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Charlie Kaufman

Antkind: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Charlie Kaufman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The hilarious debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York.

‘Riotously funny’ New York Times

‘Just as loopy and clever as his movies’ Washington Post

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 by an enigmatic outsider – a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete. Convinced that the film will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core, that it might possibly be the greatest movie ever made, 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 is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the work of art 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.

Length: 721 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled	Language: English

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Review

‘Outstanding. Combining his films’ most urgent themes and recurring concerns in a format that supports the digressions and logic-loops he’s so famous for, Charlie Kaufman may have out-Kaufmaned himself’ The i

‘A very strong debut novel, a long, anguished spill of a book, full of buried furies and nervy philosophical expeditions, constantly tossing off sparks of humour and imagination … at once surreal and highly readable’ LA Times

‘Marked by a feverish genius. Antkind is Kaufman pushing himself to every formal and social limit, no holds barred, bleak and devastating, yet marvellous’ LA Times Review of Books

‘Magnificent, genius, enraging, mysterious, joyous, terrifying and, above all, hilarious! Antkind might contain the universe’ Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less

‘A full-throttled absurdist revolt against the constraints of the audience-tested mass entertainment, 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

‘To paraphrase Charlie Kaufman, it’s like a brain factory in there! This is a whopper of a book, bursting with the driest of humour, the strangest of scenarios, and the most brilliant of observations. It is wholly original, maddening, and marvellous’ Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book

‘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. Or: the novel only Charlie Kaufman could pull off’ Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Charlie Kaufman is the screenwriter of many films including Anomalisa, Synechdoche, New York, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Being John Malkovich. He won an Academy Award for his work on Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind and has been nominated three additional times; he is a three-time BAFTA winner for screenwriting; and he has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, among many other film honours. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

File size : 1442 KB
Print length : 721 pages
Word Wise : Enabled
Publisher : Fourth Estate (7 July 2020)
ASIN : B07NRSBZR3
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
Page numbers source ISBN : 0008319537
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Language: : English

Best Sellers Rank: 103,044 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 42 in Absurdist Fiction (Books)
- 240 in Satire (Kindle Store)
- 391 in Satire (Books)

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ReadingForFun

Wild.

Reviewed in Australia on 13 November 2020

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I think you can interpret this novel in so many ways. It is excitingly original, which is wonderful… but it is also comically long. At just over 700 pages it marks the longest novel I have read and it felt about 200 pages too indulgent. If I were to remove an element perhaps the Mudd and Molloy stuff would go (I just don’t think the juice was worth the squeeze there).

To quote Antkind: ‘I don’t know what the audience would be for a book outlining a non-existent film.’

The book is about a three month long film, and the main characters attempts to both remember and recreate it. It’s an immersive experience and I found the setup to be wonderfully enjoyable. The middle was a bit more directionless. False starts and tangents aplenty. Kaufman pokes fun at himself via the film critic narrator (sort of endlessly. It’s a bit too heavy with self-deprecation) while praising Judd Apatow in comparison.

Antkind is funny, farcical, insane and dense. Sometimes I was questioning whether Kaufman was inventing a concept or whether it was actually real. One small gripe for example (perhaps one of you / thon that have read the novel can answer?), if Barassini was partially responsible for the invention of Braino in 2006 (approx.) then how could Abbitha journey back to 1983 and offer the story of Trunks to Barbosae at that time? 1983 was pre Braino, right? (Answer in the comments!) This single question should give you some indication of the level of detail in the book, and perhaps some of the madness.

I liked the ending and I’m really glad I did. I have my own interpretation of it, which I don’t need to put here, and I’m sure you’ll have yours. I liked the comparison of people being on a coach bus in transit. I enjoyed Calcium. I hope Jim Carrey gets a bicycle (in joke). If you’re receptive to this piece of art you might just become enveloped by it.

I will conclude with another quote from Antkind: ‘Is it a masterwork? Is it a sham? Am I being enlightened, or am I being conned? It is, it occurs to me, nothing more and nothing less than I bring to it.’

