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    The Verificationist: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Verificationist: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Verificationist: A Novel
    Ebook188 pages2 hours

    The Verificationist: A Novel

    By Donald Antrim

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    With a New Introduction by George Saunders

    A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

    It is early spring, and Tom has called together his fellow psychologists at the Krakower Institute for their biannual pancake supper—a chance for likeminded analysts to talk shop and casually unburden themselves over flapjacks. But, as Tom knows (at least subconsciously), his brainy colleagues are a little on edge—simmering with romantic tension and professional grievance, their stew of conflicting ego and id just might boil to the surface before the pretty waitress brings their next coffee refill. When Tom tries to provoke a food fight, a rival colleague locks him in a therapeutic hold, triggering a transcendent if totally bizarre transformation that will free Tom to confront his greatest pleasures and fears.

    Darkly funny and beautifully written, The Verificationist confirms Donald Antrim as one of America's best and most original authors.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 22, 2011
    ISBN9781429977395
    Unavailable
    The Verificationist: A Novel
    Author

    Donald Antrim

    Donald Antrim is the critically acclaimed author of Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers, and The Verificationist, as well The Afterlife, a memoir about his mother. A regular contributor to The New Yorker, he has also been the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Public Library. He lives in New York City.  

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    Reviews for The Verificationist

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    • 1/5
      Maybe it's because I was really looking forward to reading this book. Maybe it's because I have lived a sheltered life. Maybe it's because I am still naive. In any event, I hated this book. I found it to be contrite, sophomoric and meandering. There was nothing that I took from this book, except pride in myself for not invoking my "100-page rule", that I must read 100 pages before deciding to put a book down, unfinished. I would say the best part of this book is the summary, enticing the reader to pick it up.
    • 4/5
      Colleagues from the Krakower Institute gather at an all-night Pancake House for a semi-annual evening of social bonding and bonhomie. Psychoanalytical academics and therapists all, the relations, inter-relations, power dynamics, and psycho-sexual tension between them is bound to be layered with meanings, conscious, unconscious, or subconscious. And at the centre of these, undoubtedly, is Tom, who instigated this practice and who struggles to free himself from the gravity of life, and indeed from gravity itself. In a fit of pique, Tom attempts to initiate a food fight amongst his colleagues. He is restrained, forcibly, by the burly Dr Bernhardt, whose muscular arms encircling him seem to give Tom the power of flight. Thereafter, Tom floats above the patrons of the Pancake House, observing, reflecting, astrally engaging, and, effectively, transforming himself. It’s not your usual pancakes and sausage. It’s not even your usual Krakower Institute semi-annual gathering. But it’s definitely going to be an evening of import. With syrup!Donald Antrim’s novel is at once intensely written and as light as a feather. He takes dissociative narrative to a new level. Literally. Tom’s evening of aerial introspection never puts a foot wrong (or whatever the aeronautical equivalent of that image might be). His anxiety, both sexual and constitutive, heightens his appreciation of the words and actions of his peers even as it undermines his self-understanding. He is ungrounded. Again, literally. And his flights of fancy have a tendency to become flights of fancy. Flights which carry others in their wake — the young waitress, Rebecca; his alcoholic yet respected colleague, Sherwin Lang; Sherwin’s British paramour, Leslie. But even those who do not join Tom and the others above the ground are nonetheless released from their usual constraints, joining a seeming Bacchic Rite of Spring that can end only with transcendence, in one form or another, for its instigator.A strange and yet compelling narrative. Gently recommended for those prepared to take flight.
    • 3/5
      What an odd book. Not that it is necessarily bad. In fact, in the end, I enjoyed it. Although it is partly one big, long extended joke, which gets a little old about mid-way through. On the other hand, it's lucid, well-written, and in the end, it all sort of ties together really well, even though you could see the end coming a long way away.It is undoubtedly the best book set in a pancake house that I have ever read. About to start a foodfight, the main character is embraced by a big fat guy who he both loves and hates and the thoughts and fantasies in his mind take over from there. There's obviously a lot more to this book that i'm obviously not getting, but i get enough of it to know there's something more. The good news is that it's written in a silly enough way that the author doesn't make you feel stupid if you don't get that other level. The main character flies around the room for most of the book, and also a little outside and eventually asks a waitress to come fly with him which she does. And who doesn't have this fantasy everytime they're in a pancake house??? I mean, do you even have to write a book about it? i guess so. And then there's all those little relationships with his wife, his colleagues, his rivals which he explores in his mind which make you think-- am I, myself, the reader this petty and self-absorbed? The answer is--of course you are. It's a good book. it's short. There are no chapter divisions. It reads fast.
    • 3/5
      I'm always a bit leery of books in which characters start floating around out of their bodies, but I gave this a shot based on good reviews of both the novel and the author ... and, although it had it's moments, it turned into an incoherent mess by the end. I suppose it's just barely conceivable that this incoherency is supposed to reflect on the main character's own breakdown, but, if so, it was so sloppily done that that it was virtually indistinguishable from plain old bad writing.SPOILER BELOWWorst of all, at the end, this turns out to be another of those stories that's all in the "mind" of a dead or dying protagonist ... a setup that, at this stage, has hardened into a full-blown cliche.Yes, I know Philip Roth used it in his recent novel Indignation, which I gave 4 stars to, but I guess that's the difference between a master like Roth and a writer like Antrim, who just didn't seem to have a strong grasp on things in his book.I can't recommend this one.