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Memoir from Antproof Case
Memoir from Antproof Case | Mark Helprin
7 posts | 8 read | 2 to read
An old American who lives in Brazil is writing his memoirs. An English teacher at the naval academy, he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niterói, overlooking the ocean. As he reminisces and writes, placing the pages carefully in his antproof case, we learn that he was a World War II ace who was shot down twice, an investment banker who met with popes and presidents, and a man who was never not in love. He was the thief of the century, a murderer, and a protector of the innocent. And all his life he waged a valiant, losing, one-man battle against the world’s most insidious enslaver: coffee. Mark Helprin combines adventure, satire, flights of transcendence, and high comedy in this "memoir" of a man whose life reads like the song of the twentieth century.
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xicanti
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I‘m determined to finish MEMOIR FROM ANTPROOF CASE this afternoon. I had to bump it back to my in-between book because I found the first half very good but also very slow, but things‘ve really picked up now. At first, I thought the narrator generated the absurdity himself while everyone else lived in our world, but it‘s become increasingly obvious that everything‘s deeply weird here. Y‘all know how much I love weird stuff.

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xicanti
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I‘m reading another chunk of MEMOIR FROM ANTPROOF CASE through the smoke.

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xicanti
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This is me, plugging away at MEMOIR FROM ANTPROOF CASE. I‘m enjoying it, but I can‘t seem to actually sit down and READ it so it‘s taking me forever. Blah. Its oversized trade paperbackness is at least part of the problem. Current Me wouldn‘t even have bought it in this format, but Past Me succumbed to the lure of the Book Market‘s $1 table.

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xicanti
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I‘m gonna post a book (or series) from my TBR every day until I‘ve shared the lot. No descriptions. No explanations. Just a whole bunch of books I haven‘t read yet.

This is Day 10.

#LaTBRrevealed

review
Trace
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Pickpick

Standard work from Helprin that ties everything together as the stories unfold. Was wondering what all of the coffee talk was about and as usual the eventual revelation was astounding.

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Stepsanders
Pickpick

Maximalism at it most minimal. Hilarious and somber. Hard read but worth it.