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Amazon.co.uk Review
What happens if 20 psychoanalysts meet for an informal supper in the Pancake House? This is the curious, and comic, starting-point of Donald Antrim's third novel, The Verificationist: "all the teaching analysts coming together as friends, drinking limitless coffee refills, sharing opinions and impressions of the various candidates at the Institute, of crises or patients' breakthroughs in our private practices". It sounds like a recipe for professional bedlam and Antrim runs with all the potential of his cast and setting. Thomas, the first-person narrator of the book, delivers his story at breakneck speed, delving in and out of the conscious and unconscious minds of himself, his colleagues and their waitress to craft a novel from the unsentimental and surrealist work of free association. Imagine, that Thomas is being held in the (immensely strong) arms of one of his male colleagues, Dr Bernhardt, who is trying to prevent the outbreak of a food fight: "Dr. Bernhardt is holding me in the air because he doesn't want me to throw cinnamon-raisin toast at Peter Konwicki...here I am in the air over everyone's heads, feeling sick to my stomach and hanging on to a pot lid!" Infantilism, sexuality, violence, authority, attraction: the commonplace ingredients of psychoanalysis become part of the heady mix of Antrim's narrative as it explores the ever-strange dynamics of a supper party to travel through minds, history and the bizarrely-imagined world of the therapeutic professionals. --Vicky Lebeau
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Twenty psychoanalysts and a narrator meet for dinner in a pancake house. The narrator, Tom, finds himself locked in a bear hug by Bernhardt, the father figure of the group. The effects are disastrous as he is forced into an out-of-body experience and watches as his friendships and marriage unravel.
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17 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Out of Body Experience in a Pancake House
5 Feb 2004
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This 179-page novella is in a way the stream of consciousness of Tom, a middle-aged pyschologist who, meeting with his colleagues in a lower end pancake house, tries to start a food fight when a rival colleague, a burly man with a swollen ego, puts our narrator in a bear hug upon which Tom has an out of body experience in which he does a glorious exposition on the nature of pancake houses. The real business of this absurd (I mean that as a compliment), allegorical novel is to poke fun at the human need for safety, for mother, for the womb, all embodied by the pancake house. Tom's quest for a mother in the metaphorical sense compels him to invite his colleagues at this pancake emporium every year or so where they try to mend the their bruised egos, a quest that backfires. Antrim's major conflict in the novel is the human drive for safety vs. our utter sense of helplessness in this metaphysical parody, which showcases Antrim's brilliant writing skills. Why only four stars? Because after about 100 pages, I grew a bit tired of the metaphysical explorations. Similar themes are pursued with far more intensity and efficacy in my opinion in Antrim's 20-page essay, "I Bought a Bed," published in Best American Essays 2003.
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Not for me.
10 April 2000
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Sometimes, when a book is CLEARLY schlocky, poorly written and/or unentertaining, it is easy to pan it without a second thought. With other books, however--which for the reader share only the "unentertaining" part--but which are otherwise not poorly written and on a more sophisticated level, one must step back and ask oneself: Let's wait a minute. Is it possible that this is a work of creative genius and that I simply don't "get it." That my imagination and/or intellect may be too limited to appreciate what a wonderful (provocative, intelligent, well-crafted, etc., etc.) book this actually is?
Well I asked myself those kinds of questions, and while I would readily concede that my reaction may well be a function of my own intellectual limitations, particularly given all the raves this book got, I don't care--I'm sticking with my convictions. I found the book to be almost insufferable throughout. It was nearly impossible for me to trudge all the way through- though I did, page by agonizing page, waiting for it to end. I simply can't believe that everyone who reads this book could find it so wonderful, and if I'm the only one in the world who would recommend against it, so be it.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Brilliantly funny
11 Mar 2000
Format:Hardcover
Reading Antrim is proof positive of the adage that you can't dissect or explain humor. His stuff is just preposterously funny and unique. He had a short story in the NYer not long ago (and this is how I discovered him) about a lascivious high school teacher staging Shakespeare with students and I still can't think of it without laughing. This novel is the same way. Yet I can't "explain" the humor. It owes something, maybe, to Nabokov's Pale Fire and the voice of the grandiose, deluded, hilarious Charles Kinbote--but that's pretty imprecise. Antrim is his own thing, and he's a great discovery. A heartbreaking work of staggering humor.
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