Elect mr robinson for a better world
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A Novel - Hardcover
Reviews
Entropy, violence and weird fetishism confound citizens and local institutions in this breezy, darkly comic lampoon of civic duty and ambition. Things have gone awry in a small, seaside community somewhere in the American subtropics, and schoolteacher Pete Robinson wants to lead his fellow citizens back to sanity. Unfortunately, he may not remember the way. An expert in the history of torture, he supervises the drawing and quartering of the town's mayor by four automobiles. Meanwhile, the local citizenry is busy surrounding their homes with moats filled with broken glass, bamboo spears and water moccasins; the school has been converted into a factory creating talismans from marine animals; and the public library's duplicate books are being used to detonate claymore mines in Turtle Pond Park ("I do enjoy the way The Riverside Shakespeare rides the wind on a long toss," says one character, while another notes, "For hang time, give me The Complete Poems of Robert Frost any day"). Robinson reopens school in his own basement--with the ulterior motive of promoting himself as a mayoral candidate. If all this seems bew
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World
I was suddenly pulled into a never-before-experienced realm : the sunken world of a strange and marvelous book. Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World is that very rare thing : a book without antecedents.
O Jeffrey Eugenides, you may be very sweet
But I feel your education has been somewhat incomplete
Kafka (1915)
K. was informed by telephone that there would be a small hearing concerning his case the following Sunday. He was made aware that these cross examinations would follow one another regularly, perhaps not every week but quite frequently.
Donald Barthelme (1976)
Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby for a long time, because of the way he had been behaving. And now he’d gone too far, so we decided to hang him.
Donald Antrim (1993)
Today I’m not sure I’d favour drawing and quartering an ex-mayor and Chamber of Commerce volunteer. That’s what we did to Jim Kunkel after the Stinger incident.
Yes, strange, violent and random things are being described in a voice of ironic normality. And this has been going on for years
People either seem to love or dislike this book - which I can understand. Antrim, a MacArthur Genius, has been sitting on my shelf for some time. A critical darling, he has actually published very little. 3 novels (the last in 2000!), a memoir, and a slim collection of short stories (which leaves out 4 published in the NY'er). Also 7 articles, also only published in the NY'er. And none of the books come to much over 200 pp each. So, it is pretty easy to read his complete oeuvre.
His style and imagination is stunning - but not sure it all holds together with plot, even in this short novel. At times it does seem like he has added bits of story just because he thinks they are wonderful ideas he has to use. The biggest one for me in this novel is his wife and her connection to fish. Makes sense, a little bit - but not completely. OTOH, love his transitions in a book that has no chapters or breaks. The first I noticed was when he was talking of going to a Rotary Club meeting, and then they were there. The pages long paragraphs, or the detail of his directions (walk one block on Wisteria, take a left on Rose, walk two blocks to Tulip, take a right towards the water....).
And yes,
It’s hard to know where to begin a review about a book like Elect Mr Robinson. We could talk about the scathing and biting social satirical tone of the whole perform, lending it a kind of Desperate Housewives-on-steroids feeling. We could talk about the bizarre extended hallucinations of the main nature, in which he is a buffalo living underwater with his fish wife. We could even talk about the shocking termination, which places Elect Mr Robinson firmly in the Easton Ellis school of late 80s/early 90s American violence literature.
I suppose we should start, though, at the beginning. From the very first page, there is a instinct of unease as one plunges into the Donald Antrim’s nature. Having killed off the previous mayor (the body now resides in his freezer, dismembered), Mr Pete Robinson has eyes on the job for himself. He thinks he, a third-grade instructor recently unemployed, is most suitable, despite his unusual obsession for medieval torture techniques, a hobby that manifests itself in his basement collection of dioramas. In an attempt to win favour with his neighbours, he decides to set up a residence school
Clearly Pete is an undependable narrator. His tone is strangely formal and
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: 2a Novel
Donald Antrim. Viking Books, $20 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-670-85139-3
Entropy, violence and weird fetishism confound citizens and local institutions in this breezy, darkly comic lampoon of civic duty and ambition. Things have gone awry in a small, seaside community somewhere in the American subtropics, and schoolteacher Pete Robinson wants to lead his fellow citizens back to sanity. Unfortunately, he may not remember the way. An expert in the history of torture, he supervises the drawing and quartering of the town's mayor by four automobiles. Meanwhile, the local citizenry is busy surrounding their homes with moats filled with broken glass, bamboo spears and water moccasins; the school has been converted into a factory creating talismans from marine animals; and the public library's duplicate books are being used to detonate claymore mines in Turtle Pond Park (``I do enjoy the way The Riverside Shakespeare rides the wind on a long toss,'' says one character, while another notes, ``For hang time, give me The Complete Poems of Robert Frost any day''). Robinson reopens school in his own basement--with the ulterior motive of promoting hi