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بعدِ مرگ
آن موقع شصتوپنج سال داشت و سالهای سال بود مدام سرفه پشتِ سرفه میکرد. کسی به سیگار کشیدنش گیر نمیداد. خبر سرطانش احدی را شوکه نکرد. او، در این چهل سالِ زندگی با اعمال شاقه، آرامآرام و بیوقفه تباه شده بود. داستان زندگیِ مادرم اصلاً یکجورهایی همین داستانِ تباهیِ مادامالعمرش است. و داستانِ زندگیِ من هم به تار و پود همین داستان، یعنی داستان تباهیِ او، گره خورده است. این داستانیست که نقشی محوری در فهم من از خودم و دیگر آدمهای دنیا دارد. همین داستان، یا لااقل، نقش من در این داستان است که نمیگذارد هرگز مادرم را از دست بدهم.
"In the winter of 2000, shortly after his mother's death, Donald Antrim, author of the absurdist, visionary masterworks Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers, and The Verificationist, began writing about his family. In pieces that appeared in The New Yorker and were anthologized in Best American Essays, Antrim explored his intense and complicated relationships with his mother, Louanne, an artist and teacher who was, at her worst, a ferociously destabilized and destabilizing alcoholic; his gentle grandfather, who lived in the mountains of North Carolina and who always hoped to save his daughter from herself; and his father, who married his mother twice." The Afterlife is not a temporally linear coming-of-age memoir; instead, Antrim follows a logic of unconscious life, a logic of dreams and memories, of fantasies and psychoses. In it, he comes to terms with - and fails to come to terms with - the nature of addiction and the broken states of loneliness, shame, and loss that remain beyond his power to fully repair. This is a tender and even blackly hilarious portrait of a family - faulty, cracked, enraging - and of a man struggling to learn the nature of his origins.
"In the winter of 2000, shortly after his mother's death, Donald Antrim, author of the absurdist, visionary masterworks Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers, and The Verificationist, began writing about his family. In pieces that appeared in The New Yorker and were anthologized in Best American Essays, Antrim explored his intense and complicated relationships with his mother, Louanne, an artist and teacher who was, at her worst, a ferociously destabilized and destabilizing alcoholic; his gentle grandfather, who lived in the mountains of North Carolina and who always hoped to save his daughter from herself; and his father, who married his mother twice." The Afterlife is not a temporally linear coming-of-age memoir; instead, Antrim follows a logic of unconscious life, a logic of dreams and memories, of fantasies and psychoses. In it, he comes to terms with - and fails to come to terms with - the nature of addiction and the broken states of loneliness, shame, and loss that remain beyond his power to fully repair. This is a tender and even blackly hilarious portrait of a family - faulty, cracked, enraging - and of a man struggling to learn the nature of his origins.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
43 people are currently reading
1116 people want to read
About the author
Donald Antrim
23 books180 followersDonald Antrim is an American novelist. His first novel, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, was published in 1993. In 1999 The New Yorker named him as among the twenty best writers under the age of forty.
Antrim is a frequent contributor of fiction to The New Yorker and has written a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Verificationist and The Hundred Brothers, which was a finalist for the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award in fiction. He is also the author of The Afterlife, a 2006 memoir about his mother, Louanne Self. He has received grants and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
Antrim is the brother of the artist Terry Leness and the son of Harry Antrim, a scholar of T. S. Eliot. Antrim has been associated with the writers David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, and the visual artist Christa Parravani.
He has taught prose fiction at the graduate school of New York University and was the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for spring 2009. Antrim teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn.
Antrim is a frequent contributor of fiction to The New Yorker and has written a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Verificationist and The Hundred Brothers, which was a finalist for the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award in fiction. He is also the author of The Afterlife, a 2006 memoir about his mother, Louanne Self. He has received grants and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
Antrim is the brother of the artist Terry Leness and the son of Harry Antrim, a scholar of T. S. Eliot. Antrim has been associated with the writers David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, and the visual artist Christa Parravani.
He has taught prose fiction at the graduate school of New York University and was the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for spring 2009. Antrim teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
October 10, 2014
The dictionary definition of "3.5 stars" includes a picture of this one's cover next to it? About dislocation, sort of. Crosses and recrosses ground not necessarily grounded physically (location) or psychologically (cracked up). Repetitions in the story of the author's mother's and uncle's tragic alcoholism for the most part "resist empathy," to use a nice phrase in the book. As with the two other Antrim novels I read ten years ago, I admire his sentences and the unpredictability of his thoughts but I'm just as likely to feel things are leaden than to experience lift off. In the first part about beds, I felt that levitation, thanks to tragic-absurdist levity. Other parts often felt slow and heavy, like his grandfather's Mercedes driven no faster than 30 MPH, but they usually made their way to a memorable destination (running over an entire inventory of roadside birdbaths two brothers paid for in advance, the author's uncle drunk and collapsed on the author's back in bed, the mother's hopes for a show in an Old City Philadelphia gallery, bleeding blood through the skin, his grandfather's methodical work on a window pane restoring an old house in Black Mountain, NC). At best, the windows of this restoration of a ruined family rise up at a touch. But sometimes it felt to me like not always the sturdiest work -- like it was stitched up -- and actually I liked that sense of fragility. But there's something about how I read this author that tends to respect or regard his work more than admire or love it.
November 23, 2023
Siempre es interesante leer el duelo desde una nueva perspectiva. Donald Antrim se suma a la lista de los pocos autores hombres, así como los contados narradores norteamericanos, que he leído durante estos últimos dos años.
Más que un libro de duelo y muerte, se puede palpar que es un libro lleno de dolores causados en vida y heredados a esa vida después de la partida. Me impresionó esto, porque quizás acostumbrada a otro tipo de sensibilidad en la narración del duelo, no encontré acá el humor que se señala en las críticas, pero sí una brutalidad honesta y directa, que es también muy valorable.
Es un libro largo y a veces tedioso por las largas -larguísimas- descripciones y la cantidad de detalles, que a mi parecer son innecesarias y apuntan principalmente a un público gringo, que es capaz de entender referencias tan específicas, como marcas, ciudades o coordenadas de calles.
La trama está construida en forma de ensayos, los cuales son protagonizados por distintos personajes que influyen en la vida del narrador. El más interesante es sin dudas su madre, Louanne, una persona con muchos matices, lo que nos ayuda a encariñarnos y al mismo tiempo sufrir con el autor sobre las consecuencias del alcoholismo de ella durante su infancia y adolescencia. Considero que el capítulo IV es uno de los mejores del libro y es ahí donde su mamá, los intereses de ella y su duelo, logran quedar mejor plasmados.
