Customer Reviews

Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of those books that keeps doing its work long after the last word has been read. Antrim makes his art like he observes his life: contradictions galore. Mr. Robinson's loyalty to his wife and to his ideals regarding education don't seem as if they should fit within the general paranoid isolative nature of his community, and yet they do, in a very real way. Mr. Robinson attempts to make a real difference in his community while neighbors build vastly deep moats equipped with lethal spikes to surround their homes. There is a haunting similarity to the entire town's psyche here in this image, and Mr. Robinson is not immune to this. Characters seem to proceed with a wide knowledge of life and its intricacies, yet are unable to make the connections between things: to see how interest can breed obsession, how love can inspire violence. There exists the danger of falling through these cracks and understanding and this is indeed what happens.
The novel creeps toward an unsettling climax that you always know in the back of your mind is coming, yet can't quite let yourself believe it to be true. The cliched neighbor response to the latest small town horror on the six o'clock news comes to mind. "He seemed like a nice man. The perfect neighbor. Basically kept to himself." "Elect Mr. Robinson For A Better World" is touching and unsettling in the way that little art is and most life can be. Despite jacketflap trumpeting, few novelists seem willing to be brave enough to address the pockets of darkness that exist in the well-lit homes of the upper middle class. Don't expect the feel good book of the year, but if you're looking for something thought-provoking, this might very well be what you need to read.

Antrim takes a small suburban community and removes the authorities which force it to be civilized. The result is a bizarre mixture of barbarism, fad culture and civilized neighbourly rivalry. I found it fascinating, entertaining and darkly funny.

What made it funny was that, despite the extremity to which the aspects of suburban living had been taken, it was all very familiar. The satire is sharp, but Antrim manages to express it as an insider telling a shared joke, rather than as an outsider taking pot-shots at another's culture.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Antrim's second novel, The Hundred Brothers, is also very good, but I think I liked Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World more.

Donald Antrim is a wonderful original writer who takes the novel to a new and dark place unlike any book you will ever read. Black humor mixed with painful insights on us all it explores the paradoxical world of insanity and real suburban life in a very funny way.

Like most coastal towns, Elect Mr. Robinson takes place in a world slightly askew of our own. The premise of the book is based on violence, and there is a fair amount of shocking violence. Yet it is often laugh-out-loud funny. One of my favorite reads ever, I've been surprised by people who've loved or hated this one. The obligatory author mashup might be Denis Johnson meets Delillo with a splash of John Kennedy Toole. If you can laugh while being appalled, this could be the perfect read for you.

This book represents a finely detailed vision of the surburban experince gone wrong. A vivid sense of the macabre is employed to develop a rich texture and background for a surbaban scene slightly out of kilter, a place where handsome middle class homes are protected by ealborate, spike filled moats to keep the neighbors at bay. Mr. Antrim has a cpmpelling and engaging writing style. Unfortunately, the book flounders at times as Mr. Antrim seems unclear as to whether he's writing a satire or a farce and, therefore, characters either come across as too weird or, paradoxically, not nearly wierd enough. In the end, one is left much more impressed with the authors vision than with the story itself. That vision, however, is compelling enough to make this book a worhwhile reading experience

I imagine these folks giving "Mr. Robinson" five stars must be friends with Mr. Antrim; it's a good book, but puh-leeeez! Not five-stars-good. Like his cohorts Eugenides and Moody (and Wallace too, on a bad day), Antrim uses a certain amount of gross-out black humor(?) to separate his work from more mainstream prose. And I'm not complaining; I don't want to read Harlequin Romances. But I read this thing in 1998, years after it was published; and while I still feel a visceral response to people's arms being torn from their sockets; well, also it seems a little tired and juvenile, this kind of "I may have gone to an Ivy League school, but I'm no suburbanite" sort of literary thrashing around. I've already been shocked into numbness, I guess -- maybe Antrim led the pack, but that hardly matters now. I would nominate this as the "Feel Bad Book of the Year". All this violence and misery, and to what end? It's not that funny, really, and it's not saying anything new. All the gal characters are evaluated to that usual "would-I-f*ck-'er?" degree, and the men are the usual Babbitt-esque suburban louts suckin' down their brewskis. Ho hum. That being said, he's an amazing writer, and I imagine that if he gets more interesting things in his head, he could produce a real 5-star novel some day without breaking a sweat.

Suburban life is barbaric. I think John Updike and a bunch of other guys (and a few women) told us that a long time ago. Mr. Antrim's twist is to juxtapose brutish, post-apocalyptic behavior with the repressed mannerisms of the self-satisfied bourgeoise. The protagonist has a fascination with medieval torture devices and <ahem> never *dreams* that when his advice is sought on the matter that it will be put to practical use. He runs into one of his former star students in the middle of a public park ... that has been landmined by neighbors that have literally declared war on each other.

The most interesting part of the book was the regression therapy theme. Mr. Robinson's wife regresses quite comfortably down the phylogenetic ladder to her aboriginal coelocanth-essence. Mr. Robinson rather messily reverts to bison-essence, but his co-dependence on his wife is manifested by his bison's near-drowning in her coelocanth ocean. This is all wonderfully bizarre and animistic. By contrast the sort of sans-superego Freudian society that is portrayed in the rest of the book is a joke that gets kind of old.

Such unpleasantness! And to what end?

The same old, "Yea, the deepest ring of Hell is Suburbia" nihilism; (the pet musing of all college freshmen away from home for the first time).

And that over-the-top, gross-out violence -- written in the pat ironic tone, of the guy who's SEEN IT ALL, and you have NO IDEA of the depths of human depravity...

Well I'm a little maxed out on this theme, and the nastiness at the end seems pointless, grotesque, and redundant.

Still, it had some nice bits, and I like the start of the '100 brothers', so I'll try that; but overall I'd say: this particular 90's trend/theme must be almost used up, right?

You've got to be a moron with no life, and no hope of one, to enjoy this meandering, self-indulgent load of manure. My copy is in a Hefty Cinch-Sak tall kitchen bag at the dump. If I ever try to read anything else by the author, please just shoot me.