Stopped Reading Charlie Kaufman's Antkind

 

Life is too short for reading books that do not satisfy, at least in my opinion. I decided after about one hundred pages (out of a possible 700) that I did not need to read any more of Charlie Kaufman's Antkind. It does offer some humor to film obsessed types like me, but it is a lot of effort to finish.

To give some idea of the sort of humor the book has, here is one passage with the narrator's thoughts on gender and pronouns:

    Third-person plural is grammatically and, more important, aesthetically unacceptable. Thon is the superior solution to the ungendered pronoun we as a people of enhanced gender spectrum face today (p 101).

The plot of Antkind, in so far as there is a traditional plot, centers on an unusual movie. A movie that takes three months to show. Although, as the narrator says, there are bathroom breaks, but it flies by.

...It is about everything. It is a comedy about the nightmare that is humor -- a critique of comedy, if you will. It postulates the coming end of comedy, the need for its abolition, the need for us to learn empathy, to never laugh at others. To never laugh again. It is a movie about racism, made by an African American -- did I mention that? -- which depicts nary a single African American. And wait till you learn why! It is a movie about time, the arrow as well as the boomerang of it. It is about artifice and fiction and the paucity of truth in our culture. It is about meanness, Arvide. It is about the block theory of the universe. It is about the future and the past, the history and future of cinema. It is about you, Davis. It is about me. I men this in the most literal sense. It is about me and you. More me though (pp 100-101).

If you enjoyed that, you might enjoy the rest of Kaufman's book. As for me, I will be returning it to the library. Page 101 was far enough for me.