Cuestiono, eso sí, la vara con la que juzga la maternidad versus la paternidad. El papá, más allá de ser presentado como una figura ausente e infiel, es eximido de culpas y responsabilidades, relevado por su pasión por los libros. Mientras que el autor es brutal cuando se trata de su mamá, con quien tiene un fuerte vínculo de co-dependencia y cuestiona, desde la intelectualidad, el por qué ella no posee esa misma pasión por la literatura. Eso me descolocó un montón a lo largo de la narración, cada vez que aparecía el padre, sentía que una reflexión y crítica más profunda quedaba a medias.
Se puede ver en este relato el duelo fresco de Antrim, las heridas aún abiertas, los dolores sin procesar. Fue lamentable enterarme que después de publicar este libro, el autor tuvo una recaída psiquiátrica importante. No puedo juzgar la forma en la que decidió narrar y exponer su dolor, lo encuentro honesto y valiente, pero sí, desde la literatura, señalar que quizás por ajeno y a veces hasta latero, no es alguien a quien volvería a leer.
Más que un libro de duelo y muerte, se puede palpar que es un libro lleno de dolores causados en vida y heredados a esa vida después de la partida. Me impresionó esto, porque quizás acostumbrada a otro tipo de sensibilidad en la narración del duelo, no encontré acá el humor que se señala en las críticas, pero sí una brutalidad honesta y directa, que es también muy valorable.
Es un libro largo y a veces tedioso por las largas -larguísimas- descripciones y la cantidad de detalles, que a mi parecer son innecesarias y apuntan principalmente a un público gringo, que es capaz de entender referencias tan específicas, como marcas, ciudades o coordenadas de calles.
La trama está construida en forma de ensayos, los cuales son protagonizados por distintos personajes que influyen en la vida del narrador. El más interesante es sin dudas su madre, Louanne, una persona con muchos matices, lo que nos ayuda a encariñarnos y al mismo tiempo sufrir con el autor sobre las consecuencias del alcoholismo de ella durante su infancia y adolescencia. Considero que el capítulo IV es uno de los mejores del libro y es ahí donde su mamá, los intereses de ella y su duelo, logran quedar mejor plasmados.
Cuestiono, eso sí, la vara con la que juzga la maternidad versus la paternidad. El papá, más allá de ser presentado como una figura ausente e infiel, es eximido de culpas y responsabilidades, relevado por su pasión por los libros. Mientras que el autor es brutal cuando se trata de su mamá, con quien tiene un fuerte vínculo de co-dependencia y cuestiona, desde la intelectualidad, el por qué ella no posee esa misma pasión por la literatura. Eso me descolocó un montón a lo largo de la narración, cada vez que aparecía el padre, sentía que una reflexión y crítica más profunda quedaba a medias.
Se puede ver en este relato el duelo fresco de Antrim, las heridas aún abiertas, los dolores sin procesar. Fue lamentable enterarme que después de publicar este libro, el autor tuvo una recaída psiquiátrica importante. No puedo juzgar la forma en la que decidió narrar y exponer su dolor, lo encuentro honesto y valiente, pero sí, desde la literatura, señalar que quizás por ajeno y a veces hasta latero, no es alguien a quien volvería a leer.
July 23, 2015
The Afterlife by Donald Antrim starts off with a hilarious account of his quest for the perfect bed. Then, as is so often the case with Antrim, the comic turns out to be tinged with tragic. The Afterlife is the story of Antrim's complicated, difficult, and often painful relationship with his alcoholic mother, a relationship that is unresolved by her sobriety or, later, her dying, or her death. It is a relationship Antrim is still looking to comprehend and come to terms with.
I loved the opening of the book but have ambivalent feelings about the rest. It is told in an episodic, sometimes disjointed manner, perhaps reflecting Antrim's feelings about and interactions with his mother and the rest of his broken family. There are fascinating digressions about the nature of fashion (his mother taught fashion design). I longed for more connection but felt the impact of the brokenness of the narration mirroring the brokenness of Antrim's relationships, of his mother's life, of his family in general. Sometimes I found the text too self-pitying but often I was struck by Antrim's intense desire to make sense of his mother's life and their relationship.
As always with Antrim the writing is wonderful and I found the stories held my interest and the underlying theme (Antrim's relationship with his mother) held my attention.
Overall, a very good (if often painful) read.
I loved the opening of the book but have ambivalent feelings about the rest. It is told in an episodic, sometimes disjointed manner, perhaps reflecting Antrim's feelings about and interactions with his mother and the rest of his broken family. There are fascinating digressions about the nature of fashion (his mother taught fashion design). I longed for more connection but felt the impact of the brokenness of the narration mirroring the brokenness of Antrim's relationships, of his mother's life, of his family in general. Sometimes I found the text too self-pitying but often I was struck by Antrim's intense desire to make sense of his mother's life and their relationship.
As always with Antrim the writing is wonderful and I found the stories held my interest and the underlying theme (Antrim's relationship with his mother) held my attention.
Overall, a very good (if often painful) read.
July 29, 2020
Donald Antrim parla della madre cinque anni dopo la sua morte. Lo fa partendo dalla sua elaborazione del lutto, fatta anche di strani tentativi di occuparsi d'altro e dimenticare, ma poi, poco a poco, racconta questa donna problematica, dal carattere difficile, alcolista e tabagista, responsabile di pesanti condizionamenti sulla sua infanzia di figlio, sulla sua formazione; da cui un rapporto, tra i due, altalenante tra condanna e amore, nonostante tutto. È un romanzo, questo, che cresce piano, connotato sempre più fortemente dall'esigenza di schietta sincerità dell'autore.
March 15, 2022
La historia está en lo ordinario.
P.D. ¿Cómo puede ser tan espectacular leer sobre la imposibilidad de comprar un colchón?
P.D. ¿Cómo puede ser tan espectacular leer sobre la imposibilidad de comprar un colchón?
October 2, 2014
Un libro molto sincero e commovente: l'autore percorre i sentieri della memoria per raccogliere i frammenti dell'amore materno e delicatamente riunirli nella storia di famiglia. Un ritratto affascinante e semplice, ricco di paesaggi e figure, che si sviluppa in aneddoti esemplari, che vogliono far sentire e condividere il respiro di un affetto testardo e coinvolgente.
January 3, 2022
This memoir, about Antrim's alcoholic mother, is a beautiful but tortured book. After he wrote it, he felt he had betrayed his mother and fell into a suicidal depression. (He survived, and wrote an amazing essay about it called "The Hospital," published this year in the New Yorker.) But if anything it feels like he pulls his punches. Vivid scenes of his mother's illness and rage are interspersed with meandering subplots about forged paintings and downed church steeples. It's almost as if he could approach his subject only so close, and then no closer. As the son of a disturbed mother myself, I get it. How do you write about the central riddle of being afraid of, and even hating, the person you love most in the world. I don't know, but this book feels premature. He has a new memoir out this season, "One Friday in April," and I'm curious to see what he's added.
