Produktdetails
- Verlag
- Random House LLC US
- Erschienen
- 2021
- Sprache
- English
- Seiten
- 705
- Infos
- 705 Seiten
203 mm x 131 mm - ISBN
- 978-0-399-58969-0
Besprechung
There is something about this book s extravagantly appointed lunacy that makes the lunacy of real life feel (briefly) more manageable. The Wall Street Journal
Outrageously funny . . . a dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon . . . propelled by Kaufman s deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull s-eye wit. The Washington Post
An astonishing creation . . . riotously funny . . . exceptionally good. The New York Times Book Review
A sight to behold . . . Kaufman is a master of language. NPR
"Kaufman successfully blends the brain-wrapping narrative complexity of a Reddit wormhole with the laugh-a-page aplomb of Kurt Vonnegut. Entertainment Weekly
Antkind is Kaufman pushing himself to every formal and social limit, no holds barred, bleak and devastating, yet marvelous. Los Angeles Review of Books
This is a whopper of a book, bursting with the driest of humor, the strangest of scenarios, and the most brilliant of observations. It is wholly original, maddening, and marvelous. Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book
"Antkind is unbridled Kaufman energy and wit coming up against the limits of the imagination itself: discursive, subversive, and genuinely funny." Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End
Each page is so stuffed with invention, audacity, and hilarity, it feels like an act of defiance. Antkind is a fever dream you don t want to be shaken awake from, a thrill ride that veers down stranger and stranger alleys until you find yourself in a reality so kaleidoscopic you will question your own sanity. Maria Semple, author of Where d You Go, Bernadette
Magnificent, genius, enraging, mysterious, joyous, terrifying, and, above all, hilarious! Within its pages, Antkind might contain the universe. Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less
A tribute to the absurdity of story and ego and obsession that manages to criticize all of this as fiercely as it embraces it all, Antkind is as funny and brilliant and utterly idiosyncratic as you could ever hope. I couldn t put it down, which is saying a lot, because holy shit, is it heavy. Mat Johnson, author of Pym and Loving Day
[It commands] attention from start to finish for its ingenuity and narrative dazzle. Film, speculative fiction, and outright eccentricity collide in a wonderfully inventive yarn and a masterwork of postmodern storytelling. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Pynchonesque . . . Kaufman s debut brims with screwball satire and provocative reflections on how art shapes people s perception of the world. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This novel is magnificently imaginative, bringing to mind Beckett, Pynchon, and A. R. Moxon s more recent The Revisionaries (2019). With this surprisingly breezy read, given its length, Kaufman proves to be a masterful novelist, delivering a tragic, farcical, and fascinating exploration of how memory defines our lives. Booklist
Textauszug
Chapter 1
My beard is a wonder. It is the beard of Whitman, of Rasputin, of Darwin, yet it is uniquely mine. It s a salt-and-pepper, steel-wool, cotton-candy confection, much too long, wispy, and unruly to be fashionable. And it is this, its very unfashionability, that makes the strongest statement. It says, I don t care a whit (a Whitman!) about fashion. I don t care about attractiveness. This beard is too big for my narrow face. This beard is too wide. This beard is too bottom-heavy for my bald head. It is off-putting. So if you come to me, you come to me on my terms. As I ve been bearded thusly for three decades now, I like to think that my beard has contributed to the resurgence of beardedness, but in truth, the beards of today are a different animal, most so fastidious they require more grooming than would a simple clean shave. Or if they are full, they are full on conventionally handsome faces, the faces of faux woodsmen, the faces of home brewers of beer. The ladies like this look, these urban swells, men in masculine drag. Mine is not that. Mine is 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.
That it conceals a port-wine stain stretching from my upper lip to my sternum is tertiary, secondary at most. This beard is my calling card. It is the thing that makes me memorable in a sea of sameness. It is the feature in concert with my owlish wire-rim glasses, my hawkish nose, my sunken blackbird eyes, and my bald-eagle pate that makes me caricaturable, both as a bird and as a human. Several framed examples from various small but prestigious film criticism publications (I refuse to be photographed for philosophical, ethical, personal, and scheduling reasons) adorn the wall of my home office. My favorite is an example of what is commonly known as the inversion illusion. When hung upside down, I appear to be a Caucasian Don King. As an inveterate boxing enthusiast and scholar, I am amused by this visual pun and indeed used the inverted version of this illustration as the author photo for my book The Lost Religion of Masculinity: Joyce Carol Oates, George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, A. J. Liebling, and the Sometimes Combative History of the Literature of Boxing, the Sweet Science, and Why. The uncanny thing is that the Don King illusion works in reality as well. Many s the time, after I perform sirsasana in yoga class, that the hens circle, clucking that I look just like that awful boxing man. It s their way of flirting, I imagine, these middle-aged, frivolous creatures, who traipse, yoga mat rolled under arm or in shoulder-holster, announcing their spiritual discipline to an uncaring world from yoga to lunch to shopping to loveless marriage bed. But I am there only for the workout. I don t wear a special outfit or listen to the mishmash Eastern religion sermon the instructor blathers beforehand. I don t even wear shorts and a T-shirt. Gray dress pants and a white button-down shirt for me. Belt. Black oxfords on feet. Wallet packed thickly into rear right pocket. I believe this makes my point. I am not a sheep. I am not a faddist. It s the same outfit I wear if on some odd occasion I find myself riding a bicycle in the park for relaxation. No spandex suit with logos all over it for me. I don t need anyone thinking I am a serious bicycle rider. I don t need anyone thinking anything of me. I am riding a bike. That is it. If you want to think something about that, have at it, but I don t care. I will admit that my girlfriend is the one who ha
Langtext
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.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE A dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon . . . propelled by Kaufman s deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull s-eye wit." The Washington Post
An astonishing creation . . . riotously funny . . . an exceptionally good [book]. The New York Times Book Review Kaufman is a master of language . . . a sight to behold. NPR
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND MEN S HEALTH
B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, 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 re-create the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of likes and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d être.
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.
Über den AutorIn
Charlie Kaufman is the screenwriter of many films, such as Anomalisa; Synecdoche, New York; Adaptation; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; and Being John Malkovich. He won an Academy Award for his work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and has been nominated three additional times. Kaufman is also a three-time BAFTA winner for screenwriting, and he has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, among many other film honors.