Donald Antrim
With only three novels, Donald Antrim has established himself as an original voice in contemporary American literature. His work has generally drawn comparisons to important forerunners, including Thomas Pynchon, for his wildly comic works. In a Salon.com review of The Verificationist (2 February 2000), Andrew Roe compares him to Vladimir Nabokov for his use of wordplay and digressive, parenthetical asides. The primary influence on Antrim, however, appears to be Donald Barthelme. In the introduction to the 2004 edition of Barthelme's The Dead Father (1975), Antrim discusses how "reading Barthelme became part of [his] learning" and how, upon discovering Barthelme, he thought, "At last." An important influence that Antrim takes from Barthelme, the "artistic freedom," the "permission to reshape, misrepresent, or even ignore the world as we find it" is readily evident in his work. Yet, Antrim has created a style and method all his own in his three novels and his memoir, The Afterlife (2006).
After the publication of his third novel, The Verificationist (2000), Antrim stated that he considers his novels a trilogy. Though they contain no recurring characters or settings, all share certain qualities and compositional strategies. His first-person narrators, all in some way a little deranged, are notably unreliable. They are men who have reached a certain age without acquiring any semblance of maturity; they are middle class in origin and attitude if not in actuality. Their voices are erudite and rational in tone, no matter the irrationality of the narratives, and the disparity between the voices and the narrator's perceptions provides some of the comic effects of the novels. The mental state of the narrators creates a logical explanation for some of the strange goings-on found in these works: they are sophists in the philosophical sense -- their mental and psychological obsessions tend to create the world around them. This strategy allows Antrim to ground the surrealistic and strange occurrences in the novels in realistic cause-and-effect situations. The primary settings for the novels are inside the head of the narrator, and the plotline of each novel involves the narrator reaching a climatic point in the process of psychological dissolution.
Antrim was born in southern Florida, the son of a literature professor, Harry T. Antrim, and Louanne Self Antrim, who was the primary subject of her son's memoir. He believes that the presence of books in his life at an early age influenced his eventual choice to become a writer. Though he grew up in the South, he has long lived in New York City and, as he told Matt Dellinger, does not consider himself to be a Southern writer. Since the death of his mother, he feels little connection to the region, as he told Dellinger. His sometimes troubled relationship with his family is partially chronicled in autobiographical pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker and in his memoir. Antrim attended Brown University, graduating in 1983. While there, he became friends with Jeffrey Eugenides and Rick Moody, who are often linked with him, though each writes of different concerns and in different styles.
Antrim's first novel, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World (1993), is a work of comic, surreal violence. Set in a nameless small, suburban Florida town, it is narrated by Pete Robinson from the padlocked attic of his home. By profession, Robinson is a third-grade schoolteacher in a town that has elected to defund the school system, leaving him unemployed. His opinion of Captain John Smith, that he was a "self-aggrandizer and brownnoser," could apply to Robinson himself. Even though he claims to dislike them, Robinson fawns over the Rotarians, the powers that be in the town, because he feels that they can be helpful to his political ambitions. He longs to open his own school in lieu of the now-defunct public ones, and he would like this desire to be seen as an interest in the public good. He really wants, however, to be elected mayor, to the point of planning to use the students in his new school as free campaign workers. Robinson longs to be popular, to be a mover and shaker, but he is insecure and jealous. Part of the reason he becomes estranged from his wife as the narrative progresses is that she proves to be more popular than he. This disconnection between the narrator's professed motivations and his actions serves as an important source for comic effects in the novel.
The obsession that creates the reality of the story is found in Robinson's avocation: he is a specialist on the history of ancient and medieval torture techniques and devices, a knowledge he has used in lectures to his third-grade students, much to the chagrin of the school officials. He also lectures on this subject to the Rotarians. His thesis that society has internalized and institutionalized the barbarities of the past becomes manifest in the comic-book violence found in the novel and lends a dystopian feel to the work. When the Rotarians decide to execute the mayor painfully for having fired Stinger missiles into a local pool, killing and wounding several victims, it is Robinson to whom they come for advice. Robinson advocates drawing and quartering the mayor, using automobiles in lieu of horses. The novel includes houses equipped with moats and feuding families who have installed land mines in the local park. On one level, the novel offers a parodic commentary on violence in society, as well as the dissolution of public and civic cohesion and responsibility. On another level, it charts the psychic dissolution of Robinson, who by the end of the novel claims to be delirious from fever and may already be insane.
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World received primarily positive reviews, lauding the strength of the humor and creativeness of the novel. Publishers Weekly (14 June 1993) called it an "imaginative debut," praised Antrim's "crisp, effective prose," and found echoes of Don DeLillo 's White Noise (1985). The New Yorker (25 October 1993) said the work was "richly funny, even whimsical, and bizarrely familiar." Alice Joyce in Booklist (August 1993) said the novel marked Antrim "as a writer to watch very closely," but Ed Weiner, writing in The New York Times Book Review (7 November 1993), concluded that there is "nothing there."