October 24, 2019
I liked this book for all the reasons a lot of people disliked it: its episodic, digressive style suited the subject matter, I thought. Antrim's memories of his mother provide the frame for a larger exploration of his extended family history, and those memories are suspect due to the nature of his own self-protective, self-interested story. He is upfront about this, writing often of his mistrust and doubt of his own remembrances. "As I remember things now, she was living in an apartment that I had never before visited. But is this right? Surely, on earlier trips, I had stayed with her in the very place that I was now speeding toward. Have my memories converged to make some new, universal memory?" Memoirs, especially of traumatic and emotional experiences, are by their nature reconstructions of what we can never really know, our past and its fragments. In this respect I felt like Antrim was trying to be as faithful as possible to his story. My only quibble with this book was that at times he makes very disjointed transitions between narrative sequences. He will bring us back to the focus of a story by asking an awkward question, the conversational equivalent of, "Now where was I..." A writer of this caliber should be able to develop better joins between ideas, it seems to me. Overall, though, I found this to be an affecting and convincing story of how brutally alcoholism destroys individuals and relationships; because it is part of my own history, I recognized and empathized with Antrim's experiences.
October 14, 2015
la vita, durante l'assenza e dopo la perdita
memoriale di una fase della vita di Donald Antrim in relazione alla sua problematica madre, scritto dopo la morte di lei quando il dolore è ancora là, annidato come fosse un residuo di cui non ci si può liberare, un bagaglio di quelli fatti di roccia e calcare...i ricordi si accalcano e lui fatica a stargli dietro, sua madre è morta di tumore dopo una vita da alcolista, infine pentita, ma ormai tardi quando i danni ai suoi figli, al marito e alla sua stessa vita erano già stati fatti...curioso come madri così squilibrate spesso finiscano per creare nei figli il desiderio di scrivere della loro esperienza, non è della prima madre pazza che leggo e non sarà certo l'ultima, l'infelicità di lei amplifica il vuoto, il solco creato dal suo girare in tondo è tale da sembrare una trincea dietro la quale lo scrittore di turno si nasconde e tira le sue bombe, a volte postmoderne...il conflitto più grosso è tra la rabbia per non avere avuto una vita considerabile normale e l'inspiegabile amore che comunque lega questi figli alle madri pazze, madri delle quali la fragilità è l'ultima cosa che essi percepiscono, alla fine, spesso dopo la morte e comunque sempre dopo che essi stessi sono cresciuti...forse è questo la crescita: accettare di amare una donna che ti ha dato la vita e poi ti ha fatto pagare ogni istante che hai vissuto...
memoriale di una fase della vita di Donald Antrim in relazione alla sua problematica madre, scritto dopo la morte di lei quando il dolore è ancora là, annidato come fosse un residuo di cui non ci si può liberare, un bagaglio di quelli fatti di roccia e calcare...i ricordi si accalcano e lui fatica a stargli dietro, sua madre è morta di tumore dopo una vita da alcolista, infine pentita, ma ormai tardi quando i danni ai suoi figli, al marito e alla sua stessa vita erano già stati fatti...curioso come madri così squilibrate spesso finiscano per creare nei figli il desiderio di scrivere della loro esperienza, non è della prima madre pazza che leggo e non sarà certo l'ultima, l'infelicità di lei amplifica il vuoto, il solco creato dal suo girare in tondo è tale da sembrare una trincea dietro la quale lo scrittore di turno si nasconde e tira le sue bombe, a volte postmoderne...il conflitto più grosso è tra la rabbia per non avere avuto una vita considerabile normale e l'inspiegabile amore che comunque lega questi figli alle madri pazze, madri delle quali la fragilità è l'ultima cosa che essi percepiscono, alla fine, spesso dopo la morte e comunque sempre dopo che essi stessi sono cresciuti...forse è questo la crescita: accettare di amare una donna che ti ha dato la vita e poi ti ha fatto pagare ogni istante che hai vissuto...
October 7, 2013
I keep thinking about this book. It has marvelous stream of conscious writing throughout, although it also seems blah in spots. I think what I like best about it is the beautiful description of fashion as both an art and as a medium of communication at the cultural level. Much of what the author reveals in that segment could also apply to science or mathematics or philosophy or ... Really insightful.
The author's recollections of his mother are at times strong and fill all five senses, while faint at other times, often the times you'd think he would remember best. I initially looked at this as uneven writing, but in hindsight I suspect the author was deliberately making the point that our afterlives are nothing more than someone's memories of us and that people often remember things we wish they wouldn't while not remembering what we wish they would.
Overall a well-written book but one that left me feeling a little empty at the end.
The author's recollections of his mother are at times strong and fill all five senses, while faint at other times, often the times you'd think he would remember best. I initially looked at this as uneven writing, but in hindsight I suspect the author was deliberately making the point that our afterlives are nothing more than someone's memories of us and that people often remember things we wish they wouldn't while not remembering what we wish they would.
Overall a well-written book but one that left me feeling a little empty at the end.
August 24, 2015
A collection of Antrim's non-fiction essays, originally published in "The New Yorker," about his family, primarily about his relationship with his mother, a recovering alcoholic, an eccentric fashion designer, and the woman whom he desires distance from and connection to all at once. The first essay details her death, and how Antrim deals with it by searching to buy the most luxurious and expensive bed he can; it's funny and sad and heart-searing. The following pieces, though, don't benefit from being collected together; individually they may have had impact and given the impression of wisdom earned, but all at once they repeat themselves, and the same lesson is learned over and over again. Plus they are all in the New Yorker detached style, of mediated realism, a narrator who's not completely there even when spilling his family history.
June 14, 2022
El libro de Antrim responde a una corriente contemporánea de autores que construyen su obra en base a la historia personal, el género “memoir” (De hecho, su subtítulo en inglés es “a memoir”).
Un proceso duro y traumático (el alcoholismo, deterioro y muerte de la madre del autor) atraviesa todo el recorrido de la escritura, pero todo está rodeado de una belleza narrativa que es, en cierto punto, un refugio, un bálsamo.
La sencillez y cotidianidad van edificando una gran historia hecha de momentos, con un final que es muy emotivo y reconfortante a la vez.
Un proceso duro y traumático (el alcoholismo, deterioro y muerte de la madre del autor) atraviesa todo el recorrido de la escritura, pero todo está rodeado de una belleza narrativa que es, en cierto punto, un refugio, un bálsamo.
