Reading Jonathan Lethem ...?

one of my big questions coming away was whether or not we're meant to take chase's eventual understandings (chaldron as virtual treasure, janice as his own role's fictional backstory) as "really real", or whether these merely reflect the defeated version of reality he ultimately chooses.

Ha! Good question. It certainly feels less real than most of the book up to that point.

As for the the third-person sections, the question “Who is writing this?” (in a novel about ghostwriting and fakery) is significantly more interesting than usual.

I don't know: I don't think Lethem is interested enough in that kind of jiggery-pokery to put enough clues in for 'aha!' readings: I mean, I'd very much like to make the central Perkus Tooth section by the writer chick, say. But that would probably not be doable.

The section with Perkus at the doctor is contextualised as Chase reporting it, though only in a vaguely after-the-fact way.

Re: Lethem and Rucker: that schtick is very much a thing now, isn't it? 'SF noir' or whatever. Richard Morgan wrote a series of them, M. John Harrison did one for his return to SF (not v. good), I'm sure other people could name more.

I've never even seen it, it's like it just never reached the radar here. He seems to have fallen away entirely as a serious figure after Fortress, but you make it sound like the opposite. I don't even know whether this is out in paperback yet (I presume so, it's been out for what, years now?).

― Ismael Klata, Friday, 22 April 2011 17:52 (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah I got this for like four pounds off of amazon when I was reading it, upthread: it's in mass-market paperback, yet. I'd never seen a copy here and then when I was in New York at the start of the year I saw a bunch of remaindered copies (of the UK edition, specifically) at the Strand.

And cosign about middle-class observers: I think this is a pretty respectable thing to do, though.

Gun, With Occasional Music - i do not like parodies of hardboiled writing
Girl in Landscape - very good
Fortress of Solitude - gave up around 200 pages in

which is better, the UK or US cover of CC?

and is the text inside different? Probably.

I wouldn't want to read the LITTLE Faber edition of CC - it's too little.

But then I did read Fortress at the same size, so that doesn't make much sense.

I don't know: I don't think Lethem is interested enough in that kind of jiggery-pokery to put enough clues in for 'aha!' readings: I mean, I'd very much like to make the central Perkus Tooth section by the writer chick, say. But that would probably not be doable.

Yeah, I didn't mean that there were clues and stuff. I just like to think about things like that.

And cosign about middle-class observers: I think this is a pretty respectable thing to do, though.

Yes. And this time it was a joke -- the most bland, least writer-ly narrator possible.

above, the phrase 'loopy riffing' is key - it doesn't feel very structured. Though when I sort of put this to JL once he gave the impression that this was not deliberate, and it should feel more driven than it does.

But once Perkus goes to the doctor, it picks up momentum and seriousness (for Perkus), doesn't it? I can't remember how far in that was, and I've loaned out my copy.

I have just been reminded by this thread what zaftig might mean.

http://www.businessinsider.com/jennifer-egan-just-jonathan-lethem-occupy-wall-street-2011-11

This book of collected essays is looking pretty good to me: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/books/jonathan-lethems-ecstasy-of-influence-review.html

I am reading it

it is very much about him and his life and things he has done and thought and felt

Who'd a thunk it?

i'm gonna be in a book with this dude. mentioned it on ilm. should be coming out in a month or so.

http://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/Books/978-0-8223-5108-5_pr.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/Pop-When-World-Falls-Apart/dp/0822351080

nice work, scott

that article though

. He’s a novelist who has spent a lifetime creating his own subversive pantheon, a jumpy CBGB’s of the literary soul.

Mr. Lethem’s crowded pantheon, “The Ecstasy of Influence” makes clear, includes Marvel comic books and misfit writers like Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, Shirley Jackson and Charles Willeford. It includes improvisational filmmakers like John Cassavetes, little-known bands like the Go-Betweens and rumpled, bohemian critics like Manny Farber.

yeah er

that free-wheelin' j lethem, and his fondness for non-canonised and under-critically-recognised things like philip dick and ballard and kirby and the go-betweens

Yeah, I know. I liked most of the quotes from JL himself but that reviewer sounds like he just dropped in to see what condition his condition was in.

that's such an american thing. that ramshackle iconoclast thing. you look at author bios in shaggy obscure books from the 30s and 40s by american authors and you see stuff like "in his travels he has worked as a carnival sideshow barker, a gold prospector, and also dined with the Duke of Windsor." or something like that. that's why bob dylan was such catnip to journalists. and woodie guthrie before him.

