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There is something dream-like in Donald Antrim's writing. Things are real enough, but with the usual real issues of loss and despair and sometimes surrender. Then, unexpectedly, things turn surreal. A car wheel slides in the mud and we are not on the same road at all. A different dimension, perhaps, or someone else's story. And it is so hard to get that traction. Sometimes we get back on the real road. But sometimes we don't.The first story in this collection is very much like the author's three...
Every time I tried to tell someone how excited I was that Donald Antrim had a new book out - and that it was short stories - I was invariably greeted with, "Oh...well...I don't read short stories. I feel like just as I start to get interested in the characters, the story's over." Here's why you should read short stories in general, and these short stories in particular:I love having friends who know some (but never all) of my good and bad qualities. I like being able to have a conversation with
The New Yorker stories contained in this collection are varied, brilliantly written, and often funny. But overwhelmingly, the main characters suffer from a depression and anxiety so deep that several of them have been institutionalized or contemplated suicide, or both. All are in tenuous, fraught relationships, or still mourning traumatic divorces, and they largely cope with their situations through alcohol, drugs, and a lot of magical thinking about how to better their lives.The couple in “Sola...
Great writing and well-crafted stories, but with one exception, I don't think they'll stay with me too long. I admire Antrim's artistry, but as a work of literature, I really wasn't moved, except by "Another Manhattan."
Antrim is a good writer, really gets into people's minds, but I did close the book depressed, a bit freaked out and glad to be done with it. I will seek out some of his novels for comparison, however.
It turns out that when Antrim strips away everything that's unique and powerful about his writing, all that's left are stories about older white guys dealing with middling success in New York. Hard pass.
Most of these stories are incredibly well written and finely crafted. For me the collection trailed off a bit at the end, but this was a great introduction to the writing of Donald Antrim.
raymond carver minus the class analysis
There's a common theme weaving through these stories about impossible couples and psychological trauma. After the second story I've already given up on the book since I found it repetitive and boring. The writing style didn't engage me at all. I just finished reading it because I hoped for something better to come but was disappointed. There were maybe 1 or 2 stories which I could say were okay, the rest was lost on me.
Antrim is a master of psychoanalysis, observing the secrets that we bury and pretend we are free of. In his world, no-one can escape the gravitational field of their past. Characters struggle against inertia, and those around them may briefly hold out hope for them, but ultimately they slide back into their old sorrows.These are Raymond Carver stories, but told with complex, hyperenergetic language, like Seinfeld on the therapist's couch. Unhappy people stay unhappy. Beyond a haze of antidepress...
There was one story that stood out to me in the collection - about a couple with mental illnesses trying to have a 'normal' relationship - but the others were...I just don't get it, frankly. There was another about a father and a step-father meeting which was just a line machine - really droll, so droll - but then just whimpered away. I really must be missing something here because these were all in the New Yorker. But I'm all for emotional directness and stories about people trying to make thei...
Another one I just can't finish. I just don't like these stories.
Not what I was expecting having previously read only Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World, but these stories make sense when you realise all seven were published in the New Yorker. With one exception they’re about educated, middle-aged, more or less ridiculous Manhattanites processing their neuroses in public and in private. But if that sounds horrible, Antrim imbues his creations with enough humanity to make you laugh at them, cheer for them, and condole with them. Like the subject of Another M...
Donald Antrim writes about people who hurt. They are grieving lost loves, ruined lives, and often their own dispossession in a world they have lost familiarity with. The characters seem to inhabit the spaces between words and they are often in pain but unable to identify its source. Many of the stories deal with people who have psychiatric illnesses and rely on medication or frequent hospitalizations in order to function.There is a common theme to many of the stories. After loss, characters are