La sencillez y cotidianidad van edificando una gran historia hecha de momentos, con un final que es muy emotivo y reconfortante a la vez.
November 28, 2023
Es un libro potente y crudo. La imagen de la mamá alcohólica es brutal y compleja y muy bien trabajada. Me encantó el personaje de la mamá, es tan odiable y al mismo tiempo me generó empatía o pude verla más allá de odiarla y eso me gustó (el capítulo sobre su oficio es increíble).
Le pongo tres estrellas porque me costó la lectura, no porque no sea buena o esté mal escrito, solo porque no estoy acostumbrado a la narrativa de los gringos y me cansó un poquito tanta descripción y esa manera de narrar.
Le pongo tres estrellas porque me costó la lectura, no porque no sea buena o esté mal escrito, solo porque no estoy acostumbrado a la narrativa de los gringos y me cansó un poquito tanta descripción y esa manera de narrar.
March 4, 2023
I can't recommend this book. While I'm sure the author meant it to be cathartic to write about his mother's passing, it was meandering, getting lost in a story inside another story. Lengthy descriptions of a kimono and the childhood home dragged on. Maybe even a little... grandiose? I initially pushed through in the hope it would get better, but then it didn't and I was close to finishing, so I did.
November 12, 2022
El libro me gustó muchísimo. Algunas historias del libro me parecen una auténtica genialidad, pero otras tantas me hicieron saltar párrafos enteros, y de ahí mi pequeño pero.
August 27, 2025
The book started off engaging and had me curious about where it was going. But as I read on, it felt weighed down by too many unnecessary details that slowed the pace and took away from the story’s impact. It had potential, but in the end it didn’t fully deliver for me.
April 20, 2022
An interesting personal reading experience even if a bit uneven. At first I was not engaged much with the content but was fascinated by a few very long sentences often sprinkled with semi-colons. Interested but not super engaged. Later, no longer paying much attention to the sentences, I was a bit bored and thought about scrapping it.
But then something came into focus. I'm not sure exactly where and when but about 100 pages in his mother and his relationship with her becomes darkly poetic and visceral. At one point, he spends several pages describing "the garment I often see, whenever I talk to my dead mother" (93). It's a silk kimono that we find out later she may actually have made or at least something like it that then Antrim greatly expands in his imagination. At this point, as readers, we start to realize his alcoholic mother had a long career as both an academic in home-economics dept and as a seamstress of her own designed clothes that reeked of smoke before she sold them.
I got intrigued with her dysfunction and Antrim's struggles to come to terms with it. Reminded me of Richard Russo's Elsewhere, which I recently read, about his extremely dysfunctional relationship with his mother who manipulates him as a young child and who Russo moves around the country to be close to his family or meet her desire to return to her hometown again. In both cases I came up short: no way would I go to these lengths to support and figure out my relationship with my mother if she ever needed me in these ways. I'm not up for it. Sorry, Mom.
Antrim muses that his mother never stopped being a child and "lived life inviting death" (108)--again similar to Russo's mother. She even asks Antrim if he is going to dedicate his next book to her. His response: "Well...." but then of course in quick recognition as the reader you realize you are holding the very book he did dedicate to her. Not sure a book exploring her dysfunction is what she had in mind when she asked.
But he is still there for her when he has a strange phone conversation where she hangs up. Immediately he travels via plane across the country to find her yet again in the throes of alcohol, near death. Near her end he couldn't bear to be around her and starts to refer to her by her first name and he "pretended to [himself] that the coming loss of her would not hurt, and that in the absence of suffering [he] would go forward, a free man" (191).
Maybe we all do that with our parents. Well, probably not all of us but some of us. The notion haunts me already.
But then something came into focus. I'm not sure exactly where and when but about 100 pages in his mother and his relationship with her becomes darkly poetic and visceral. At one point, he spends several pages describing "the garment I often see, whenever I talk to my dead mother" (93). It's a silk kimono that we find out later she may actually have made or at least something like it that then Antrim greatly expands in his imagination. At this point, as readers, we start to realize his alcoholic mother had a long career as both an academic in home-economics dept and as a seamstress of her own designed clothes that reeked of smoke before she sold them.
I got intrigued with her dysfunction and Antrim's struggles to come to terms with it. Reminded me of Richard Russo's Elsewhere, which I recently read, about his extremely dysfunctional relationship with his mother who manipulates him as a young child and who Russo moves around the country to be close to his family or meet her desire to return to her hometown again. In both cases I came up short: no way would I go to these lengths to support and figure out my relationship with my mother if she ever needed me in these ways. I'm not up for it. Sorry, Mom.
Antrim muses that his mother never stopped being a child and "lived life inviting death" (108)--again similar to Russo's mother. She even asks Antrim if he is going to dedicate his next book to her. His response: "Well...." but then of course in quick recognition as the reader you realize you are holding the very book he did dedicate to her. Not sure a book exploring her dysfunction is what she had in mind when she asked.
But he is still there for her when he has a strange phone conversation where she hangs up. Immediately he travels via plane across the country to find her yet again in the throes of alcohol, near death. Near her end he couldn't bear to be around her and starts to refer to her by her first name and he "pretended to [himself] that the coming loss of her would not hurt, and that in the absence of suffering [he] would go forward, a free man" (191).
Maybe we all do that with our parents. Well, probably not all of us but some of us. The notion haunts me already.
December 19, 2014
Unfortunately, the work of Donald Antrim is best described as frivolous.
He's obviously a smart guy (in a pompous, I know a lot of obscure shit about 19th Century American painting kind of way). Moreover, he's so well connected within the New York literary community that he can basically fluff the first five pages of whatever EXTREMELY LITHE thing he publishes with praise from b-grade critics, Manhattan memoirists, writers-- like himself-- who have to work crummy teaching jobs to cover the rent in Boerum Hill (Note the recent J.J. Sullivan profile in the NYT Magazine). Moreover still, he's the kind of insecure male author who always has to bring up that he has a girlfriend and that he's having copious amounts of sex with said girlfriend and that the sex is good (The girlfriends are never named; instead, they get alluded to by initials only, perhaps because the relationships just never seem to last for poor Don; is he violent? Is he a drunk? Is he just an asshole? I have no explanation for why R becomes K and then S and then F and then B before we've reached the end of The Afterlife).
Ugh! Donald Antrim (He's got so many cool friends!)! I want to hate this asshole unconditionally, but he's very good with language. I imagine him in his sad apartment turning and turning and turning a sentence until it ends with the right word. It thus makes sense then that he's slow with publishing and that he's kind of infamous for recycling material and releasing books that are basically just hardcover bound reprints of his last decade of work for The New Yorker. This kind of painstaking effort (coupled with a history of mental illness and substance abuse, which he proudly flaunts during regular dips into self pity) makes reading Donald Antrim a worthwhile venture for no other reason than that we know we won't have to spend too much time with him.
