Talk about Donald Antrim

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tell him to please write a new book.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Saturday, 20 December 2003 02:28 (twenty-two years ago)

It's not a novel, but his piece about his mother's crazy boyfriend in this week's New Yorker is like 10 pages long.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 20 December 2003 02:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I liked it okay, but my heart belongs to Lorrie Moore. Her story in that issue is so friggin' great. Tell HER to write another book!

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 20 December 2003 02:35 (twenty-two years ago)

I really liked that New Yorker piece. I'd love to see him write more memoir/nonfiction.

― jaymc (jaymc), Sunday, 21 December 2003 23:17 (twenty-two years ago)

he wrote another long piece about his mom a while back in the new yorker.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 21 December 2003 23:42 (twenty-two years ago)

i am looking forward to reading the piece in the new yorker just gone. but what is this other piece on his mom? i didnt know of that. i dont suppose anyone still has a copy of that?

― charltonlido (gareth), Monday, 22 December 2003 13:39 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Taking Sides: The Hundred Brothers versus The Verificationist

― nabiscothingy, Sunday, 18 September 2005 21:28 (twenty years ago)

The Hundred Brothers is marginally less claustrophobic so it wins for me; also the concept of 100 brothers is very pleasing. The Verificationist made me twitch in a way I don't enjoy. May we talk about Elect Mr. Robinson... too? It's even less claustrophobic, as I recall, but the author hadn't yet quite found the interior-monologue vein in which he works best.

― Paul Eater (eater), Monday, 19 September 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

I like The Hundred Brothers best, I think it had more momentum. It built to the great climax where the brothers are playing football and running through the house and causing pandemonium. The Verificationist is great but the climax is less tangible; starts out strong but then peters out, as opposed to THB, which starts out a little weak but gets better. I just read Elect Mr. Robinson a couple of months ago and was disappointed in it, nowhere as near as good as the later two.

― n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 19 September 2005 12:57 (twenty years ago)

I wish people would talk about Donald Antrim more. Unfortunately I don't have much to add. I should reread The Hundred Brothers.

― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 16:22 (twenty years ago)

I could talk about David Antin if you wanted.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 16:37 (twenty years ago)

I talked to him on the phone once and met him one time at a restaurant because he was a friend of a friend, but other than that I have nothing to add.

― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

I just walked by the place that I met him at. It used to be a groovy downtown diner. Now it is a pizza parlor.

― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 18:05 (twenty years ago)

Right before I passed the place, I saw Jennifer C0nn3lly walking down the street- she seems pretty short in real life. Maybe she was in the neighborhood visiting the C0urant Institute to do some research for A Beautiful Mind II: Electric Boogaloo?

― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)

I would probably have posted that on the Celebrity Sightings thread, but the search engine is down.

― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 18:20 (twenty years ago)

Is it a groovy downtown pizza parlor?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 22:27 (twenty years ago)

Not in the slightest!

― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 23:00 (twenty years ago)

The Verificationist jumped out at me from the library shelf today. I have a bad feeling I'm outclassed here and will find it totally inedible but here goes nothing.

― Laurel, Monday, 26 September 2005 02:16 (twenty years ago)

I read "The Hundred Brothers" and "Elect Mr. Robinson For A Better World". I didn't like either, really, but the most frustrating thing was I couldn't work out quite why. You know how sometimes you meet people and you just don't like them, and you're not sure why? They haven't said anything wrong, they just rub you up the wrong way? That was how it was. Both times.

I know that the above amounts to terrible and useless criticism and I'm sorry. It's not DA, it's me. Gareth says I might like "The Verificationist" more, and two-word-title-October is fast approaching, but I'm not sure I can face it.

― Tim (Tim), Monday, 26 September 2005 08:18 (twenty years ago)

About halfway through The V. and I'm trying to give it a fair shake but I'm increasingly irritated by the whole incestuous circle of academics attacking each other and/or each other's work and sleeping with each other/'s wives and over-sensitive middle-aged men having crises of wondering where it all went wrong with their marriages and looking for consolation from rosy-cheeked young women or just women who represent something without being PEOPLE and ARRGH. This is overcoming any appeal the writing or ideas might have had, although in the beginning I was still amused enough to keep going. Am I just inordinately bothered or is there a rawther large body of work that uses this setting/premise and WHY?!?

I remember now that the same issue that nagged me about White Noise although a) it was warmer and less, erm, self-consumed? and b) Ben assures me that it was ground-breaking, basically the first of its kind and should get a bye for originality plus the writing is genius. He may be right but I think I'll pass on anything further in this vein.

― Laurel, Tuesday, 4 October 2005 22:27 (twenty years ago)

I fucked him many times. The man knows what he is doing.

― mary clark, Wednesday, 5 October 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

I didn't like The Verificationist one little bit. I had the same problem as Laurel, and then when they all took off, well, I'd have to admit that I didn't really get why that was happening. It all seemed like a very long short story, stretched to breaking point. Are his other books like that too?

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 7 October 2005 01:28 (twenty years ago)

everyone who thought about reading the verificationist should read straight man by richard russo instead.

no shit.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Friday, 7 October 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

seriously. it is much funnier and much better. i would like to prove this to you by sending you the book and guaranteeing your pleasure, but i am broke. heed me nevertheless.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Friday, 7 October 2005 01:46 (twenty years ago)

eight months pass...

Has anybody here read the new one, The Afterlife, yet? It looks interesting...

― Jeff LeVine (Jeff LeVine), Friday, 9 June 2006 20:01 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

I am absolutely loving 'The Afterlife'.

― baaderonixx, Monday, 21 January 2008 10:14 (eighteen years ago)

Ok, just finished it. Shattering. The topic hits very close to home, so might be a bit bias, but Antrim really managed to put across all the nuanced ambivalence of his situation and avoided all the pitfalls of the contemporary 1st person "post-modern" rambling.

― baaderonixx, Friday, 1 February 2008 09:46 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

No discussion on the last one? I picked up the Verificationist but had to give up 2/3rds of the way. Laurel pretty much OTM 3 years ago.

― baaderonixx, Monday, 6 July 2009 13:46 (sixteen years ago)

Ha! The Verificationist finally put my finger on why I'd been avoiding a whole category of lit-crit-beloved writers and books for years and years.

― But not someone who should be dead anyway (Laurel), Monday, 6 July 2009 16:00 (sixteen years ago)

What was weird to me about re-reading that, though, is that I'd never thought of The Verificationist as belonging to that category, even though I suppose the check-boxes are all ticked.

― nabisco, Monday, 6 July 2009 19:11 (sixteen years ago)

two years pass...

Nobody commented on this:

I fucked him many times. The man knows what he is doing.
― mary clark, Wednesday, October 5, 2005 11:31 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

― Jung Danjah (admrl), Friday, 19 August 2011 21:36 (fourteen years ago)

four years pass...

i came here to post about the emerald light in the air, and how good it is - but the most recent post seems more important.

― doing my Objectives, handling some intense stuff (LocalGarda), Sunday, 23 August 2015 11:00 (ten years ago)

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