The following version of this book was sued to create this study guide: Kaufman, Charlie. Antkind. New York: Random House, 2020.

The novel begins with a brief prologue set in St. Augustine, Florida in the 1890s. Two young boys discover a strange creature on the shore. One of the boys theorizes that the creature is comprised of the bodies of the boys’ future selves. The main narrative begins approximately in the present day. Balaam “B.” Rosenberger Rosenberg is a generally unsuccessful film critic in his late fifties. He arrives in St. Augustine to do research for a film studies project. By chance, he meets a reclusive, elderly man named Ingo Cutbirth. Ingo has spent his life making an experimental stop-motion animation film. It has a runtime of about three months. B. watches the film and believes it to be an undiscovered masterpiece. Ingo suddenly dies, and B. decides that he should bring the film back to New York City for further viewing and study. Unfortunately, the film soon spontaneously combusts.

B. returns to New York City feeling dejected. Soon, he decides that he must try to remember Ingo’s film in perfect detail, and then transcribe it. B. returns to his job as a film studies teacher. However, his feelings of frustration cause him to have hostile outbursts, and he loses his job. B. begins visiting therapists to see if they have any techniques to help him remember Ingo’s film. B. eventually meets a hypnotherapist named Barassini, whose techniques begin to help B. clearly recall the film. B. recalls only one scene at a time. He remembers that two recurring characters in the film were a comedy duo named Mudd and Molloy. Between hypnosis sessions, B., struggles with personal isolation and loneliness. He develops feelings for a woman named Tsai, who hates him. She devises ways to humiliate B., such as ordering him to apply for arbitrary jobs. B., desperate for some form of connection, obeys her orders, and he begins working at a deli.

Tsai eventually breaks contact with B., and B. acquires a job in the marketing department of Zappos (a shoe company.) Meanwhile, B. continues his hypnosis sessions with Barassini. B. soon discovers that he is able to view scenes that Ingo created and purposely did not film. The filmed scenes are generally comedic, while the un-filmed ones are much more tragic in tone. For the time being, Mudd and Molloy continue to be the main focus of the film. In the story, Molloy begins to make suggestions for their act that directly oppose comedic conventions. As a result, Mudd and Molloy’s career begins to quickly decline.

Eventually, B. begins to have dreams in which a woman named Abbitha appears to him. She claims to be from the future, and she says that she is projecting herself back in time, into B.’s consciousness, using a future technology called Brainio. Abbitha says that she has created a Brainio film about Donald Trump (whom she refers to as Donald Trunk due to a mistranslation in historical records.) Abbitha shows B. parts of the film and asks him to translate the film into a novel. However, the film is presented from within Trump/Trunk’s consciousness, and B. finds it too taxing to experience.

B. continues to attend hypnosis sessions to try to recall Ingo’s film. B. recalls various scenes and storylines that occasionally intersect. Most of the storylines involve comedy duos similar to Mudd and Molloy. One storyline focuses on a meteorologist who is obsessed with finding a way to predict the future. Meanwhile, B.’s real life continues to deteriorate. He becomes increasingly destitute, and circumstances eventually cause him to be without a home. Then, during a hypnosis session, B. finds that he can physically/metaphysically escape into the ‘Unseen.’ The Unseen is the plane of existence where Ingo’s purposely un-filmed scenes exist. B. wanders through the Unseen for an indeterminate amount of time.

When B. returns to reality, he finds that the universe has replaced him with a doppelganger. The doppelganger is gregarious, successful, and generally beloved. The doppelganger has published a novelization of Ingo’s film. However, the film that the doppelganger describes is very different form the one that B. remembers. B. eventually kills the doppelganger and tries to take his place. B. then notices that other changes have been made to the world as well. For example, Barassini is an actor, not a hypnotist. B. searches for another hypnotist who might help him recall Ingo’s film. Meanwhile, political tensions rise as Donald Trump (now referred to as Donald Trunk) attempts to take authoritarian control of the country. Meanwhile, a fast food conglomerate called Slammy’s attempts to do the same thing. Eventually, war erupts between Trunk and Slammy’s.

The war causes much destruction, and many parts of society relocate to networks of caves. B. wanders through the caves, still attempting to recall Ingo’s film. One day, he finds what appears to be a copy of Ingo’s film. However, when B. watches the film it merely depicts a blank white screen. Eventually, Ingo appears on the screen and speaks to B. Ingo says that nothing is ever the same in two separate moments, not even films, which are supposedly permanent. Eventually, B. recalls what he believes to be the end of Ingo’s film. The ending is set one million years in the future, and it follows an intelligent ant named Calcium. Calcium discovers what appears to be B.’s skeleton. Calcium then attempts to build a time machine, but the film then ends. B. decides that he will abandon his goal of perfectly remembering and transcribing the film. He feels a sense of fulfillment and equanimity. He decides to simply play parts of the film in his mind, and to never speak of it to anyone else. However, the film then disappears from his mind. As the novel ends, B. decides to simply accept the changeable, unpredictable nature of memory.