He's obviously a smart guy (in a pompous, I know a lot of obscure shit about 19th Century American painting kind of way). Moreover, he's so well connected within the New York literary community that he can basically fluff the first five pages of whatever EXTREMELY LITHE thing he publishes with praise from b-grade critics, Manhattan memoirists, writers-- like himself-- who have to work crummy teaching jobs to cover the rent in Boerum Hill (Note the recent J.J. Sullivan profile in the NYT Magazine). Moreover still, he's the kind of insecure male author who always has to bring up that he has a girlfriend and that he's having copious amounts of sex with said girlfriend and that the sex is good (The girlfriends are never named; instead, they get alluded to by initials only, perhaps because the relationships just never seem to last for poor Don; is he violent? Is he a drunk? Is he just an asshole? I have no explanation for why R becomes K and then S and then F and then B before we've reached the end of The Afterlife).
Ugh! Donald Antrim (He's got so many cool friends!)! I want to hate this asshole unconditionally, but he's very good with language. I imagine him in his sad apartment turning and turning and turning a sentence until it ends with the right word. It thus makes sense then that he's slow with publishing and that he's kind of infamous for recycling material and releasing books that are basically just hardcover bound reprints of his last decade of work for The New Yorker. This kind of painstaking effort (coupled with a history of mental illness and substance abuse, which he proudly flaunts during regular dips into self pity) makes reading Donald Antrim a worthwhile venture for no other reason than that we know we won't have to spend too much time with him.
August 13, 2015
la vita, durante l'assenza e dopo la perdita
memoriale di una fase della vita di Donald Antrim in relazione alla sua problematica madre, scritto dopo la morte di lei quando il dolore è ancora là, annidato come fosse un residuo di cui non ci si può liberare, un bagaglio di quelli fatti di roccia e calcare...i ricordi si accalcano e lui fatica a stargli dietro, sua madre è morta di tumore dopo una vita da alcolista, infine pentita, ma ormai tardi quando i danni ai suoi figli, al marito e alla sua stessa vita erano già stati fatti...curioso come madri così squilibrate spesso finiscano per creare nei figli il desiderio di scrivere della loro esperienza, non è della prima madre pazza che leggo e non sarà certo l'ultima, l'infelicità di lei amplifica il vuoto, il solco creato dal suo girare in tondo è tale da sembrare una trincea dietro la quale lo scrittore di turno si nasconde e tira le sue bombe, a volte postmoderne...il conflitto più grosso è tra la rabbia per non avere avuto una vita considerabile normale e l'inspiegabile amore che comunque lega questi figli alle madri pazze, madri delle quali la fragilità è l'ultima cosa che essi percepiscono, alla fine, spesso dopo la morte e comunque sempre dopo che essi stessi sono cresciuti...forse è questo la crescita: accettare di amare una donna che ti ha dato la vita e poi ti ha fatto pagare ogni istante che hai vissuto...
memoriale di una fase della vita di Donald Antrim in relazione alla sua problematica madre, scritto dopo la morte di lei quando il dolore è ancora là, annidato come fosse un residuo di cui non ci si può liberare, un bagaglio di quelli fatti di roccia e calcare...i ricordi si accalcano e lui fatica a stargli dietro, sua madre è morta di tumore dopo una vita da alcolista, infine pentita, ma ormai tardi quando i danni ai suoi figli, al marito e alla sua stessa vita erano già stati fatti...curioso come madri così squilibrate spesso finiscano per creare nei figli il desiderio di scrivere della loro esperienza, non è della prima madre pazza che leggo e non sarà certo l'ultima, l'infelicità di lei amplifica il vuoto, il solco creato dal suo girare in tondo è tale da sembrare una trincea dietro la quale lo scrittore di turno si nasconde e tira le sue bombe, a volte postmoderne...il conflitto più grosso è tra la rabbia per non avere avuto una vita considerabile normale e l'inspiegabile amore che comunque lega questi figli alle madri pazze, madri delle quali la fragilità è l'ultima cosa che essi percepiscono, alla fine, spesso dopo la morte e comunque sempre dopo che essi stessi sono cresciuti...forse è questo la crescita: accettare di amare una donna che ti ha dato la vita e poi ti ha fatto pagare ogni istante che hai vissuto...
March 15, 2020
Novelist Donald Antrim describes his life during and after the death of his alcoholic mother. From the description, one assumes what the book would be like: a chilling recalling of his broken and damaged upbringing, and how said upbringing has shaped his adult life; with the majority of the book being comprised of "horror stories" about his mom. This is not the case. Antrim spends just as much time discussing his family (father, grandparents, uncle, sister) as he does his mother. The style of writing itself is almost manic at times: nonlinear, he will bounce around to different scenes/times/eras all within a few pages. The memoir is not only full of run-on sentences, but ones punctuated to an infuriating degree with countless commas. This practice is so prevalent it often becomes difficult to follow the thread of a single thought (because there are just so many goddamn asides and/or qualifiers). It almost reminds me of someone trying to do a bad imitation of David Foster Wallace. Sadly, this work in no way motivates me to read Antrim's fiction.
August 12, 2019
I saw this on a list of "best books since 2000 (so far)" and it's fine —it's far better than The Unwinding of the Miracle, which I also finished last week — but I wouldn't race out to read it. It is a memoir about the author's mother and ostensibly about the author's horrible childhood, but unlike Jeannette Walls' brilliant The Glass Castle or Tara Westover's amazing Educated, The Afterlife dwells not at all on the author's actual childhood. The details and the emotional trauma have to be inferred, which left me unsatisfied as a reader, and while I delighted in Antrim's way with language — he writes really fun sentences — I felt like the whole promise of the book, which is emotional catharsis (or at least emotional exploration), was left unfulfilled.
January 31, 2008
Beautiful writing, excellent humor... obviously my careless "review" will do Antrim's book little justice.
August 25, 2009
Very disappointed. This has been on my "to read list" forever. Just couldn't get into it. It was more just his whining then a story of his mother.
February 27, 2025
کاملا میفهمم نویسنده چی میخواست بگه ولی نمیتونم بگم چی میخواست بگه.
اگه توی زندگیتون نقش "مادر" یا "فرزند" براتون مهمه، کتاب خوبی میتونه براتون باشه.
از ترجمه عماد ��رتضوی هم خیلی خوشم اومد.
