{"id":829,"date":"2020-08-10T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T21:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=829"},"modified":"2026-07-20T20:20:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T03:20:32","slug":"antkind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=829","title":{"rendered":"Antkind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Antkind<\/em>, by Charlie Kaufman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An absurd novel by the screenwriter best known for <em>Being John Malkovich<\/em>, <em>Adaptation<\/em>, and <em>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/em>. He has another movie coming out this September on Netflix, <em>I&#8217;m Thinking of Ending Things<\/em>, which he directed and co-wrote with Iain Reid from Reid&#8217;s novel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Antkind<\/em> is crazy. It&#8217;s over the top. It&#8217;s unafraid to go wherever Kaufman&#8217;s imagination goes, which is everywhere. It&#8217;s funny with a slapstick, or early Woody Allen tone. The plot follows a film critic trying to re-create by memory a three-month long movie that he saw only once. The book explodes in all directions. Kaufman&#8217;s usual interests appear: puppets, memory, doppelg\u00e4ngers. Kaufman&#8217;s invention never falters. Eventually we get to an army of animatronic Donald Trump clones ushering in the apocalypse (of course). But it lacks the human center that made <em>Eternal Sunshine<\/em> such a gem. And it&#8217;s very long. It&#8217;s in 90 short chapters, to parallel the 90 days of the lost movie, and it starts to feel like Kaufman just keeps writing to fulfill his own pre-assigned plan. It&#8217;s amusing enough to finish, but tedious, too. The endless sense of driving forward with the awakening realization that it&#8217;s not going anywhere reminded me of David Foster Wallace&#8217;s, <em>Infinite Jest<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>I write a diary entry like this after every book I read, mostly novels, mostly the best of nineteenth and twentieth century literature.\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=3437\">To see what else is on my reading list click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Antkind, by Charlie Kaufman. An absurd novel by the screenwriter best known for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=829\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Antkind<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-diary","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5138,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions\/5138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}