I finished reading this recently and was surprised I hadn’t seen any mention of this book since I very quickly fell in love with it and read through the bulk of it in a three-day span. For those unaware, the main thrust of the novel is about a pompous, neurotic, failing film critic who happens upon a stop-motion film that takes three months to watch (with inbuilt bathroom, meal and sleep breaks) that took its reclusive creator 90 years to make, and when the film is destroyed, he’s left with a single frame of footage and has to try to recall the rest of it so he can exploit it for his own perceived greatness, against the wishes of the filmmaker.
The protagonist B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, a man who insists everyone he interacts with knows that he’s not Jewish, that his girlfriend is African American, a man who obsessed with race and gender, constantly using obscure pronouns (thon) is at times uncomfortably relatable in a similar way to *A Confederacy of Dunces’* Ignatius J. Reilly and it strikes me as a careful balancing act on the part of Kaufman to create a character who engages in performative ‘wokeness’ to excess without it seeming like a mean spirited right-wing dig at those who try to be socially conscious or like a left-wing white saviour self-insert with no sense of self-awareness.
The first half of the novel is filled with seemingly disparate, irreverent scenarios and characters which all come into play as the book progresses, and the most obvious parallel for the books tone would be the work of Thomas Pynchon. Though while it does seem that the book owes a debt to him it’s still identifiably Kaufman’s work, and not just because he references Rosenberg’s disdain for his own works multiple times through the novel. Watching a couple of his movies with this book fresh in mind made it seem like a culmination of all his screenwriting work so far. Tonally it’s very very funny as you might expect, but not without moments of poignancy and sadness – one scene in particular towards the beginning of the book, where he returns home after months away and remembers something that’s in his apartment (left as vague as possible) made me feel sick.
If you’ve read this book, I’m interested to hear your takes on it. If you haven’t, I absolutely recommend finding a copy and giving it a read. At 700+ pages of intertwining and contradictory narratives it’s not necessarily the quickest or breeziest read, but if you’re like me you’ll fall into it quicker than B does any of NYC’s manholes *(personhole)* throughout the story.
by suchalusthropus