The Verificationist - by Donald Antrim (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>A group of psychologists meet at a pancake house, where they engage in shop talk. At the center of the pyschobabble and unrequited lust sits Tom, a program coordinator. When Tom tries to initiate a food fight, a rival psychologist bear hugs him into submission, resulting in an out-of-body experience that leaves Tom hovering over his colleagues.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>With a New Introduction by George Saunders <p/>A <i>New York Times Book Review </i>Notable Book of the Year <p/>It is early spring, and Tom has called together his fellow psychologists at the Krakower Institute for their biannual pancake supper--a chance for likeminded analysts to talk shop and casually unburden themselves over flapjacks. But, as Tom knows (at least subconsciously), his brainy colleagues are a little on edge--simmering with romantic tension and professional grievance, their stew of conflicting ego and id just might boil to the surface before the pretty waitress brings their next coffee refill. When Tom tries to provoke a food fight, a rival colleague locks him in a therapeutic hold, triggering a transcendent if totally bizarre transformation that will free Tom to confront his greatest pleasures and fears. <p/>Darkly funny and beautifully written, <i>The Verificationist</i> confirms Donald Antrim as one of America's best and most original authors.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> From the Back Cover </b></p></br></br>A group of psychologists from the Krakower Institute meet one April night at a pancake house, where they order breakfast foods and engage in shoptalk and the occasional flirtation. At the center of this maelstrom of psychobabble and unrequited lust sits Tom, program coordinator for the Young Women of Strength, who is know to sob uncontrollably at meetings and has encouraged clients to get on with their lives and pursue tap dancing. When Tom tries to initiate a food fight, a rival psychologist bear hugs him into submission, resulting in an out-of-body experience that leaves our Tom hovering over his colleagues.<P>In the hands of Donald Antrim, recently chosen by The New Yorker as one of the 20 best writers under 40, this unique perspective becomes an exuberantly funny riff on our culture that does nothing less than expose the most basic of human needs. Breathtakingly smart, fascinatingly peculiar, and singularly well written, The Verficationist is the work of one of America's strangest and most fiercely intelligent writers.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>"A superb literary achievement." --<i>Entertainment Weekly</i> <p/>"Edgy, fantastical, absurdist, Dionysian, visionary. " --<i>Newsday</i> <p/>"Antrim does a beautiful job....[Full] of intellection, rude humor, grief, and longing. " --<i>The New York Times Book Review</i> <p/>"Donald Antrim is in top form with this high-spirited hallucination, whose characters, undeniably ourselves, carry on engagingly and shamelessly in an off-the-wall, not to mention off-the ceiling, environment that is also the world we know, and sometimes wish we didn't." --<i>Thomas Pynchon</i> <p/>"Not since the late Donald Barthelme have we had such a pitch-perfect surrealizing of domestic American life." --<i>Esquire</i> <p/>"Antrim's extraordinary imagination has invited comparison of his work with that of Italo Calvino, but Antrim has a sharper razor." --<i>Annie Proulx</i> <p/>"Vividly, Antrim captures the poignancy of the human enterprise....He goes right for the jugular in order to expose the vital essential pulse of his characters--and by proxy, our own. " --<i>Elle</i> <p/>"Antrim is the Buster Keaton of current American literature. " --<i>The Wall Street Journal</i></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><p>Donald Antrim is the critically acclaimed author of <i>Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers, </i>and<i> The Verificationist</i>, as well <i>The Afterlife</i>, a memoir about his mother. A regular contributor to <i>The New Yorker</i>, he has also been the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Public Library. He lives in New York City.</p>
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