This is one that starts off kind of slow, but if you hang in there, it is worth it! The author is hilarious and the premise of a single frame of a film found by a neurotic film critic is unique.

Antkind by Charlie Kaufman is a truly out of this world adventure about a film critic experiencing and trying to remember a film that last 30 days. It consumes him and his dreams as he figures out what was the film and what was his life. The book relies heavily on how film affects the watcher, and that the film can become a part of you. This book is deeply funny mind trip that only the writer of such films as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind could write. This is Charlie Kaufman's first novel and it is a doozy. This is the kind of novel that I think could be heavily discussed in college literature classes, because there's a lot to explore and debate about, what is part of the film and what is a dream? The book is 720 pages and should have been well over a hundred pages shorter, it has as many endings as Return of the King, I slapped my forehead once of reading more. This is a book that I see being really divided over, some loving while others put it as do not finish. Antkind is a cross between a Kurt Vonnegut novel and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the ARC. Antkind by Charlie Kaufman was published on 7-7-20.

The Plot: B. Rosenburger Rosenburg is a film critic that dives deep into the avant garde film. He goes to Florida to dive deep into the a 1908 film that is the first portrayal of a transgender on screen. Upon this trip he meets his neighbor that claims he was in the film, because he is a time traveler. As B. gets to know his neighbor he learns he is a filmmaker and has an animated film featuring puppets that know one has seen before. B. indulges himself and agrees to watch the film, the film that is untitled is 30 days long, it is about the past, present, and future. The filmmaker dies midway through the first watch, but B. is so committed now thinking this the greatest film that he has ever seen continues to watch (as a film critic his rule is to watch a movie 7 times). He doesn't make it through the second viewing as the film burns up and B. is in a coma. He makes it his life's work to remember everything, but he soon can't tell his life from the film as it consumes him and his dreams.

What I Liked: There's an on going joke about the character of B. being mistaken for jewish because of his name and appearance, that I never grew tired about. There a scene about Donald Tump (or Trunk) as he becomes to enamored with his animatronic robot from Disney's Hall of Presidents that he orders one and it becomes his best friend. There's a couple of scenes about Vaudeville duo Mudd and Moroony where a stage accident send one into a coma and changes his outlook on life and wants to play the straight man in the comedy act instead of the foyle. The compromise is two straight men, which is funny because how bad it is. I like the common debate does life imitate art or does art imitate life? B. is a film critic that loathes the films of Charlie Kaufman, and destroys everyone of his films. I like his nicknames for favorite directors. Theirs a lot of praise for filmmakers Judd Apatow and Wes Anderson. I liked a lot of the humor, especially the self analysis humor about his idiosyncrasy.

What I Disliked: Like all first time writers the novel is long and over bloated. I could trim 150 pages easily and have almost the same book. I don't like the title, at the end of the novel it gets to the meaning of Antkind. The ending was all over the place I saw five times where it could have ended, and kept going and going.

Recommendations: I'm going to barely recommend this, the story is all over the place, it has strong metaphors about life and dreams, with bits of laugh out loud moments. The story is overly long, but there some diamond in the rough moments that really save it. I think literature majors are going to get a lot more out of it than I did; there is a lot to debate and discuss. I rated Antkind by Charlie Kaufman 3 out of 5 stars. This review rating tore me up I kept bouncing back and forth between 3 and 4 stars, but I thought the endings and overly long put it in the barely 3 stars category.

I really wanted to like this book more. I am a huge fan of Charlie Kaufman and the things he has to say. This book just did not do it for me. There were times when the book got on a roll and you kept turning the pages then it would literally come to a full stop and go off on a tangent and slow the pace of the novel and thenit would get you back to turning the pages. The problem is after a while it just became tedious. The story is interesting which should move things along. It's about a person who discovers a film that he thinks is the greatest movie ever made. It gets burned in a fire and he has to piece it back together from memory. We go in and out of his head with stories that may or not be true. Again, there were certainly pages of fantastic writing and intellectualism that will make you laugh out loud and think about the world we live in. I'll definetly be interested in seeing what he writes for a follow-up to this novel.

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 couldn't finish this one. It was my first Kaufman book, and probably my last. It seemed all over the place, and like it was written by someone who was completely high. Maybe that was the point, but if it was, I missed it. Oh well.

2/5 Stars only because it wasn't so awful that it was offensive. It was simply DNF.

Phew this was a tough one to read and honestly I am going to confess I haven't finished it... but I have a promise to keep to talk about it... it's publishing soon (I am posting this about two weeks prior).

It took me two months to get past the first two chapters. Seriously. Two weeks to read about a bug getting squashed (or was it a drone) on a windshield. Then after that things really kicked into gear. And the gears directed me into a rabbit hole. A complex, swirling rabbit hole of the main character. It is so very good. So so very good. I am relishing my time with this book.

