The Afterlife"In the winter of 2000, shortly after his mother's death from cancer and malnourishment, Donald Antrim, author of 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 Louanne twice. The Afterlife is not a temporally linear coming-of-age memoir; instead, Antrim follows a logic of unconscious life, of dreams and memories, of fantasies and psychoses, the way in which the world of the alcoholic becomes a sleepless, atemporal world. In it, he comes to terms with--and fails to comes 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. It is also the story of the way the author works, in part through writing this book, to become a man more fully alive to himself and to others, a man capable of a life in which he may never learn, or ever hope to know, the nature of his origins"--Publisher's description. |
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airport alcoholic Asheville asked bedroom beneath beside Black Mountain Bloomingdale's Blue Ridge Mountains called chair Charlottesville clothes death DONALD ANTRIM door drinking drive drove dying Eldridge father feel felt Fiddler's Green Florida Frederic Church friends front grandfather grandmother grandmother's grandparents hand Hello hospital Hurricane Floyd imagine intentionally left blank kimono kitchen knew Lady Macduff later Leonardo da Vinci living room looked Louanne MACD memory Miami morning mother told mother's house moved never night North Carolina painting parents picture pillows play recall remember Sarasota seemed side Siesta Key sister sitting sleep smoking stairs stood stopped story street talk Tallahassee tell tennis Terry things thought took trees trip turned uncle Upper East Side Virginia waiting walked watched wearing woman York