can't represent it as an objective whole. But even if you could, there would still be the question of which way up to look at it, which angle to frame it from, which part should be in the foreground and which in the background, which the seen and which the unseen.
There's the problem of what equipment you would use to make the movie: what camera, what sound, and how reliable or accurate any recording could ever be anyway.
And so on (or, as the narrator would say, et chetera).
If all of this sounds like the makings of a tiresome read, then I can only say: it is often a tiresome read.
I repeatedly longed for an editor's blue pencil to come and relieve me of the tedium of yet another faux Abbott and Costello routine. But the tiresomeness – or rather, the completism – is the point.
Plus, whenever I was ready to give up and go and do something else with my life – like watch paint dry or something – the book would always, every single time, suddenly unleash a hilarious torrent of gags, and I'd be hooked again.
There's a scene where a tiny man dresses in a giant's clothes, wearing the giant's wristwatch as a trouser belt. The experience of reading the book is a bit like that: you're flailing around inside something that's too big, sometimes waving, sometimes drowning, usually laughing your head off. There are stretches that feel like hard work, and others that are pure candy floss joy, and yet others at all points in between. Hey, that's space-time for ya.
As I'm sure you've gathered, it's left me feeling a little unhinged.
Then I hate myself for being such a smartarse.
Then I realise that this is exactly how the book's narrator proceeds, then I hate him as much as I hate myself, then I can't stop laughing, then I realise this bloody book has given me a brain virus.
The book's central thesis is the block theory of space-time, according to which past, present and future all coexist. Imagine that you could make a four-dimensional film of that block of space-time. That's what Antkind sets out to do.
An impossible task, and therefore an impossible book.
Its attempt to complete that impossible task inevitably throws up a whole slew of subthemes.
There's the problem of free will: if your past, present and future are all equally "present" in the block, then all of your choices are already made, no matter how you much agonise while you make them.
There's the problem of representation: you can't step outside of the block, so you can't represent it as an objective whole. But even if you could, there would still be the question of which way up to look at it, which angle to frame it from, which part should be in the foreground and which in the background, which the seen and which the unseen.
There's the problem of what equipment you would use to make the movie: what camera, what sound, and how reliable or accurate any recording could ever be anyway.
And so on (or, as the narrator would say, et chetera).
If all of this sounds like the makings of a tiresome read, then I can only say: it is often a tiresome read.
I repeatedly longed for an editor's blue pencil to come and relieve me of the tedium of yet another faux Abbott and Costello routine. But the tiresomeness – or rather, the completism – is the point.
Plus, whenever I was ready to give up and go and do something else with my life – like watch paint dry or something – the book would always, every single time, suddenly unleash a hilarious torrent of gags, and I'd be hooked again.
There's a scene where a tiny man dresses in a giant's clothes, wearing the giant's wristwatch as a trouser belt. The experience of reading the book is a bit like that: you're flailing around inside something that's too big, sometimes waving, sometimes drowning, usually laughing your head off. There are stretches that feel like hard work, and others that are pure candy floss joy, and yet others at all points in between. Hey, that's space-time for ya.
As I'm sure you've gathered, it's left me feeling a little unhinged.
July 9, 2020
At 700 pages, Antkind is 300 pages too long. And the story often hangs by a thread.
But good Lord, it's brilliant and funny.
It's as if Kaufman just said, 'well, here's my brain barf. I'll put it in a few piles for you. Do with it what you will.'
I'm not usually down for sorting such things. But in this case, well - I'm glad to have waded through.
But good Lord, it's brilliant and funny.
It's as if Kaufman just said, 'well, here's my brain barf. I'll put it in a few piles for you. Do with it what you will.'
I'm not usually down for sorting such things. But in this case, well - I'm glad to have waded through.
October 8, 2020
Нового я стараюсь не читать, как известно, потому что, как правило, это какой-нибудь новоэтический порожняк и политкорректное мелкотемье. Но вот против свежего и пока единственного Кофмена не устоял. Потому что он ебаный гений. Я не знаю ни одного плохого фильма по его сценарию.
