FAMILY reunions can prove as explosive as international diplomacy. In fact, family members often play far dirtier than politicians for what may appear far pettier stakes. Donald Antrim's second novel. The Hundred Brothers (Seeker & Warburg, £9.99 in UK), attempts the impossible - in more ways than one. The notion of a man fathering 100 sons who know each other well enough to have some memories and strong dislikes - mainly of each other - tests credulity to the limits.
Ranging in age from Hiram, the clan's elder, who has reached 93, to the nervous young fathers who are under orders not to read their father's collection of pornographic material, the brothers are a strange group, particularly as presented by Doug the narrator. Each year they gather in the vast library of the family home. Sympathy not being central to his personality, Doug is a detached, somewhat formal character and certainly experiences few pangs of sentiment. "The collective persona of this family," he says, "could reasonably be described as frantic, romantic, lethargic, sarcastic, fearful, frustrated, tipsy, pugnacious, unchaste, heartless, dog eat dog, borderline narcissistic, nervously narrow minded, and more or less resigned to despair although occasionally festive when inebriated. This can be problematic."
Doug introduces his various siblings - more through their afflictions and nervous tics than by their personalities but it is the great library itself which provides the strongest sense of the nature of the family these men belong to. Robert Coover and William Gaddis are the writers who appear to have most influenced Antrim, and his approach to this narrative echoes Coover's absurdist masterpiece Gerald's Party (1985), an admittedly far longer, denser and more linguistically complex work.
From the outset it is obvious that Doug, the amateur genealogist, is far from perfect. He explains that "the deep investigation into blood line and blood's congenital inheritances particularly in connection with insane monarchs has become a primary avocation of mine. I'm not crazy. But I do have the blood of an insane monarch running through my veins. We all do."
Instead of travelling back in his family's history, Doug describes the immediate physical environment of the library, though not in terms of the books it contains. Concentrating on the dead animals adorning the walls, he says in a rare moment of tenderness: "Poor squandered animals. My heart goes out to them. Their faces seem to scream out final terror. What a crummy way to spend the afterlife, tacked up in a room fall of men falling down or shouting obscenities at each other Yes, as family get togethers go, Antrim's is low on brotherly love.
Since returning from the tropics, Maxwell the botanist appears to be suffering from a strange disease and is continually falling about, smashing heirlooms. Another brother, Barry, the doctor, tries to help. Various brawls break out. Further tension is created by the presence of a vicious pet Doberman. In the midst of the madness taking over the library, Doug is approached by Larry, yet another brother, who confides: "I'm having a little problem with God." Are we about to see the gentler side of Doug? "Was this one of those occasions for prayer? A brief and silent prayer for the happiness and wellbeing of a troubled younger brother?" he wonders. But it is not. All the same, Doug has enough of a conscience to wonder, after a cruelly deadpan exchange with Larry, "why did I tell him this lie? Now he would suppose his problems were unusual and grave, rather than ordinary and average, and he would feel alone with them.
ANTRIM creates a world out of a library filled with misfits, weirdos and drunks who are hiding among the stacks. We never find out anything about Dad; the nearest he comes to having a presence is a damp patch of plaster on the library ceiling which reminds Doug of his father's face.
One of the more intimate conversations involves old Hiram's advising Doug of the virtue and value of dental flossing. "Your teeth are your greatest possession" he warns. Dinner includes cartoon adventures such as Doug's crawling around under the table to caress Hiram's shoes. The after a minor skirmish or two, and, of course, the indoor football game, Doug briskly sets off on his annual ritual which consists of racing masked but naked through the library. This year it is cold and the library is flooded: "Our soaked floor would be treacherous without footwear. I elected this compromise: shoes and socks but no pants or underpants, and for warmth, my sport coat, but no shirt." The object of the Corn King's run is largely to avoid being beaten to death by his crazy brothers who are armed with "burning sticks and fireplace pokers".
Antrim succeeds through the consistent tone of low key farce. Doug is obviously as insane, probably more insane, than his brothers. With the absolute minimum of detail, the book catches the atmosphere of a decaying upstate New York mansion. Ultimately it fails to come up to the standard of Coover or Gaddis or Barthelme, yet it is blackly funny and tightly written. Antrim does not carry his sick joke beyond its limits. Most importantly of all, he has followed Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World an hilariously farcical first novel, with a snappy performance balancing menace and humour.
