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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’ve been reading this book since ninth grade, and am graduating today (I finished it at the graduation rehearsal). When B forgets Ingo’s last name, so have I. This book made me laugh, chortle, and cachinnate.
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Do you like Charlie Kaufman? Then you might like this book. Or, you might not.
Think of everything you find in a Charlie Kaufman film and you will find it in Antkind. But like, way, way more of it. Charlie Kaufman set free from the constraints of film run times. Charlie Kaufman running away with first person like it's a brand new lover. Charlie Kaufman at his FULLEST: full of self-loathing, tongue in cheek humor, metafictional references, and pretentiousness (in the best and worst ways). Do you like the word pulchritudinous? No? Me either. But you will read it at least a bajillion times in Antkind.
Don't get me wrong, this book made me guffaw like I'd never guffawed before. The writing can be absolutely incandescent. And I, for one, love Charlie Kaufman's films. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. At about the 50% mark my enthusiasm began to sag, and I wondered whether some of his satirizing wasn't quite satire but some real darkness coming through.
Still, it was worth trying.
Think of everything you find in a Charlie Kaufman film and you will find it in Antkind. But like, way, way more of it. Charlie Kaufman set free from the constraints of film run times. Charlie Kaufman running away with first person like it's a brand new lover. Charlie Kaufman at his FULLEST: full of self-loathing, tongue in cheek humor, metafictional references, and pretentiousness (in the best and worst ways). Do you like the word pulchritudinous? No? Me either. But you will read it at least a bajillion times in Antkind.
Don't get me wrong, this book made me guffaw like I'd never guffawed before. The writing can be absolutely incandescent. And I, for one, love Charlie Kaufman's films. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. At about the 50% mark my enthusiasm began to sag, and I wondered whether some of his satirizing wasn't quite satire but some real darkness coming through.
Still, it was worth trying.
It was OK. It was frequently funny, but it was also very self-referential and meta to a fault. I think the references are ultimately a distraction, and my own guess with what's going on is that everything went bonkers the moment his doppelgangers appeared.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
About halfway through there is a fairly explicit description of a sexual encounter between Donald Trump and the animatronic version of himself from Disney’s Hall of Presidents, and it isn’t even a top 5 weirdest scene in this book.
Reading this is not unlike watching one of Kaufman’s films. There is his trademark existential humor and weirdness with layers of reality fold in on themselves until you really can’t tell which way is up, but there is also a visceral energy that sort of overwhelms the experience to a point where you are feeling more than thinking, and by the end you are simultaneously filled with existential dread and immense hope.
At least that’s how it goes for me.
Reading this is not unlike watching one of Kaufman’s films. There is his trademark existential humor and weirdness with layers of reality fold in on themselves until you really can’t tell which way is up, but there is also a visceral energy that sort of overwhelms the experience to a point where you are feeling more than thinking, and by the end you are simultaneously filled with existential dread and immense hope.
At least that’s how it goes for me.
It’s a testament to Kaufman’s brilliance as a screenwriter that I would be first in line to see any attempts by him in adapting this.
Never have I ever read a book that was seemingly crafted specifically for me to enjoy, in a way that is almost a little frightening and could probably become its own little adventure within this book which contains multitudes. For the thousands of jokes and bits and references in this book there’s an overflowing well of absolute feeling that kind of starts clinging to you. I say feeling purely because I think, like a lot of Charlie Kaufman’s work, it’s hard to describe that mishmash of emotion it evokes - an overwhelming sense of loneliness/ apathy/compassion/frustration/
yearning/love. It’s crazy how one moment you can be laughing at a passage about a man working a clown convention (only because he is involved in a psychosexual dance with a random woman he met at a hypnotist’s office), lusting after a female clown (Clown Laurie) seated next to him only to then be hit in the chest with an overwhelming heartache at the depth of true alienation people come to know and suffer though, whether through circumstance or their own misguided mistakes. Anyway, this might be the funniest book ever written. Craving a Biggy sized Slammy’s Original Boardwalk Cola and a Slammy’s Double El Mexicano Taco Burger 🐜🤡🔥🏔️
yearning/love. It’s crazy how one moment you can be laughing at a passage about a man working a clown convention (only because he is involved in a psychosexual dance with a random woman he met at a hypnotist’s office), lusting after a female clown (Clown Laurie) seated next to him only to then be hit in the chest with an overwhelming heartache at the depth of true alienation people come to know and suffer though, whether through circumstance or their own misguided mistakes. Anyway, this might be the funniest book ever written. Craving a Biggy sized Slammy’s Original Boardwalk Cola and a Slammy’s Double El Mexicano Taco Burger 🐜🤡🔥🏔️
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an ARC of this book.
I love the weird, brainy, meta things Charlie Kaufman does with his movies, and I was excited to see what he'd do within the frame of a book, especially with the description of what Antkind was all about.
And yet.
This is too long and needed an editor to get this down by a third or even a half. There's some cool ideas here, especially in the beginning and the end, but the middle spins its wheels for too many pages in a way that's hard to keep track of. That might be the point, but it lost me as a reader - at 50% of the way through, I was trying to figure out where the plot was going, and by 66 and 75% I was repeatedly talking myself into making it to the end because the good parts are clever and funny enough to get you to keep going. The main character is completely punchable and yet you keep wanting to read about him!
I absolutely want to read more of Charlie Kauffman's thoughts on movies (especially since he name-drops a bunch of MST3k-grade films like _Fun in Balloon Land_), but as nonfiction essays. Not this.
I love the weird, brainy, meta things Charlie Kaufman does with his movies, and I was excited to see what he'd do within the frame of a book, especially with the description of what Antkind was all about.
And yet.
This is too long and needed an editor to get this down by a third or even a half. There's some cool ideas here, especially in the beginning and the end, but the middle spins its wheels for too many pages in a way that's hard to keep track of. That might be the point, but it lost me as a reader - at 50% of the way through, I was trying to figure out where the plot was going, and by 66 and 75% I was repeatedly talking myself into making it to the end because the good parts are clever and funny enough to get you to keep going. The main character is completely punchable and yet you keep wanting to read about him!
I absolutely want to read more of Charlie Kauffman's thoughts on movies (especially since he name-drops a bunch of MST3k-grade films like _Fun in Balloon Land_), but as nonfiction essays. Not this.