اگه توی زندگیتون نقش "مادر" یا "فرزند" براتون مهمه، کتاب خوبی میتونه براتون باشه.
از ترجمه عماد ��رتضوی هم خیلی خوشم اومد.
September 22, 2019
I thought, at first, that “The Afterlife” would be one of those memoirs of a dysfunctional childhood that, while dark and deeply disturbing, also provided humorous moments…ala “Running With Scissors”. (I think, for some reason, that this impression came from the cover photo of the author’s mother…smiling and looking down at the title of the book. But wait, isn’t there some adage about a book and its cover…?)
“The Afterlife” dances right up to the humor line but never crosses. This section about his quest for a bed comes the closest:
“I saw the crated bed by the door. I saw the sunlight coming through the windows. I saw myself standing there seeing these things. I was a man whose need for love and sympathy had led him to telephone a Swedish executive in the middle of the morning. Perhaps, at some point, the story of my mother and the bed becomes the story of my mother and father, the story that remains to be told, the story, you could say, of the queen versus the king.
The bed went away. I let it go. R was right. I could get another bed later. I stood in my empty room. In place of the bed was – shame? In place of the bed was a question – a question that is at once too simple and too complicated to answer.”
But in every memory, there is too much genuine pain, confusion and love behind the author’s words to find these stories funny. The raw emotion, the way Antrim is still questioning every emotion or thought he has/had about his mother, comes through every line, almost every word. His life is still tied up in hers, and in the end of her life. He is still unable to clearly define their relationship. Were they mother and son, or was theirs a more Oedipal relationship, or were they similar artistic souls…or? He is very critical of her at times, being too embarrassed of her to go out in public together, and then will flip to the fiercest kind of protective love.
“And when in the deep of the night my mother came into my room swaying, half conscious and with grey smoke from her cigarette wreathing her face, shattered by bourbon and white wine; and when she raised her hand to strike, and I easily batted her arm back, then stepped forward and quickly steadied her before she tipped…”
and also, “You may learn, too, as a defense against the absurd disappointments caused by fragile and unhappy parents, the crude art of sarcasm.”
and later, “I found myself repeatedly subjecting K. to antagonistic appraisals of my mother’s cultivation of fantasy. When K. went along with my negative assessments, I turned the tables on her and rushed to my mother’s defense.”
One of my favorite aspects of the book was Antrim’s acknowledgement of the vagaries of time and memory. So many things from our past seem so clear and indisputable…and yet when described to other people, those certainties start to break apart like a fragile web. He is constantly starting into a description of an event…and then second guessing himself…which for me, makes the memory all the more real. The past, tempered by time and by who we are in the present.
I liked, or certainly appreciated this book, but felt at times that it was too raw, too personal for me to be reading. Antrim’s thoughts seem so real, so genuine…that I almost felt like I was trespassing in his mind. Any memory involving his mother invoked my pity, and empathy.
The book does, though, give glimpses of other relationships, ones that are easier to read, ones that have the gentle patina of time…not colored by pain.
“Nonetheless I was attracted by my grandfather’s patience, by the care he took with this broken house. It wasn’t that I suddenly understood the value in a job well done. Far from it. It was that for a moment – a romantic moment destined to resonate and grow in magnitude over the years – I hoped (and this may have been a fantasy that I wanted to have about the man) that my grandfather had something to pass on to me, to teach me.”
At the end of the book, it is even clearer than at the beginning, that the author has not resolved his feeling towards his mother in the writing of this book. Far from it – the wellspring of emotion seems even stronger. I hope, for his sake, that further reflection or writing, helps.
“Near her life’s close, I lost the fortitude, the ability, the heart to be with my mother. For a time, I referred to her, in thought and in conversation with others, not as my mother but as Louanne….In thinking of her as Louanne, I pretended to an objectivity of perspective that I did not, nor will ever, possess, and, in doing so, I pretended to myself that the coming loss of her would not hurt, and in the absence of suffering I would go forward, a free man.”
Going back to old adages…one can only hope that the one about Time and old wounds proves true.
“The Afterlife” dances right up to the humor line but never crosses. This section about his quest for a bed comes the closest:
“I saw the crated bed by the door. I saw the sunlight coming through the windows. I saw myself standing there seeing these things. I was a man whose need for love and sympathy had led him to telephone a Swedish executive in the middle of the morning. Perhaps, at some point, the story of my mother and the bed becomes the story of my mother and father, the story that remains to be told, the story, you could say, of the queen versus the king.
The bed went away. I let it go. R was right. I could get another bed later. I stood in my empty room. In place of the bed was – shame? In place of the bed was a question – a question that is at once too simple and too complicated to answer.”
But in every memory, there is too much genuine pain, confusion and love behind the author’s words to find these stories funny. The raw emotion, the way Antrim is still questioning every emotion or thought he has/had about his mother, comes through every line, almost every word. His life is still tied up in hers, and in the end of her life. He is still unable to clearly define their relationship. Were they mother and son, or was theirs a more Oedipal relationship, or were they similar artistic souls…or? He is very critical of her at times, being too embarrassed of her to go out in public together, and then will flip to the fiercest kind of protective love.
“And when in the deep of the night my mother came into my room swaying, half conscious and with grey smoke from her cigarette wreathing her face, shattered by bourbon and white wine; and when she raised her hand to strike, and I easily batted her arm back, then stepped forward and quickly steadied her before she tipped…”
and also, “You may learn, too, as a defense against the absurd disappointments caused by fragile and unhappy parents, the crude art of sarcasm.”
and later, “I found myself repeatedly subjecting K. to antagonistic appraisals of my mother’s cultivation of fantasy. When K. went along with my negative assessments, I turned the tables on her and rushed to my mother’s defense.”
One of my favorite aspects of the book was Antrim’s acknowledgement of the vagaries of time and memory. So many things from our past seem so clear and indisputable…and yet when described to other people, those certainties start to break apart like a fragile web. He is constantly starting into a description of an event…and then second guessing himself…which for me, makes the memory all the more real. The past, tempered by time and by who we are in the present.
I liked, or certainly appreciated this book, but felt at times that it was too raw, too personal for me to be reading. Antrim’s thoughts seem so real, so genuine…that I almost felt like I was trespassing in his mind. Any memory involving his mother invoked my pity, and empathy.
The book does, though, give glimpses of other relationships, ones that are easier to read, ones that have the gentle patina of time…not colored by pain.
“Nonetheless I was attracted by my grandfather’s patience, by the care he took with this broken house. It wasn’t that I suddenly understood the value in a job well done. Far from it. It was that for a moment – a romantic moment destined to resonate and grow in magnitude over the years – I hoped (and this may have been a fantasy that I wanted to have about the man) that my grandfather had something to pass on to me, to teach me.”