The Hundred Brothers appeared in 1997 and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in fiction. This novel represents Antrim's most explicit acknowledgment of Barthelme's influence on his work, especially Barthelme's The Dead Father. The Hundred Brothers is a narrative with a funereal objective -- the search by the brothers of the title to locate the misplaced urn containing the ashes of their deceased father. The dead father does make an appearance of sorts. Doug, the narrator, believes he sees his image in a water stain on the library ceiling and asks the image what he should do.
The setting is a large library that occupies an entire wing of the father's estate. The library walls are lined with the heads of African animals that the father killed, all sadly neglected, with their hair falling out and some missing eyes. The library itself is also in a state of disrepair; the lights flicker off occasionally, and the roof leaks. Antrim uses the library to orient the characters and action comically as the novel progresses. As the night goes on, the setting becomes more chaotic. Outside the grounds of the estate, homeless people have set up tent cities whose fires can be seen from the windows of the library, suggesting the dysfunctional nature of contemporary society that parallels the dysfunctional nature of the family.
In his narration, Doug comes off as a fastidious failure, who never seems to have lived down fumbling the football in an important game. Neurotic, he tends to nuzzle older brothers' shoes as the night grows late. His brothers think he has a drinking problem, which he denies, but much of the novel involves his searching for a drink without having to stand in line at the bar. This search works as a plot device for his mingling and conversing with brothers whom he would otherwise avoid. Many of the interactions involve some type of power relationship; and Doug, like Pete Robinson, is relatively powerless. Many other interactions involve the resurfacing of old hurts and insecurities, for which the brothers find little empathy among their siblings. Unlike Robinson, Doug, though, has no ambition at all.
Doug's avocation is genealogy, as related to his family, and heraldry -- an insane king exists in the family background. He is also obsessed by the family antecedents who bore his name, all of whom died at an early age. This obsession reflects his own longing for and fear of death; it becomes clear that he has thoughts of suicide. Doug is known among his brothers for the dance of the Corn King he performs at each family gathering as the hour grows late. For this ceremony, Doug strips off his clothes and dons an African mask from the collection in his father's library. Antrim derives this dance from ancient mythic and folkloric rituals that often involved human sacrifice. Following the dance, Doug invites his brothers to chase him around the library in an invitation to human sacrifice, one which his brothers may accept on this occasion. This act highlights the presence of the past in contemporary society, whether or not the myths and inheritances from the past have any true meaning for the present.
The Hundred Brothers elicited comments from reviewers similar to those about Antrim's first novel. However, Dwight Garner, writing for Salon (February 1997), called it the "most fascinating balancing act you'll witness in American fiction this year." Garner praised Antrim's ability to "smuggle so much warmth and real feeling into his narrative."
Antrim's third novel, The Verificationist, appeared in 2000 and was chosen by The New York Times as one of the notable books of the year. In this work Antrim returns to the themes of father-son relationships and the refusal to mature. It is set entirely in a pancake restaurant and bar in a small northeastern city where members of the Krakhower Institute, a psychological institute attached to the local college, gather for relaxation and collegial conversation. Once again, Antrim deals with father-son relationships even though no actual fathers appear. The narrator is Tom, a specialist in Self/Other Friction Theory, an invention of Antrim, and he has considerable social friction with those who share his life. The gathering is his idea, and the novel takes the form of his later account of the event. The possessor of a fragile psyche, Tom is a boy in a middle-aged man's body who is known for spitting water at meetings, playing practical jokes that no one else thinks are funny, and starting food fights. Toward most of his colleagues he demonstrates jealousy and feelings of inferiority. Tom also has problems making decisions, such as what to order at the pancake house, which in a long, funny aside, is shown to be fraught with symbolic meaning. Tom only feels hopeful when he is in the mood for sex.
The dramatic situation that drives the story occurs within the first thirty pages of the novel, when, in order to prevent Tom from starting a food fight, Richard Bernhardt, a colleague sitting at his table, takes Tom into a bear hug, a position in which Tom spends the rest of the novel. This action precipitates Tom's nervous breakdown. Richard, a large man, serves as a terrible father figure, disciplining and destroying Tom's fragile ego. The embrace also has homoerotic overtones, and Tom more than once describes it as a rape. The mental breakdown Tom experiences is one of psychic disassociation. While he is acutely, tactilely aware of the physical touch of Richard, he is mentally flying around the pancake house like Peter Pan, an apt comparison given his inability to mature psychologically.
What follows is a combination of hallucination, fantasy, and seemingly lucid social commentary, which allows Antrim to satirize the interpersonal relationships between the others from the institute.