Donald Antrim

Donald Antrim, author of a loosely-defined trilogy of novels, a memoir, a collection of stories, and a significant number of stand-alone stories in high-profile literary magazines (especially the New Yorker, where he has a more than twenty-year publishing history) is, counterfactually perhaps, a shadowy character of the American literary world. His biographical note is performatively sparse: his works, his most prominent awards, and where he lives: either New York City or Brooklyn, New York. But, this sparseness is not the entire picture: Antrim, carefully reluctant in the literary spotlight, is also the author of the stridently personal The Afterlife (2006), which tells the story of his mother’s life and death, and is determinedly upfront in its disclosure of the author’s presence and role in that book: “The story of my life is bound up in this story, the story of [Antrim’s mother’s] deterioration” (Antrim 2008, p. 5).