Low Self-Esteem Reading Night by Malcolm van Delst

I wish I was as well versed as Mr Toth and familiar with the literary terminologies used to sound like I actually know what I'm talking about.
I read the "Antibook" and must say, enjoyed it. What was meaningful for me was the authors self revelations and insights into her past and present. The small snippets into the anger and tribulations of the authors self, left me wanting to read more to discover more.
I liked that the author addressed issues that I believe we all face or feel or think about...and quickly push away and deny. I appreciated the vulnerability of the writing and got an absolute sense that if the author really let lose, the reader better hold on.

All in all, I liked this book a great deal, and can recommend it highly. The "Antibook" is not for everyone, though, I think. For those contemplating giving it a try, here's a quick overview.

As the title implies, there's no linear, traditional story (or even a complete non-linear one, in the Vonnegutian sense). Rather, there a mishmash of story fragments and internal monologues on a variety of subjects, along with a meta-story about the creation and consumption of the anitbook itself. Some of the fragments fit together with some of the others, and some are one-offs. A few are relatively baffling stream-of-consciousness bits, but the majority are written in something like traditional prose - though, as with much "literary" fiction, there's a tendency to play fast a loose with the conventions (quotes around dialog, who needs 'em?).

As one might expect, the quality and general intelligibility of the work varies a lot from chapter to the chapter - which makes sense, given the presence of multiple "virtual authors." At its worst, the voice is dogmatic, railing against some status quo from days gone by - a long, meandering, straw man argument. At best, its vivid and horrific, as when the state of a woman's face is described, after half of it has been sucked away by a pinpoint singularity.

Though most of the bits are brief, some of the stream-of-consciousness passages become tiresome. For instance, a passage labeled "Red" rambled about things color red and white in manner of Melville's atrocious "Whiteness of the Whale."

A couple of my favorite parts feature a mysterious child wandering around her dog, and the opening descriptive passages are superb: "A pale child wanders in the grass - tall grass - almost as tall as the girl. Her dog bounds ahead of her. The dog's head appears, then disappears, then appears, while child's head, a ghostly sphere, is constant." Things bog down a big towards the end of this thread, when the child, does, or perhaps doesn't, go to heaven or commune with an alien fog-bank or something, but the events are so immersive, and so beautifully described it's easy to overlook the fact that they provide no true conclusion and don't particularly make much sense.

Some of the lines in the story are so good that there's great in their own right, and don't really context to prop them up. An example:

"She has no plans to do bad things. She has no plans to murder her dog or set her father's barns on fire."

This is awesome. Just awesome. It's ominous, but in a contrary manner that's like a shiv in the ribs that makes you bleed out before you realize you've been injured.

Another: "... because life is not linear. It is not a graceful series of arcs and intersecting characters. It is a soup. It's a garage sale. It's a garage sale, two months after it's happened, that hasn't been packed up, in fact."

This, in essence, appears to be the book's mission statement, and it's a great one. It's hard to make a statement of something as broad as "life" without coming off as hackneyed, pompous, or both, and the author manages it wonderfully.

And yet another: "She's holding me, herself, and even Mitchell, hostage to a story she makes up."

It's a terrifically universal line. How many of us trapping ourselves, and those around us, in a cage built from our own narratives?

So... themes. What's this thing about. Generosity, solitude, justice, religion, and trust, seem to weave their ways in and out of various threads, but to my mind no one theme dominates. Like a lot of litfic, the book features a lot of characters who seem to be exceptionally depressed and detached from the rest of humanity. Even a character who's just undergone an epiphany and realized she's destined to be author seems pretty fatalistic.

Okay, so, I like this book, I like it a lot. But, as I've mentioned, I didn't like all of it.

Some chapters get bogged with thematic cliches: ".. cramming all the work I can into my days because I want to avoid facing the issues in my relationships."

Yikes. I (and a lot of other readers, I'm guessing) cringe inwardly when we hear (or read) the word "issues" used in this manner, especially when closely followed "my relationships," dreading the Oprah-Sally-Jessie-Dr-Phil whiny, lift-sapping tedium that sure to come. I certainly don't want to see these words in a novel (or "anti-novel," as the case may be).

At its weakest, the narrative voice turns preachy, and seems to be paraphrasing any one of a thousand women's studies lectures. Example: "We know men and women are equal forces, even if the book, stories and histories we read are all about men."

There's nothing distinctive in passages like this, no "special sauce" to set it apart from innumerable boooks with identical sensibilities. Correctness does not equal creativity, and there's nothing insightful, evocative, or entertaining about the fact that the virtual author doesn't seem to comprehend this.

One of my favorite bits is a one-off allegory called, "Sneaking Up on Respect." Though a bit heavy-handed, it's cleaver, and offers a bit of nuanced light-heartedness amongst what are mostly angsty or or outright dismal tales.

At the weaker end of the spectrum, there's "Hairless Rat." It feels more like poetry than prose, and, to my mind, not particularly compelling poetry. Still, it's a respectable effort - substantial writing addressing substantial memes.

Despite the occasional wart, the anti-novel is more sublime than insipid, and more than worthy of an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

(Backing this with a big old boatload of stars).