At the end of the book, it is even clearer than at the beginning, that the author has not resolved his feeling towards his mother in the writing of this book. Far from it – the wellspring of emotion seems even stronger. I hope, for his sake, that further reflection or writing, helps.
“Near her life’s close, I lost the fortitude, the ability, the heart to be with my mother. For a time, I referred to her, in thought and in conversation with others, not as my mother but as Louanne….In thinking of her as Louanne, I pretended to an objectivity of perspective that I did not, nor will ever, possess, and, in doing so, I pretended to myself that the coming loss of her would not hurt, and in the absence of suffering I would go forward, a free man.”
Going back to old adages…one can only hope that the one about Time and old wounds proves true.
October 6, 2025
"If we name the faults of those who have hurt us, we will be shielded from pain; if we can collect evidence to justify our anger, we will overcome shame; if we pity our betrayers, we will not have been betrayed, mishandled, misunderstood, or left abandoned.”
3.5 stars. I’ve been telling myself I’m too busy with law school to keep up with these, but it’s really not that much work to write one of these on my phone while I watch a football game and I need to stop being a huge baby. We’re back.
Checking back in with the always-impressive but not-always-enjoyable Donald Antrim. The Afterlife sees him mostly concerned with reflecting on his eccentric alcoholic mother and their tumultuous relationship, but he also touches on his childhood, his other formative family relationships, and some of his other woes. Considering it’s mostly made up of Antrim psychoanalyzing his family members and himself, this memoir’s more interesting than it has any right to be.
Thoughts:
Mentioned it above but he really is stunningly aware of other people’s psychologies in this book, including his own. Despite the mixed feelings I’ve had on his other work, I’d have never called Antrim dumb, and he’s at his smartest with this one. Just so insightful. Great stuff on the family histories and the way they get telephone-game-distorted through the generations, the mythic nature of our parents’ lives before we were born to them, and some shocking Lord of the Rings analysis.
Couple random notes to show what I mean re insight:
- (“I put off the visit. I put it off. A dog in the apartment next to mine started barking, and for a while I lost my mind. Then the dog stopped barking and a year had passed and my sister and I were boarding flights from opposite ends of the country to stand beside my mother’s bed in the little house near the bottom of the hill that pitched down to the parking lot beside the town lake.”) So damn good.
- (“ [She] undoubtedly saw, as people will when profoundly attached to lovers on their way to falling through the cracks, some version of him that would forever exist as Potential.”)
- And then this especially incredible moment of Antrim reflecting on how he was left out of his grandfather’s will, how the nature of his relationship with his mother was such that he couldn’t give her any benefit of the doubt on the DAY her father died because he was SO SURE she’d cut him and his sister out of the will. (“I was determined to catch my mother in what I was certain was a deliberate deceit. How could she? How dare she? I told myself that I wanted to get to the bottom of the matter. I was curious. That was all.”)
Heading into this one, my exposure to Donald Antrim had been a demented, satirical, darkly hilarious short story that I sorta loved (An Actor Prepares) and a demented, satirical, not-so-hilarious, meandering novel that I didn’t love at all (Mr. Robinson). Never had I ever known a bigger discrepancy between how little I enjoy an author and how good I think they are, but I’m glad to have found something from Antrim that I unabashedly Liked. He gets personal here, and I think sincerity’s a good look for him.
3.5 stars. I’ve been telling myself I’m too busy with law school to keep up with these, but it’s really not that much work to write one of these on my phone while I watch a football game and I need to stop being a huge baby. We’re back.
Checking back in with the always-impressive but not-always-enjoyable Donald Antrim. The Afterlife sees him mostly concerned with reflecting on his eccentric alcoholic mother and their tumultuous relationship, but he also touches on his childhood, his other formative family relationships, and some of his other woes. Considering it’s mostly made up of Antrim psychoanalyzing his family members and himself, this memoir’s more interesting than it has any right to be.
Thoughts:
Mentioned it above but he really is stunningly aware of other people’s psychologies in this book, including his own. Despite the mixed feelings I’ve had on his other work, I’d have never called Antrim dumb, and he’s at his smartest with this one. Just so insightful. Great stuff on the family histories and the way they get telephone-game-distorted through the generations, the mythic nature of our parents’ lives before we were born to them, and some shocking Lord of the Rings analysis.
Couple random notes to show what I mean re insight:
- (“I put off the visit. I put it off. A dog in the apartment next to mine started barking, and for a while I lost my mind. Then the dog stopped barking and a year had passed and my sister and I were boarding flights from opposite ends of the country to stand beside my mother’s bed in the little house near the bottom of the hill that pitched down to the parking lot beside the town lake.”) So damn good.
- (“ [She] undoubtedly saw, as people will when profoundly attached to lovers on their way to falling through the cracks, some version of him that would forever exist as Potential.”)
- And then this especially incredible moment of Antrim reflecting on how he was left out of his grandfather’s will, how the nature of his relationship with his mother was such that he couldn’t give her any benefit of the doubt on the DAY her father died because he was SO SURE she’d cut him and his sister out of the will. (“I was determined to catch my mother in what I was certain was a deliberate deceit. How could she? How dare she? I told myself that I wanted to get to the bottom of the matter. I was curious. That was all.”)
Heading into this one, my exposure to Donald Antrim had been a demented, satirical, darkly hilarious short story that I sorta loved (An Actor Prepares) and a demented, satirical, not-so-hilarious, meandering novel that I didn’t love at all (Mr. Robinson). Never had I ever known a bigger discrepancy between how little I enjoy an author and how good I think they are, but I’m glad to have found something from Antrim that I unabashedly Liked. He gets personal here, and I think sincerity’s a good look for him.
