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Antkind  By  cover art

Antkind

By: Charlie Kaufman
Narrated by: Fred Berman
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Publisher's summary

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

Long-listed for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

“A dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon...propelled by Kaufman’s deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull’s-eye wit." (The Washington Post)

“An astonishing creation...riotously funny...an exceptionally good [book].” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Kaufman is a master of language...a sight to behold.” (NPR)

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR and Men's Health

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 90 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.

All that’s left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film 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.

©2020 Charlie Kaufman (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“A terrific debut novel that makes Gravity’s Rainbow read like a Dr. Seuss story...a masterwork of postmodern storytelling.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Pynchonesque ... Kaufman’s debut brims with screwball satire and provocative reflections on how art shapes people’s perception of the world.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

“This novel is magnificently imaginative, bringing to mind Beckett, Pynchon, and A. R. Moxon’s more recent The Revisionaries (2019). With this surprisingly breezy read, given its length, Kaufman proves to be a masterful novelist, delivering a tragic, farcical, and fascinating exploration of how memory defines our lives.” (Booklist)

What listeners say about Antkind

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A wild ride, a fever dream, a social satire

Fred Berman, the narrator, does such a remarkable job with this book that even though I had no idea what was happening much of the time, it didn't matter because I loved the wild ride and just held onto my hat and got swept along. I'm a big Charlie Kaufman fan, so was intrigued by the meanderings of his fertile imagination. Parts of the book were hilarious--I laughed out loud repeatedly--and parts were repetitive and frankly mysterious and weird. But what else would one expect from Charlie Kaufman. The big themes of reality versus fantasy, mortality versus transcendence, personal will versus impersonal destiny, not to mention racism, fascism, and consumerism leant the book a fascination that beckoned me further and further into the non-linear but also linear plot until I completely submitted to it. Certainly, for me, the section in the middle in which Kaufman essentially channels the interior world of Donald Trump was my favorite part of the book. I want to get a hard copy so I can read that section over again. It's brilliant. It may be the first time I ever really understood Donald Trump and even had compassion for him. Kaufman's continual plays on words, read so humorously and expertly by Berman, were another thrill for me. After 25 hours and 42 minutes, I wasn't sorry when the book ended, because I had other things I wanted to listen to, but I enjoyed the wild ride and felt suitably confused but also amused and entertained by the end. I've read a couple of book reviews of this book and one reviewer (can't remember which one) got a little tired of what s/he thought might have been solipsism, and I can understand that, but I still would recommend the book for those who are willing to wade in deep and be swept along by the current into parts unknown.

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15 people found this helpful

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Take a trippy trip through Kaufman's mind

Was this a love letter to Judd Apatow? Christopher Nolan criticism disguised as a novel or a self-indugent attempt to display what seems to be an endless stream of film-making consciousness and knowledge? A dig at American consumerism, credentialism, and the U.S. social justice moment? An ode to stop-action film-making? A lash swung at professional media critics? A self-depricating analysis of Kaufman's catalog? An earnest attempt to address the pointlessness and meaningless of existence?

Yes, replete with a running joke (or was that serious?) about personal pronouns.

Either that or it's a story wrapped around the funniest portrayal of the 45th president of the U.S. republic's ridiculous demeanor and his easily lampooned family. Except Kaufman does the work to make it an actually funny joke now that the bad jokes have been retold countless times by the funny and unfunny alike.

Altogether, this work documents 2020 in a manner that will not be repeated while examining the deepity of life and its many possible meanings.

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Charlie is laughing at me somewhere

Nothing but random rambling. Any other insight could have taken 20 minutes and not 28 hours. Yes, I was waiting for it. Please let Charlie out of the asylum. Thanks

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Absurd

This book is insane. Funny and absurd. A little too long, but worth it.

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What the hell

This is the only book of put in the same category as an infinite jest. Absurdly long, constantly funny, why is the still going, bringing the reader to the edge of sanity, possibly causing temporary or permanent marital issues during and after reading. And finally giving Apadow his due.

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The Worst Book Ever Written

And I love Charlie Kaufman. I started skipping seconds ahead and then minutes and finally leaping over entire chapters in a race to put this dog down. 20 hours of drivel narrates (correctly) by a priggish, clueless intellectual. omg.

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Maddening but worth it!

Antkind is/was/thon a maddening book, but worth continuing to mine Kaufman's occasional philosophical gems, not to mention the laugh out loud humor.

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Being extra in the best way.

I absolutely love this novel. It was by far the greatest most ridiculously 'Kaufmenesque' to the max. Writing in the perspective of beards and breaking the 4th wall of involving the character who is the most outrages and yet realistically more human than any other character, by effecting the struggles of the character based on his criticism on the authors movies. just perfect for someone like me but could see it not bring for everyone, that being said please give it try

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Educated Nonsense

I can’t believe I wasted hours on this stream of consciousness. It’s like a bad acid trip. You can tell he means to be funny. Poor guy.

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The most insane thing I've listened to

I guess I should have expected this from a Charlie Kaufman book. The audio is 26 hours long but somehow it felt like months. I feel like my brain has just been dissected. I think I recommend it, but definitely wouldn't for everyone. If you liked Synecdoche, NY you'll probably appreciate the absolute insanity of this story.

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