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Ashley Crawford

Don't do this at home

Reviewed in Australia on 3 September 2020

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I made a terrible mistake whilst reading Charlie Kaufman’s debut novel. I had received it the same day as Blake Butler’s latest, Alice Knott. Amazon had supplied my Covid relief package, my portal away from pandemic paranoia. Butler has long been a favourite, but the Kaufman had me overwhelmingly curious – a first novel by the guy who brought us Being John Malkovich? It was Antkind first. However, as others have noted, Antkind is a long (705 pages) and unwieldy tome and, at times, laborious and repetitious. At around the 350-page mark, and after what felt like the 100th falling-down-a-manhole (sorry, a ‘personhole’ as Kauffman’s would be politically correct narrator continually reminds us) joke, Alice Knott seemed to beckon with increased urgency. Just have a taste of the first page, I thought, and whoosh, like falling into a Malkovich portal, Butler’s book utterly subsumed me. I returned to Antkind, shaken and somewhat bloodied, a week later, but it had been a terrible mistake to make – Alice Knott was an adrenalin rush laced with cocaine. Antkind is another beast altogether. Intriguingly both books are about displacement, mind-slippage, memory distortion and alienation – all too apt in this day and age (and versions of Trump-phobia and pandemics creep into both). But where Butler’s 304-page juggernaut gets to the point with urgency, Kaufman’s does so with innumerable zigs and zags, moments of true pathos and sparkling doses of Pynchonesque humour. And, like Pynchon, or even at his best, Philip K. Dick, Antkind is awash in multitudinous ideas and plot twists and bizarre characters. As a first novel, Antkind is truly something – exactly what I have yet to quantify – just don’t do what I did, which was unfair to Kaufman. Read both books most certainly, but keep them at separate ends of the house.

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John Ferngrove

Bit long. Very very funny. A guy just wants to be liked...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2020

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I was alerted to the release of this book by a comment on my Facebook Thomas Pynchon fan group. It was basically highly sceptical of some critic's claim that this book made Thomas Pynchon read like Dr.Seuss. That would make it a major literary event. It doesn't and it's not. Nonetheless it is a very funny book. As critics like to say it is fiercely intelligent and, deeply humane at its root. About what you'd expect of a novel penned by the script-writer of, amongst other things, Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I was also attracted to the book by its title which promised to feed me fascination with the metaphor of insect societies for the general grotesqueries of human society. I was hoping for something like William T Vollmann's You Bright and Risen Angels, which to my mind was a major literary milestone that went unnoticed. Again it wasn't. Not a chitinous carapace in sight. But as a labyrinthine and zany plotline, involving films within dreams, within dreams, within movies, within hypnosis sessions, it certainly had echoes of Vollmann's missed masterpiece. Having said that, the whole thing is taken from the first person POV of a single central character making it not particularly challenging to follow. Unlike Pynchon where you're four pages along and you suddenly realise you've been in the head of a completely different character situated at a different place and time, and you go back to reread it, and after three attempts you're still not sure where the transition occurred.

Other reviews suggest that it's full of abstruse and obscure allusions. As a reader of Joyce and Pynchon i did not find this to be so, which i guess defines me as sadly over-educated. Most of the references are to movie directors. Reading it on the Kindle made it very easy to look up anyone's name that was unfamiliar. The pace is unrelenting and the comedy never flags or becomes repetitive, but that in itself can become exhausting with such a long book. I took time out half way through to read a biography of the rock group Soft Machine, and then returned to this without any great sense of disruption. Does it need to be quite so long? I've not quite reached the end yet so i don't know if there is a punchline or if it's just an endless recursion of shaggy dog stories. The guy has a lot to say, and he's funny so it doesn't matter.

At its essence the comedy is based on the increasing mental contortions that the privileged white male who just wants to be a decent human being has to go through to exist with some kind of dignity in the MeToo, BLM era. If there is a message then perhaps it is that sure, we all need to get 'woke'. The more the merrier. But if that's accomplished with just sanctimonious snarkinees, and without a bit of humorous self-deprecation, then we'll just end up making a world that's no better than the one we are trying to change.

6 people found this helpful

Fleety

What a doorstop of a book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 August 2020

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Having just finished reading 'Ducks, Newburyport.' by Lucy Ellman, which is huge book with hardly any fullstops, I thought I'd read something a bit shorter, then this was released and that idea went up the chimney. I'm a big Charlie Kaufman fan (Especially 'Adaptation' and 'Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind' ) and , thankfully, this book didn't disappoint. It had full stops and everything.

I'm not going to recite the plot (mainly because I can't really, it's written by Charlie Kaufman.) lets just say if you like Kaufmans film and you like reading then you'll like this, probably.

If this doesn't win a load of awards (Pulitzer?) then I really don't know what will. Best book I've read this year and I've read a ton. I wanted to get as many in as I can before the whole world cracks down the middle like a dropped egg. But round and no yoke.

I think it's evident I'm not a writer.

3 people found this helpful

Tom J-B

BrilliANTKIND more like!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 September 2020

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Loved it loved it loved it. Maybe a little bit too long, Charlie really isnt holding anything back here, so I'd probably say 4.5 out of 5, but I have never laughed so much and so consistently while reading a book. This is full on hilarious for a good deal of the story, which is nice because Kaufman's films, though still excellent, are getting progressively darker it seems.

Dominic

Eternal sunshine of the genius mind

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 November 2020

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Had me hooked from the first page. I’m 100 pages in and it’s constant hilarity and typical reality bending, mind dissecting stuff from the Genius of Charlie Kauffman. If you’re a fan of his films, then you won’t be disappointed!

Arthurbrownscraziestworld

Too long

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 August 2020

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Really funny but it badly needed an editor as it's repetitive and meandering. Get it to five hundred pages and it's a five star book.

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