February 18, 2018
There was a zany Barthelme-like quality to the earlier novels I read by Antrim that is completely absent from "The Afterlife." This is not to say that the novels were immature or derivative or that "The Afterlife" is plodding or dry. I think Antrim merely set out to write very different types of books and succeeded at each. There's an ambition, a daring, and an inventiveness in "The Verificationist" and "The Hundred Brothers" that I would say comes with youth, the author hoping to stand out. A lot of great work stems from this impulse--George Saunders would be another example. It isn't that Antrim is maturing as a writer so much as he's becoming more confident in the substance of his ideas and so has less of a need to cover them in a dazzling sheen. I recall reading some of the essays from "The Afterlife" when they first appeared in "The New Yorker" and feeling that they were an interesting departure for Antrim. What I'm impressed by here is that they don't seem merely cobbled together so the author can cash in twice from magazine and print publication. While each essay is self-contained, they're arranged nicely and avoid much overlap. When repetitions do occur, they seem intentional and serve to remind readers of important points or emphasize crucial moments. "The Afterlife" is labeled a memoir, which I suppose it is, but the book is primarily about Antrim's attempts to understand his mother's complex life and come to terms with her death. Like her son, Louanne was creative, a clothing designer and teacher of design, but her life seemed to become upended by her split with Antrim's father and her descent into alcoholism. The clothing Louanne created became increasingly bizarre, as did her behavior. Antrim seemed to be both a caregiver and an apologist for his mother. What emerges is an honest, complex account. The author does a great job of depicting various family members: his professor father, his sister, his grandfather, an uncle who dies of alcoholism. Antrim is honest about his own anxieties (particularly in the great opening essay about his attempts to find the perfect mattress) and about the pain and conflict in his life. His writing here is never showy yet always elegant and always in service of the subject matter. As with some of his recent short stories, Antrim seems to be focusing on darker themes of substance abuse, mortality, etc. He seems to be pushing his limits as a writer, which is always great to see. Really the only section of "The Afterlife" that failed to shine for me was the essay on Louanne's tailoring and the crazy outfits she designed and considered works of art. Tellingly this section was inserted into the middle of the book, sandwiched by stronger essays. Overall, however, this was a fascinating book and, for me, the best type of memoir, which is the one that focuses its gaze outward. Through it we learn about Antrim's very Southern roots. This combination of rural Southerner and urban New Yorker make Antrim a truly interesting author.
May 10, 2019
The Afterlife (Memoir) Donald Antrim. 2006. 195 pages. Seven parts.
The memoir is a grief dealing with the eventual demise of the author’s mother from lung cancer, who had been an alcoholic as well as chain smoker.
As a nonlinear narrative, there was an obvious intention in attempting to bring life by relating in detail scenes from the past. Or bringing people from the past, who had died, as well. Details that had him conflicted in the end as the author kept coming with I think were bits and pieces of one story after another to relive the past. Pieces that maybe significant, insignificant but had been necessary, not necessary, to rewrite the whole story.
And in reliving them, he gets to the point confusion: “I made sure the rifle was loaded... walked down the stairs ... I shot the bird, I guess .. I don’t remember the shooting... maybe I waited in the dark for the bird to pass.. maybe I never got the gun at all...:
As a reader, it seemed concealing his sense of loss became a distraction in itself. Not acknowledging an emotion affects a natural human activity such as sleeping, and a simple task of buying and choosing a bed becomes deeply complicated. And this is where the author began his narrative: buying a bed.
Not only was he grieving, but he had resented, too, his mother’s alcoholism, which had affected her bond with the family as a whole. Going into rehabilitation had proved to be failure in her case. How this addiction ruined a life, its eventual destruction crawled gently and subtly until it fulfilled its purpose: death.
A memoir is a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in the subject's life. The assertions made in the work are understood to be factual as far as the writer could remember. However, only the sharers in these memoirs could agree or otherwise to the veracity of the events.
The memoir is a grief dealing with the eventual demise of the author’s mother from lung cancer, who had been an alcoholic as well as chain smoker.
As a nonlinear narrative, there was an obvious intention in attempting to bring life by relating in detail scenes from the past. Or bringing people from the past, who had died, as well. Details that had him conflicted in the end as the author kept coming with I think were bits and pieces of one story after another to relive the past. Pieces that maybe significant, insignificant but had been necessary, not necessary, to rewrite the whole story.
And in reliving them, he gets to the point confusion: “I made sure the rifle was loaded... walked down the stairs ... I shot the bird, I guess .. I don’t remember the shooting... maybe I waited in the dark for the bird to pass.. maybe I never got the gun at all...:
As a reader, it seemed concealing his sense of loss became a distraction in itself. Not acknowledging an emotion affects a natural human activity such as sleeping, and a simple task of buying and choosing a bed becomes deeply complicated. And this is where the author began his narrative: buying a bed.
Not only was he grieving, but he had resented, too, his mother’s alcoholism, which had affected her bond with the family as a whole. Going into rehabilitation had proved to be failure in her case. How this addiction ruined a life, its eventual destruction crawled gently and subtly until it fulfilled its purpose: death.
A memoir is a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in the subject's life. The assertions made in the work are understood to be factual as far as the writer could remember. However, only the sharers in these memoirs could agree or otherwise to the veracity of the events.
January 5, 2023
El otro día volví a oír aquella regla de Chejov que venía a decir que cuando en un relato aparece un arma, ésta tiene que acabar utilizándose antes del final del mismo. Creo que el escritor ruso lo dijo porque no llegó a conocer una buena parte de la literatura estadounidense del siglo XX y XXI (y del cine y las series), porque tendría que revisarlo. Siempre me ha sorprendido no tanto la normalidad (mas bien las tratan con bastante respeto y reverencia) sino la omnipresencia de armas en armarios y cajones de las ficciones norteamericanas. Supongo que no sólo se debe a motivos dramáticos sino a la pura realidad de tan exótico país.
En ‘La vida después’, la estupenda novela autobiográfica de Donald Antrim, el tío del narrador, cuando envejece, acaba sustituyendo sus posesiones relacionadas con sus aficiones (raquetas de tenis, libros, revistas, equipos de buceo y de golf), por armas. No parece haber ningún propósito: es que vivía en las montañas de Florida.
“Después de la muerte de su hermano, mi padre fue en coche por el Tamiami Trail hasta Sarasota y vació el piso. No hubo funeral. Le pregunté qué había pasado con los rifles y los discos de Eldridge, su equipo de buceo, de golf y de tenis, y me dijo que mi tío había reemplazado todo esto por pistolas de alto calibre y cajas de municiones sin abrir, que él, mi padre, sacó del armario del dormitorio y llevo hasta la armería, donde logró vendérselas de vuelta al dueño del local”.
En ‘La vida después’, la estupenda novela autobiográfica de Donald Antrim, el tío del narrador, cuando envejece, acaba sustituyendo sus posesiones relacionadas con sus aficiones (raquetas de tenis, libros, revistas, equipos de buceo y de golf), por armas. No parece haber ningún propósito: es que vivía en las montañas de Florida.
“Después de la muerte de su hermano, mi padre fue en coche por el Tamiami Trail hasta Sarasota y vació el piso. No hubo funeral. Le pregunté qué había pasado con los rifles y los discos de Eldridge, su equipo de buceo, de golf y de tenis, y me dijo que mi tío había reemplazado todo esto por pistolas de alto calibre y cajas de municiones sin abrir, que él, mi padre, sacó del armario del dormitorio y llevo hasta la armería, donde logró vendérselas de vuelta al dueño del local”.
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