Так и тут - синефильский роман-каприз, причудь фантазии и сарказма, ядовитый полив кино, культуры, политики, множества нынешних отношенческих и нравственных трендов и политкоректности во многих ее ублюдочных проявленьях. Бесценно. И бесполезно перечислять, чем текст романа отзывается в читателе, - до того там много всего и всякого.
Так и тут - синефильский роман-каприз, причудь фантазии и сарказма, ядовитый полив кино, культуры, политики, множества нынешних отношенческих и нравственных трендов и политкоректности во многих ее ублюдочных проявленьях. Бесценно. И бесполезно перечислять, чем текст романа отзывается в читателе, - до того там много всего и всякого.
May 30, 2020
Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy.
I got halfway through Antkind and needed a pause. The book was draining me, spinning in circles around the same joke and a narrator that was increasingly frustrating. I told myself I would go back after a break, but I honestly knew that day would never come.
To me, this book needed an editor to tell Charlie that less is more. I found it repeating the same points (and jokes about Charlie Kaufman movies) over and over, to the point that it felt like chapters were just following the same structure again and again. Maybe they were and it was all some meta-Charlie Kaufman joke that I missed.
I got halfway through Antkind and needed a pause. The book was draining me, spinning in circles around the same joke and a narrator that was increasingly frustrating. I told myself I would go back after a break, but I honestly knew that day would never come.
To me, this book needed an editor to tell Charlie that less is more. I found it repeating the same points (and jokes about Charlie Kaufman movies) over and over, to the point that it felt like chapters were just following the same structure again and again. Maybe they were and it was all some meta-Charlie Kaufman joke that I missed.
May 16, 2022
Senryu Review:
Farcical recall
in caustic filmic maze where
LOLs and yawns abound
Farcical recall
in caustic filmic maze where
LOLs and yawns abound
December 19, 2020
"It is obvious that he has only one subject, the mind, and only one plot, how the mind negotiates with reality, fantasy, hallucination, desire and dreams. "Being John Malkovich." "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." "Adaptation." "Human Nature." "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." What else are they about? He is working in plain view."
- Roger Ebert's review of Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York."
I genuinely don't know what to make of this one. Charlie Kaufman's "Antkind" is one of the most unique books I have ever read. I can sense his influences throughout, and occasionally a certain section would remind me of David Foster Wallace or Pynchon, but overall the book is almost bewilderingly original, something you probably wouldn't expect when you read the snyopsis. Another 700 page postmodern novel by and about a neurotic white guy, meditating on the nature of art, memory, time, conciousness, gender, etc? Yawn. But "Antkind" is... not that. It's something completely different.
I'm having trouble figuring out how to even write about this novel. For long sections, it is a hilarious and brutal evisceration of self-centered borgeouis liberalism, a wicked parody of upper middle class white men who find personal fulfillment in over the top self-flaggelation while doing very little good for anyone. It is an indictment of the very type of person most likely to read this novel. But as the story progresses, it starts to move away from the political parody. The final sections of the novel comprise a fever dream plunge into the deepest recesses of the mind... I was reminded of "The Counterforce", Part 4 of Gravity's Rainbow, where Pynchon's narrative is elevated to a level of Biblical absurdity, a chaotic dreamscape of untethered symbolism...
Let's back up.
--
Charlie Kaufman is one of my favorite writers. His early 2000s screenwriting work is pretty stunning. The trifecta of "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation", and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" represent an amazing achievement in melding philosophical, arthouse narratives to extremely accessible, entertaining stories. These movies are enjoyable on several levels, containing both broad appeal and treasure troves of nuance for those looking to dig deeper.
In the latter half of his career, Kaufman has moved further from accessible, "Hollywood" movies, producing a trilogy of extremely dense, bleak, uncompromising philosophical investigations into the nature of the mind. 2008's "Synecdoche, New York" is, in my opinion, his crowning accomplishment, a maximalist, absurdist film that should be required viewing for any artist in any field. "Anomalisa" and 2020's "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" are, meanwhile, minimalist and stark, but no less nuanced.