Charlie Kaufman really loves his words. In this 720 page tome not a single complex word is wasted. Seriously. To me not a one. Wowza. That is valuable. I have loved it. The challenge of getting past those first two chapters, the challenge of learning a new pronoun, the challenge of seeing the film that is the center of this book.

Yes this is how twisty and complex this is. Charlie Kaufman's gauntlet has been thrown down and it's a joy to accept the challenge. I don't think Charlie Kaufman looks at the reader as the enemy that the knight might, but definitely is challenging the reader.

I have seen it said that this is an absurdist fantasy. But it is the connection to Charlie Kaufman and his mind that makes this less fantasy but absurdist for sure. Keep in mind the calculated deeper message Charlie Kaufman always has. This is a book about a deep love of the genre of "film" and how we get to that point is part of the journey... the fantastical, wordy, charming and imaginative journey.

Not an easy read, but one that I am very seriously enjoying as I am moving along.

"As a person of privilege and a male who has been correctly chastised and silenced by the emergent culture, I recognize I have no right to feel bad for myself and certainly no right to publicly bemoan my circumstances."

And yet the narrator certainly does publicly bemoan his circumstances for 772 pages. That's a lot of bemoaning, disguised as self-reflection. It involves a little of lots of things including an ant named Calcium. It is funny and boring and sad and annoying and mystifying and silly. Everyone will have their own interpretation. Good luck as you begin your journey.

Thank goodness you do not need to recreate it from a single word that survived a fire.

A fitting debut novel from the storied screenwriter and director. He managed to meet expectations after years of enthralling films, while also blowing them out of the water by taking a refreshing and unfamiliar approach to his writing.

This book just wasn’t for me. I’m a huge fan of Kaufman’s films, but had a hard time getting into his writing strike and don’t feel like I’d finish it in time for reviewing before publication.

"It lands with a thunk." So begins Antkind, confirming the thesis of one of my many widely ignored monographs, "Ishmael Shishmael: Why the Opening Line of Books Is All You Need to Know: How to Save Time By Not Reading the Classics" (which also solidified my minimally regarded reputation for subtitling my subtitles).

Discarding my own good advice, as I never fail to do, I nonetheless plowed on for a good 270 of Antkind's 720 pages, wondering even as I look back upon that estimate whether it is real of whether I am just pretending that there is a fractured synchronicity to my numbering scheme. I must admit, I loved what I was reading. It was exactly what I expected from Charlie Kaufman in this, his debut novel, which no matter how faint-praised that sounds is meant as a compliment.

But then it struck me, like a flying insect hitting my windshield (a simile I cannot claim as original, and neither can Charlie) -- I loved Barry Lyndon too, but my god, three hours of my life, with nothing to show for it, each scene lingering eternally, as beautiful, haunting, and heartbreaking as can be, but (yawn) I think I need to take a nap right this second. Charlie's musings likewise made me laugh, made me cry, made me cry out in anguish, made me laugh inwardly in anguish -- but my god, some of those paragraphs droned on and on for pages upon pages!

So I skimmed the next 270 pages, rationalizing to myself -- fooling myself, really -- that I would go back and read them more thoroughly once I had a better sense of where this was going, knowing of course that I would probably not, not that I would ever admit that to myself, even though I readily admit it to you, my imaginary reader (for I cannot imagine that anyone is actually reading this, or reading it this far after its inauspicious start).

Then it struck me again, like lightning improbably striking twice (another ludicrous simile): I know exactly what to do! I did it before, loving a book I was reading but struggling to get through it, not quite the tome Antkind is, but close. Facing a long ride to Pittsburgh (a story for another time, though that time will never come), and having procured the audio edition for my wife -- for she was as disinclined to reading in print as I was to "reading" in audio -- I realized that I could finish the book by listening to it.

In the process, I learned something new, as much as I believed that I already knew it all (by "it" I mean everything). A comic novel -- and the title at issue was as humorous as Antkind -- has an indisputable advantage in audio: a professional narrator most likely (almost assuredly) has much better comic timing than the voice in my head (my own voice, not all those other voices that clutter up my inner multi-logue -- OK, that's too facile).

So I'm going to give Antkind a four-star rating, five stars for the masterful first third that I read fully and the second third that I read lightly, deducting one star for it being too weighty to read all the way through in one try. And I vow (this time knowing that I will in actual deed fulfill this promise to myself) to finish it in audio once it comes out (this review being as honest a review as I can fashion, poorly mimicking Charlie's own narrative voice, of the ARC that was kindly provided to me by NetGalley well in advance of the publication date).

Returning to my own voice, that's the best I can do right now, sorry to say. I really did like what I read and I really am looking forward to listening to the entire book in audio. Fred Berman is a prolific audiobook narrator, I've experienced him several times, including at least one novel that is as wildly comic as Antkind, so my expectations are soaring.

The affectionate parody above may not tell you what Antkind is about, but it does give you an idea of Charlie's style, almost all of it being an internal monologue with himself that is at once self-deprecating and self-congratulatory, and always darkly comic. I really hope it ends up going somewhere good -- I'll update this review when I finish.

