The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Hundred Brothers by Donals Antrim
Paul Maliszewski

Donald Antrim. The Hundred Brothers. Vintage, 1998. 206 pp. Paper: $12.00.

Before the dusk of this short novel’s one evening, Doug, the narrator and 1 percent of the novel’s hundred brothers, witnesses sufficient evidence of fraternal guerrilla struggles that divide old and young, married and single, and twins and not-twins. All of this before cocktails, dinner, and the Dance of the Corn King, which they’re waiting for. Although Doug observes and remarks on many of his brothers’ antics, he is a far cry from objective, for Doug is the Corn King and central to the action. As unreliable narrators go, this one is erratically unreliable, at times convincing, but often wildly self-deceived. Doug’s narration is frequently knotted as he catalogues the brothers’ activities in an epic manner that hasn’t been as rousingly employed since Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth six chapters into the Old Testament. While Doug gives every indication of wanting to understand his brothers, his desire exceeds his abilities and the critical tools he has—from primitive myths based on corn harvesting to genealogy and fossilized psychology—to make the task more difficult and finally tangle him in sticky webs of syntax.
It is fitting then that Antrim sets his novel about Western culture’s collection of critical tools in the library, where the brothers meet, eat, drink, carouse, and look at eighteenth-century pornography. The stacks meanwhile are a maze, the shelving system’s gone to pot, and books are piled on the floor. Antrim’s library is both a physical place and a collection of conceptual signposts.
The Hundred Brothers is high-test literary absurdity. Explaining the need for ritual, Doug says, “Modern men had lost touch with ancient rhythms of death and regeneration, but that it was possible—if you took intoxicants and wore the right mask and costume—to regain connection with the primeval aspects of the Self.” This is not too far from T. S. Eliot’s prescription for Western culture in “The Waste Land,” his vegetal myths and regeneration legends. The Fisher King has merely become the Corn King, right? One detail that will distinguish them is that Doug is talking to Gunner here, his brother’s Doberman pinscher. [Paul Maliszewski]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Hundred Brothers by Donals Antrim Paul Maliszewski Donald Antrim. The Hundred Brothers. Vintage, 1998. 206 pp. Paper: $12.00. Before the dusk of this short novel’s one evening, Doug, the narrator and 1 percent of the novel’s hundred brothers, witnesses sufficient evidence of fraternal guerrilla struggles that divide old and young, married and single, and twins and not-twins. All of this before cocktails, dinner, and the Dance of the Corn King, which they’re waiting for. Although Doug observes and remarks on many of his brothers’ antics, he is a far cry from objective, for Doug is the Corn King and central to the action. As unreliable narrators go, this one is erratically unreliable, at times convincing, but often wildly self-deceived. Doug’s narration is frequently knotted as he catalogues the brothers’ activities in an epic manner that hasn’t been as rousingly employed since Noah begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth six chapters into the Old Testament. While Doug gives every indication of wanting to understand his brothers, his desire exceeds his abilities and the critical tools he has—from primitive myths based on corn harvesting to genealogy and fossilized psychology—to make the task more difficult and finally tangle him in sticky webs of syntax. It is fitting then that Antrim sets his novel about Western culture’s collection of critical tools in the library, where the brothers meet, eat, drink, carouse, and look at eighteenth-century pornography. The stacks meanwhile are a maze, the shelving system’s gone to pot, and books are piled on the floor. Antrim’s library is both a physical place and a collection of conceptual signposts. The Hundred Brothers is high-test literary absurdity. Explaining the need for ritual, Doug says, “Modern men had lost touch with ancient rhythms of death and regeneration, but that it was possible—if you took intoxicants and wore the right mask and costume—to regain connection with the primeval aspects of the Self.” This is not too far from T. S. Eliot’s prescription for Western culture in “The Waste Land,” his vegetal myths and regeneration legends. The Fisher King has merely become the Corn King, right? One detail that will distinguish them is that Doug is talking to Gunner here, his brother’s Doberman pinscher. [Paul Maliszewski]

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