Which leads us to "Antkind", his 705 page debut novel about an anxious, overanalytical film critic namd B. Rosenberger Rosenberg. Antkind can be best described as a "playground novel", less of a controlled narrative than a vast expanse of ideas. The appeal of the novel is the chance to live inside Charlie Kaufman's brain for a few weeks, and in that respect, the book does not disappoint. Practically every mechanism and conceit from his screenplays shows up here, exaggerated to an even more extreme degree. At times I felt like I was reading all the ideas for movies that Kaufman was unable to get made.
But despite the absurd amount of ideas in this story, I could make an argument that Antkind is almost an excercise in minimalism. The characters and locations are fairly limited. We revisit the same situations dozens of time. The book is less of a grand artwork and more like a rubik's cube, endlessly rescrambled and rearranged and re-examined. Kaufman pulls an amazing amount of meaning from these slight readjustments of repeated themes, and the book is not at all overwhelming until maybe the final 200 pages or so.
Once again, I feel like I'm failing to encompass even a hint of the novel's essence in these words. I have hardly mentioned Mudd and Molloy and their dozens of comedy duo clones who seem to constantly morph recursively into the narrative. I haven't mentioned how much time B spends obsessing over trans people (achieved surprisingly not too cringeworthy by a cis white male author) or the therapists and hypnosis. The chapters that we spend inside the mind of an alternate reality Donald Trump named Donald Trunk, who fucks a robot clone of himself. There's a lot in here.
Kaufman doesn't take himself too seriously. The main character constantly eviscerates Kaufman's movies, which is a pretty hilarious running gag. There is not a single paragraph here that you can take literally. There's always a tone of sarcasm, irony, gentle or stinging parody, a constant assertion of subjectivity. The book is frequently hilarious and when it sinks briefly into a depressing meditation on mortality, don't worry, B will probably trip and fall into a manhole sometime soon.
I was never bored by this novel, but I was never really astounded either. The very last paragraph of the book is the closest we get to some sort of cathartic, transcendent payoff, and it's a hell of a paragraph, but I don't think it really satisfied me, which is odd, because endings have always been one of Kaufman's strongest assets... hmmm. Again, I find myself confounded.
Would I reccomend Antkind? I have no fucking clue. I had a great time reading it though!
--
When you look at this novel in comparison to Charlie Kaufman's movies, the book remains something of a quandry. It touches on all the same themes, but it also fully embraces the medium of the novel. It doesn't read like a screenplay that was haphazardly converted into prose, it's an unashamed novel, and the writing is very, very good. It's both instantly recognizable as a Kaufman story and yet it's nothing like any of his other works. I would take "Adapation" or "Synecdoche" any day over this, but I also don't think the comparison is necessarily valid. It's something completely different, and enjoyable on its own merits.
I liked the characters. I liked the jokes. I liked the prose. I liked the story, especially when it went off the rails in the final hundred pages. I liked every single sentence of this novel, but I didn't love any of them. In the end, I was glad I read the book, but I don't think I took anything deeper away. I'll certainly return to it for a laugh, but I'll sooner rewatch almost any of his films.
Overall, this is an immensely impressive debut novel, and I really hope Kaufman tries his hand at another one. Even though I can't say I loved "Antkind", it was an entirely unique novel, unlike anything I have ever read, and I won't soon forget it. Really, really fascinating book.
- Roger Ebert's review of Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York."
I genuinely don't know what to make of this one. Charlie Kaufman's "Antkind" is one of the most unique books I have ever read. I can sense his influences throughout, and occasionally a certain section would remind me of David Foster Wallace or Pynchon, but overall the book is almost bewilderingly original, something you probably wouldn't expect when you read the snyopsis. Another 700 page postmodern novel by and about a neurotic white guy, meditating on the nature of art, memory, time, conciousness, gender, etc? Yawn. But "Antkind" is... not that. It's something completely different.