This book is a dark, weird, wild ride. For me, it is like Pynchon, DeLillo (particularly the overeager, overwrought, poseur sense of academia presented in WHITE NOISE), Kafka, and all of Kaufman's films (again, particularly: Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) went into an updated blender and out this came. One thing I really like is how Kaufman is able to drop in all kinds of erudite references but still be just damn funny/entertaining. His protagonist is an Ivory Tower neurotic living in an absurd reality, but still has all the surface-level foibles of a Seinfeld character, and things keep moving... all the way into an equally brainy but absurd future.

I got halfway through Antkind and needed a pause. The book was draining me, spinning in circles around the same joke and a narrator that was increasingly frustrating. I told myself I would go back after a break, but I honestly knew that day would never come.

To me, this book needed an editor to tell Charlie that less is more. I found it repeating the same points (and jokes about Charlie Kaufman movies) over and over, to the point that it felt like chapters were just following the same structure again and again. Maybe they were and it was all some meta-Charlie Kaufman joke that I missed.

This book is bonkers. If you are a fan of Kaufman's films and you think you know what to expect—think again. The form of the novel gives Kaufman complete, unrestricted freedom to indulge his insane imagination and he uses it. Equal parts hysterical, fascinating, and infuriating, with moments of real genius. A satirical mind-bender that confounds all expectations.

I think I read something brilliant, but it was so drawn out it lost some of its sparkle. Antkind is a book about a lot of things, but its primary story is about a film critic who finds the masterwork of a reclusive auteur who created a three-month-long stop-motion film that took him 90 years to make. Unfortunately all that remains of it is a single frame of film, and that is the starting point of his journey. Along the way there are some odd characters, a futuristic ant named Calcium, and plenty of observations of modern society and politics, properly skewered by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who wrote this novel.

It took me about 10 weeks to read this 700-page novel. I kept putting it down. But I did return to it for one reason. It is consistently funny. I've always believed writing humor is the most difficult writing task. To be truly funny in print, especially when sustained over 700 pages, is a remarkable achievement. That said, this book would have been an instant classic at 450 pages. So the five-star brilliance only gets four stars from me because it was just too long for its own good. But if you don't mind a long novel, I would highly recommend Antkind.

This is a deeply goofy book. It tested my patience at times, but also made me laugh (which is rare for a book). My favorite joke, and I am not sure why, was "which I pronounce yah-gurt."

Not my type of novel but I imagine we have readers that would enjoy this a lot. Very unique and fresh. Wasn't my favorite but I can appreciate the craft!

This is one of the best books I have read in years. It felt as though it covered, well, everything. Reality, consumerism, memory, history, identity, criticism, film. It's entirely universal in nature. Very few pages went by where I didn't laugh. The jokes, like in Kaufman's movies, are well earned. They are built rather than one-offs. Although, I could have read about B falling in a personhole for days.
'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.'
This description only begins to touch at what the novel is about. It certainly is the thread through the story, but from this Kaufman delivers the reader to every corner of his mind.
I already know this is a novel I will come back to again and again. It is a rare occurrence that an artist can be this creative in more than one field. Kaufman has written a novel which not only gives clarity to our times but defines the reality we find ourselves in.

Dense, macabre, hilarious. Could not read at one go and had to pick away piecemeal, but worth the effort if you stick with it.

[Cross-posted from Goodreads]

What the hell did I just read? Oof. My brain hurts, and now I will be taking an extended trip through some reading that is extremely linear and straightforward.

Charlie Kaufman's debut novel, Antkind, is very much neither of those things, but it was pretty delightful. Frequently laugh-out-loud funny, it explores the nature of memory, identity, and comedy, among many, many other things. I saw another review describe the narrator as something like "the most punchable person of all time," and I can't help but agree. He's an insufferable human being through most of the novel, but also a hilarious one. Other characters include Abbott and Costello, Apollo 11 Michael Collins, robot Donald Trump, a low-rent hypnotist, the murderous staff of a clown-shoe company, et cetera. I could tell you the whole plot, and it wouldn't matter. In many ways, it's a literary acid trip.

Do I recommend this book? Maybe. Do you like surrealism? Do you like tinges of Murakami magical realism? If you liked Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and especially Synecdoche, New York, I think you will enjoy this. It made especially unusual reading as a follow-up to One Hundred Years of Solitude, which also told a story spanning many years in non-linear. My best advice for this one? Just roll with it.

Reading this book made me fantasize about how wonderful it might be to watch paint drying on the wall. My tolerance for pretentious, pseudo-intellectual stream-of-consciousness is less than zero. Please understand that this only represents my own personal opinion which is contra-balanced against the masses who find brilliance in this bloated mess. I guess it's like some of the modern art that the critics love and ordinary folks just shake their heads at, wondering what all the fuss was about.