The Verificationist: A Novel

I’m not a fan of experimental or absurdist literature. I’m not sure where to categorize The Verificationist, but I will make an exception for it because the writing is so good. A group of academic psychiatrists meet at a pancake house where one of them proceeds to have a mental or physical breakdown. He is physically restrained by a burly companion and proceeds to hallucinate that he is flying around with a waitress speculating about everything. It’s funny, thoughtful, and well worth a look.

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 show more 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. show less

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.

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 show more 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. show less

one of the few books where i've actually laughed out loud in several parts.
cw: a lot of sexual references through a Freudian psychology lens, but also from the main character being a horndog.

Okay, to say I read this book is an overstatement. I just . . . could . . . not . . . finish it. I tried, but I couldn't do it. It was just too absurdist for me. The story is told by a psychologist and takes place during a dinner of psychologist coworkers at a local diner. Maybe if you were a psychologist you would be amused by it??? I was not.

A truly dazzling modern tale. Destined to be a classic. My review:

http://www.free-times.com/Reviews/verification.html