I'm having trouble figuring out how to even write about this novel. For long sections, it is a hilarious and brutal evisceration of self-centered borgeouis liberalism, a wicked parody of upper middle class white men who find personal fulfillment in over the top self-flaggelation while doing very little good for anyone. It is an indictment of the very type of person most likely to read this novel. But as the story progresses, it starts to move away from the political parody. The final sections of the novel comprise a fever dream plunge into the deepest recesses of the mind... I was reminded of "The Counterforce", Part 4 of Gravity's Rainbow, where Pynchon's narrative is elevated to a level of Biblical absurdity, a chaotic dreamscape of untethered symbolism...
Let's back up.
--
Charlie Kaufman is one of my favorite writers. His early 2000s screenwriting work is pretty stunning. The trifecta of "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation", and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" represent an amazing achievement in melding philosophical, arthouse narratives to extremely accessible, entertaining stories. These movies are enjoyable on several levels, containing both broad appeal and treasure troves of nuance for those looking to dig deeper.
In the latter half of his career, Kaufman has moved further from accessible, "Hollywood" movies, producing a trilogy of extremely dense, bleak, uncompromising philosophical investigations into the nature of the mind. 2008's "Synecdoche, New York" is, in my opinion, his crowning accomplishment, a maximalist, absurdist film that should be required viewing for any artist in any field. "Anomalisa" and 2020's "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" are, meanwhile, minimalist and stark, but no less nuanced.
Which leads us to "Antkind", his 705 page debut novel about an anxious, overanalytical film critic namd B. Rosenberger Rosenberg. Antkind can be best described as a "playground novel", less of a controlled narrative than a vast expanse of ideas. The appeal of the novel is the chance to live inside Charlie Kaufman's brain for a few weeks, and in that respect, the book does not disappoint. Practically every mechanism and conceit from his screenplays shows up here, exaggerated to an even more extreme degree. At times I felt like I was reading all the ideas for movies that Kaufman was unable to get made.
But despite the absurd amount of ideas in this story, I could make an argument that Antkind is almost an excercise in minimalism. The characters and locations are fairly limited. We revisit the same situations dozens of time. The book is less of a grand artwork and more like a rubik's cube, endlessly rescrambled and rearranged and re-examined. Kaufman pulls an amazing amount of meaning from these slight readjustments of repeated themes, and the book is not at all overwhelming until maybe the final 200 pages or so.
Once again, I feel like I'm failing to encompass even a hint of the novel's essence in these words. I have hardly mentioned Mudd and Molloy and their dozens of comedy duo clones who seem to constantly morph recursively into the narrative. I haven't mentioned how much time B spends obsessing over trans people (achieved surprisingly not too cringeworthy by a cis white male author) or the therapists and hypnosis. The chapters that we spend inside the mind of an alternate reality Donald Trump named Donald Trunk, who fucks a robot clone of himself. There's a lot in here.
Kaufman doesn't take himself too seriously. The main character constantly eviscerates Kaufman's movies, which is a pretty hilarious running gag. There is not a single paragraph here that you can take literally. There's always a tone of sarcasm, irony, gentle or stinging parody, a constant assertion of subjectivity. The book is frequently hilarious and when it sinks briefly into a depressing meditation on mortality, don't worry, B will probably trip and fall into a manhole sometime soon.
I was never bored by this novel, but I was never really astounded either. The very last paragraph of the book is the closest we get to some sort of cathartic, transcendent payoff, and it's a hell of a paragraph, but I don't think it really satisfied me, which is odd, because endings have always been one of Kaufman's strongest assets... hmmm. Again, I find myself confounded.
Would I reccomend Antkind? I have no fucking clue. I had a great time reading it though!
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When you look at this novel in comparison to Charlie Kaufman's movies, the book remains something of a quandry. It touches on all the same themes, but it also fully embraces the medium of the novel. It doesn't read like a screenplay that was haphazardly converted into prose, it's an unashamed novel, and the writing is very, very good. It's both instantly recognizable as a Kaufman story and yet it's nothing like any of his other works. I would take "Adapation" or "Synecdoche" any day over this, but I also don't think the comparison is necessarily valid. It's something completely different, and enjoyable on its own merits.
I liked the characters. I liked the jokes. I liked the prose. I liked the story, especially when it went off the rails in the final hundred pages. I liked every single sentence of this novel, but I didn't love any of them. In the end, I was glad I read the book, but I don't think I took anything deeper away. I'll certainly return to it for a laugh, but I'll sooner rewatch almost any of his films.
