The truth finder
The Truth Finder is a novel by Donald Antrim , published in New York in 2000 under the title The Verificationist and in Germany in 2015. It describes the increasing loss of reality of a group of psychologists over the course of an evening together.
content
The novel is the report of a long night in which the middle-aged psychologist Tom invited a group of colleagues to a pancake restaurant for a conversation about professional issues. Before the more vicious than funny protagonist could start throwing slices of toast at those present, a colleague grasps him from behind with his arms, lifts him up and immobilizes him in this way for the rest of the evening. He frees himself from this grip through a growing, rampant hallucination , he is flying around under the ceiling of the restaurant. The novel is Tom's report to the reader about his observations, assumptions and associations that revolve around his colleagues, his wife's loyalty and the seduction of a young waitress.
Narrative
All knowledge appears doubtful from the start. Bernhardt, the captivating colleague wearing Tom, is at the same time a Richard, something tempting and difficult to imagine is at the same time its opposite, the flying Tom is “not terribly high above the floor”, but just a sentence later just as well “quite high above the floor ".
Tom's feelings are as fluctuating as the evaluations of external reality. An intensely felt sympathy only lasts “for a moment”, Tom's moods change from one moment to the next and since he is not sure about his appetite, his order from the young waitress becomes an inner drama.
From the point of view of the psychologist, this uncertainty in the world becomes the task of deciphering secret messages and symbols. The whole world is just a shimmering foil over the actual intentions. "In my job, it's important to study such signs," says Tom. How those involved behave that evening and what they say often stands for something different and mostly for a barely hidden sexual desire.
The protagonist Tom is observed by his colleagues with the same skeptical attention that he lurks to analyze. You know him as someone who ignores social etiquette, throws food at them and spits water on them. He's behaving so crazy again in the restaurant that they describe him as a patient who is disturbed in several ways and for whom a lifelong admission is not too far off. “Take a look and learn,” comments one of the older psychologists.
The topics or sequences, which are often dealt with in psychological jargon , are linked in an associative circle, can largely be exchanged in the order in a thought experiment and therefore hardly show any internal development. But there is a change in the central dimension of the second reality: First of all, the loss of the floor is a hallucination, even Tom, again and again, which is only observed by the other guests. But then they begin to behave as if Tom flying around under the covers were a reality for them too: "... the psychologists ducked" in front of Tom scurrying past. Or: "'What was that?" Asked Leslie Constant's voice with the English accent as I shot past the aquarium ... ". Finally, several from the group of psychologists are floating over the tables.
The second reality in this gathering of truth finders gradually permeates the actual one, and within the second level a third level of new fantasies develops later ... Tom is undoubtedly an unreliable narrator , but the first level of the narrative already includes his all night long embrace by Bernhard - the weirdness of the whole group is therefore verified as a basic assumption.
The pancake house is located in an American east coast city on the edge of an abandoned airfield, from which actually only hobbyists can take off their crackling small planes by remote control. In the symbolic play of places, Antrim lets rise up a collective parallel world of this group of specialists who were supposed to help their patients to regain contact with reality. And part of this game is that the protagonist sees the brightly lit pyramid-shaped roof of the city hospital gradually approaching during his flight from under the ceiling of the restaurant, until his colleagues there say goodbye to the intensive care unit on the last few pages.
interpretation
This concentrated novel of only 200 pages has the texture of a very professional failure. The truth finder Tom and his colleagues get lost in disparate realities. This directly means the profession of psychologists and also that of the American philosophers with their evocation of multiple worlds ( Saul Kripke , David Lewis et al.). In addition, the novel can also be read as an allegory of the failure of all social sciences whose exit from underage ( Kant ) ends as entry into insignificance.
Conspiracy theories are booming today and in their echo worlds the demand for a plausible verification (“The Verificationist” is the American title) is already denounced as an element of another conspiracy. In the context of the latest American cultural history, people are now writing about the disintegration of hegemony into narratives that are no longer competing, but rather in parallel rampant narratives. Amazingly, Antrim anticipated this development in his allegory a good twenty years before its open appearance.
Antrim's fellow American writer George Saunders called it "a Freudian free-for-all" and "Antrim's unsung masterpiece" in the New York Times. In his foreword to the present edition, however, he emphasizes the lack of intent of this novel, which for him is the hallmark of the best narrative literature.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Truth Finder. Novel. Translation of Brigitte Heinrich. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-499-27079-6
- ↑ Compare, for example, Mark Lilla , The Unrestrained Spirit. Die Tyrannophilie der intellectuals, Munich: Kösel 2015 (USA 2001), especially p. 192 ff., Or ders., The truth about our libertarien age, In: https://newrepublic.com/article/118043/our-libertarian -age-dogma-democracy-dogma-decline , where he criticizes the failure of anti-neoliberal intellectuals to develop new narratives. Similarly, Gustav Seibt in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 16, 2016, p. 11, who examines the clumsiness of intellectuals in analyzing Trump's election victory.
- ^ Dwight Garner: More Coffee? Wonder What She Meant by That . In: The New York Times , February 20, 2000. Retrieved February 14, 2014.