Read an exclu­sive extract from Char­lie Kaufman’s debut nov­el ​‘Antkind’

It not only seemed inevitable that Char­lie Kauf­man would write a nov­el, it’s actu­al­ly sur­pris­ing to dis­cov­er that he hadn’t already writ­ten a bunch before he suc­ceed­ed in becom­ing one the world’s best screen­writ­ers on the back of titles such as Being John Malkovich, Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind and Synec­doche, New York.

‘Antkind: A Nov­el’ (out now via 4^th Estate) is his epic com­ic tome detail­ing the extra­or­di­nary tra­vails of one B Rosen­berg­er Rosen­berg, failed film­mak­er and under-appre­ci­at­ed crit­ic, who meets a man who has spent 90 years mak­ing a film that is three months long. After watch­ing the film and deem­ing it a pro­found mas­ter­piece, it is destroyed, and B Rosen­berg­er Rosen­berg then decides to ded­i­cate his life to bring­ing this work of art back into being. Here we find him in the midst of that process, seek­ing help from TV ther­a­pists and dunk­ing on Ron Howard…

Chap­ter 24

So after these three months of pac­ing in my tiny, pitch-black apart­ment, I start to believe I might be hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. The apart­ment looks as if it is stuffed to the ceil­ing with black wool. I hud­dle in cor­ners, in an attempt to avoid the nee­dles and apes hid­ing with­in. I decide enough is enough. I force myself to leave. The hall­way is filled with black wool. I exit the build­ing and hail a black-wool-filled taxi and ride through black-wool New York to see a new ther­a­pist. This one I had spot­ted list­ed as a tech­ni­cal advis­er in the cred­its of A Beau­ti­ful Mind, a film by Ron­son Howard that I’ve come to rec­og­nize is bril­liant (late to that par­ty!), about a guy who goes ​“men­tal,” then learns how to love and gets a big prize (not sure which, maybe an Oscar?) and gives a speech to an audi­ence of peo­ple, one of whom is, for some obscure rea­son, Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly in old-age make­up. I didn’t entire­ly under­stand that part, but I think it’s because I had gone to the bath­room. I pieced it togeth­er and decid­ed she was on her way to per­form in a local the­ater pro­duc­tion but didn’t want to miss the speech, so she put her make­up on before. The tech­ni­cal adviser/​therapist (she’s the one who famous­ly said ​“more crazy blink­ing” to actor Russ Crow) lis­tens to my sto­ry and imme­di­ate­ly sug­gests ket­a­mine ther­a­py. She rec­om­mends this in con­junc­tion with ayahuas­ca ther­a­py and that in con­junc­tion with hyp­nother­a­py. In addi­tion to help­ing with my depres­sion, she says, the com­bi­na­tion might jog my mem­o­ry about the Ingo film, which she feels could be at the crux of my dis­tress. It all seems rea­son­able to me, pos­si­bly because I have become addict­ed to Per­co­cet (dis­cov­ered in the Voiceover Lady’s med­i­cine cab­i­net) and am also sort of ​“men­tal” myself due to sev­er­al per­son­al issues. In hind­sight, I think she might have been punk­ing me, as the kids say nowa­days. I find it high­ly unpro­fes­sion­al for a ther­a­pist to punk a depressed Per­co­cet addict, but I sign the release for her TV show The Doc­tor Is In(sane)! any­way because I under­stand every­one has to make a liv­ing. In any event, I go ahead and make the nec­es­sary appoint­ments with the psy­chi­a­trist, hyp­nother­a­pist, and shaman. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, they are all avail­able to see me on the same day, so it is for­tu­nate they have offices in the same med­ical build­ing in Midtown.

The psy­chi­a­trist, Dr. Mud­dy Kabir, sees me at eleven. After ask­ing me how much ket­a­mine I think would do me (I say maybe one glass to start), he imme­di­ate­ly jumps in with prob­ing ques­tions such as, ​“What are you doing after?” and ​“Are you into shop­ping?” and ​“Do you like to hang out?” With­in sec­onds, the ket­a­mine has enabled a break­through. It turns out the depres­sion can be traced back to my fail­ure to get my last film project off the ground. I don’t even remem­ber the project until the ket­a­mine sets in, and then there it is in full Tech­ni­col­or pro­ject­ed in my head, like it had actu­al­ly been made. It’s the sto­ry of a man who wakes up one morn­ing to dis­cov­er there’s no record of him ever hav­ing exist­ed. It’s like a dark fan­ta­sy, which I think is very cool. Like dystopi­an but with a real­ly cool twist. So he has no mon­ey and can’t get a job with­out a Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber, so he resorts to steal­ing just to sur­vive. One day, he steals an old lady, and he acci­den­tal­ly kills her by repeat­ed­ly stab­bing her until she is killed. But he’s a good man and it was just the des­per­a­tion that drove him to this bru­tal, sense­less act. So he feels real­ly guilty and decides to turn him­self in, but the police can’t arrest him because of some loop­hole about them not being able to arrest a per­son who doesn’t offi­cial­ly exist, so he takes his case to the Supreme Court, and it ends with him giv­ing an impas­sioned speech before the teary-eyed jus­tices about how no one is nobody and if he can’t pay for his crimes then that is very unfair because every­one deserves to be able to repent if they kill an old lady or even oth­er­wise. It’s called Who Shall Remain Name­less and it’s actu­al­ly a metaphor for the mod­ern world in which we now live, how tech­nol­o­gy iso­lates us, and how we are all cogs in this bru­tal machine we call civ­i­liza­tion with­out air quotes but it should have air quotes. And big busi­ness. To say it’s a pow­der keg is an under­state­ment. One exec­u­tive even admit­ted to me that he’d total­ly lose his job if he financed this movie. How’s that for a pow­der keg?

‘Antkind: A Nov­el’ is pub­lished by 4^th Estate and is avail­able now.