Overall, this is an immensely impressive debut novel, and I really hope Kaufman tries his hand at another one. Even though I can't say I loved "Antkind", it was an entirely unique novel, unlike anything I have ever read, and I won't soon forget it. Really, really fascinating book.
January 27, 2024
Che trip allucinante... Questo è l'ultimo romanzo puramente postmoderno... Quindi posso affermare che la fine del postmodernismo coincide con la pubblicazione di Formichità
qui c'è Pynchon nei nomi strambi dei personaggi e c'è Wallace per il film
lo ripeto Formichità è l'ultima espressione del romanzo postmoderno
qui c'è Pynchon nei nomi strambi dei personaggi e c'è Wallace per il film
lo ripeto Formichità è l'ultima espressione del romanzo postmoderno
January 26, 2021
Charlie Kaufman's "Finnegan's Wake" or "Gravity's Rainbow" or "Infinite Jest" or "Take Five" but meta removed, removed, removed, and oh so gender correct(ed) with BIG magical Trump/k(s), and self parodies a la loathing ... and so much more!
July 13, 2020
A genuine achievement, a great American novel. Its first thirty pages or so ticked me off something fierce, with its snide caricature of a Brody-resembling film critic. But the protagonist's resemblance to any real-life figure is a kind of red herring. This is not any "a clef" novel. When David Ehrenstein commented here that Kaufman is the North American Borges, he hit the nail squarely on the head. This resembles a Kaufman script more than it does a prose work by the postmodernists Barth, Pynchon, Coover, Wallace, et. alia. And you might think, well why Borges since the damn thing is 705 pages long? Well, because within the complex framework Kaufman's created there are dozens of discrete narratives, all short, all very much resembling stuff Borges would write were he obsessed with Abbott and Costello rather than the Old West, Herbert Asbury, and the classics. This is where all the funny stuff is, too, and it is often convulsively funny. And within these discrete narratives are repetitions and clues and iterations that render them as fractals, ever infecting/enriching the larger structure. The themes are consciousness, sex, and death, all the biggies, and Kaufman is an acute portrayer of how pop culture has corrupted consciousness — the book is a terrifying demonstration of why nobody thinks like Proust anymore. (Not that Proust is named.) The ostensible potshots at critics, filmmakers, and so on aren't material except insofar as they represent the resentments of the protagonist who's aware that he's someone else's creation and can't do anything about it. The only authentic Charlie Kaufman "like" you can derive for it is of the poet Hugh McDiarmid, who I'll be investigating shortly. Anyway, check it out. It's amazing.
April 20, 2021
The screenplay for "Being John Malkovich" made Charlie Kaufman world famous. The Oscar-winning novel is a new milestone in American literature: B. Rosenberg can't manage anything except write reviews that nobody reads. The New York city neurotic boasts of the black skin color of his girlfriend and defends himself against the assumption that he is Jewish. He doesn't even want to have a gender and just calls himself B. Then, however, he comes across the longest film ever made and has a mission: He wants to show the world the unseen film. But the masterpiece goes up in flames and B. can only dream about it. Endless fun that goes beyond any scope.
Kaufman is familiar to us from the films, but it's time to admit: until now, the author of "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was constrained by the budget and the limitations of the objective world. In his debut novel about an unsuccessful film critic, he throws off the shackles: the narrative stretches back and forth for millions of years, inhabited by fictional and genuine movie stars, Trump clone robots, speculations about Sokurov and Nolan, BDSM practitioners and caustic comments on the #MeToo era. Antkind is a majestic and caustic puzzle novel that can be deciphered after T. Pynchon or D.F. Wallace's model, or you can dive into it and surrender to psychedelic power. A wonderful, complex, escapist read. Highly recommended.
Kaufman is familiar to us from the films, but it's time to admit: until now, the author of "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was constrained by the budget and the limitations of the objective world. In his debut novel about an unsuccessful film critic, he throws off the shackles: the narrative stretches back and forth for millions of years, inhabited by fictional and genuine movie stars, Trump clone robots, speculations about Sokurov and Nolan, BDSM practitioners and caustic comments on the #MeToo era. Antkind is a majestic and caustic puzzle novel that can be deciphered after T. Pynchon or D.F. Wallace's model, or you can dive into it and surrender to psychedelic power. A wonderful, complex, escapist read. Highly recommended.
January 5, 2022
There are a lot of jokes (some funny) about PC culture, celebrity worship, anti-intellectualism and ambition for attention. But mostly, ANTKIND seems a misguided attempt at a new kind of absurdism featuring some serious self-loathing.
It did not work for me. I wanted to put ANTKIND down about half way thru. It devolves into pointless nonsense. I don’t know why I bothered to read to the end. Maybe I knew I was going to lambast it and felt a need to finish it, just in case.
But there is no pay off. The jokes become horrible with repetition and Kaufman’s persistence in wasting his readers’ time qualifies as a special sort of narcissism. ANTKIND wallows in much of what makes humanity silly and miserable.
It did not work for me. I wanted to put ANTKIND down about half way thru. It devolves into pointless nonsense. I don’t know why I bothered to read to the end. Maybe I knew I was going to lambast it and felt a need to finish it, just in case.
But there is no pay off. The jokes become horrible with repetition and Kaufman’s persistence in wasting his readers’ time qualifies as a special sort of narcissism. ANTKIND wallows in much of what makes humanity silly and miserable.
July 16, 2020
At 720 pages, Antkind succeeds as a large-scale comic novel. This is an impressive feat for a first-time novelist (albeit a first-time novelist who happens to be an Oscar-winning screenwriter). Line for line, page for page, Antkind is frequently deliriously funny. Kaufman’s 1990s TV scripts for comics like Chris Elliot are a clear influence. Antkind’s narrator and protagonist, B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, a self-important film critic, has the snotty arrogance that Elliot mastered so perfectly. Chris Elliot’s willingness to risk unlikeability is both his genius as a comic performer and probably his undoing with audiences (e.g. Cabin Boy). Charlie Kaufman seems to intuitively understand that an insufferable character is only as bearable as the jokes exposing the character’s pretensions and selfishness. Antkind has the jokes like Arby’s has the meats. As Kaufman has shown in his wildly inventive screenplays (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), he’s never met a meta gag that he can’t spin into comedy gold. Not unlike Martin Amis’s insertion of “Martin Amis” as a character in his novel Money, Antkind’s film critic is deeply hostile to the very real films of Charlie Kaufman (while extolling the more comfortably mainstream films, both real and imaginary, of Judd Apatow). Although the novel’s sci-fi trappings—time-travel and multiverses—seem at times like a lesser work by Philip K. Dick (name-checked in Antkind as an “American primitivist”), Antkind’s slapstick exuberance is like a live-action Tex Avery cartoon.
June 4, 2019
Book hasn't been released yet--but I just feel a compulsion to write that I've awaited this thing's release for 7 years. I'm desperate for HarperCollins to keep their promised February 6th, 2020 release date. Synecdoche, New York and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are among the most brilliant works of film *or* literature created this century, and to read Kaufman in novel-form seems a tantalizing prospect. I'm also curious how much reading Kaufman will resemble reading David Foster Wallace, seeing as his films felt like watching a Foster novel onscreen much of the time.
Precious few good things happen in this cruel, wicked world; Kaufman releasing his novel would be one of them.
Precious few good things happen in this cruel, wicked world; Kaufman releasing his novel would be one of them.
May 31, 2020
This book is a dark, weird, wild ride. For me, it is like Pynchon, DeLillo (particularly the overeager, overwrought, poseur sense of academia presented in WHITE NOISE), Kafka, and all of Kaufman's films (again, particularly: Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) went into an updated blender and out this came. One thing I really like is how Kaufman is able to drop in all kinds of erudite references but still be just damn funny/entertaining. His protagonist is an Ivory Tower neurotic living in an absurd reality, but still has all the surface-level foibles of a Seinfeld character, and things keep moving... all the way into an equally brainy but absurd future.
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