>>> that free-wheelin' j lethem, and his fondness for non-canonised and under-critically-recognised things like philip dick and ballard and kirby and the go-betweens

I AGREE

these things are mostly hugely recognized or in some cases even overrated

though I suppose he could point to his fondness for obscure rather than famous superheroes

He does!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_the_Unknown

I read most of the essay collection a couple of weeks ago. The examples of reporting (e.g. James Brown) are first-rate. However, I'd real problems with a few of the formless things; and including the response to James Wood was stupid and immature.

pinefox agrees with me about something, good lord

is the james wood thing online anywhere? library copy of this is 'in processing at the copyright receipt office' and i have no idea how long that takes

What irritated me was Lethem concentrating on Wood's appropriately dismissive reply ("I'm sorry you feel that way," Lethem remembers Wood said in a brief note) as if it revealed Wood's innate snobbbery.

here's that essay --- http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/12467824780/my-disappointment-critic
it is not great, though i kind of appreciate his willingness to come across as so needy. or maybe that isn't what he meant at all. but lethem is obviously an author who esteems critics almost as much as artists, I think.
anyhoo, the ecstasy of influence was a fun read for the most part -- alfred otm about the reporting, that james brown feature is incredible, and his dylan piece is great as well.

huh. for me 'j wood probably deserves it' trumps 'kind of a bad look for j lethem'. but, yeah, kind of a bad look.

oh he definitely deserves it (tho i do like some of his writing)

wonder when he's just going to give up and take a job at the av club

All critics deserve it, but a critic and writer as smart as Wood deserves evisceration, not kicking sand on his feet, playground style.

i thought you guys were wood fans.

or thought he was an ilx fave.

I'm a fan! But every critic is a target.

I've loved more of Wood's productions over the years than Lethem's, but that's an unfair comparison.

just looked at the lethem wood thing. kinda embarrassing. like listening to someone talk about getting dumped by their boyfriend.

I know HE probably doesn't care... (he says something like that twice in the thing)

like listening to someone talk about getting dumped by their boyfriend.

otm -- it's creepy in a predictable way

what else was Wood supposed to say beyond "I'm sorry you feel this way"??

"So I hear McG has optioned 'Gun with Occasional Music'..."

yes the anti-Wood essay is not good

the 'Holidays' bit of fiction has its few brief moments while feeling like the work of someone else, some post-Barthelme type that Stevie T would have praised in 1997

the 'Crazy Friend' Dick essay shows some of the problems - reams of overdetermined / overcomplicated stuff about 'the shame' of telling two girls that he liked SF (probably there wasn't really any 'shame' at all; a bit of embarrassment and a recognition that his tastes were becoming different from theirs)

there is a weird tendency to over-analyze things in this way ... I suppose it's what writers do and should do, but usually they do it about others, not just themselves?

Franzen appears pp.26-7 btw

rereading The Fortress of Solitude, having walked down Dean Street again just yesterday.

I ventilate this yet again
http://www.powells.com/review/2003_10_09.html
and immediately see the mixture of blindness and insight - within two paras he dismisses JL's best book but has an interesting angle on characterization.

I am finding the book much easier to read this time round, though still dense. I see its prose delicacy and lyricism (the first section, this is, the bit that Wood liked). And the dialogue feels peculiarly well judged, well heard and delivered. I think I still see some of what frustrated me about the novel too, even in Part One.

I just gave a copy of You Don't Love Me Yet as a gift to the English prof I've been working with for the last four months. She's never heard of Lethem, but she seemed to be hitting on quite a few decidedly Lethem-y themes in the course (Canadian Poetry), particularly wrt this novel. I'm looking forward to discussing it with her.

I admire a lot of things about this book, but there were always things I had trouble with, and I am reminded of both of these aspects as I reread it.

One thing I have trouble with is the amount of talk about graffiti, which is a thing I am not generally keen on.

I'm afraid that this book is quite paradoxical as a book that I like that is sometimes about things that I do not like. I suppose there are some other books like that, like The Line of Beauty. But in that book you are not supposed to like the Cons, whereas I feel that in this book you are supposed to like the graffiti.

What don't you like about graffiti?

If you like it, then I would not want to get into an argument with you, or anyone, about it.

FWIW, one thing that I think I don't like about it is that it is a violation of public space by a private interest. Someone claims this space as their own, 'tagging', perhaps analogously to a cat marking its territory. But it's not theirs - it's ours.

This does not mean that I approve of corporate / neoliberal violations or enclosures of public space, either.

I also generally do not find graffiti attractive, though presumably that cannot be a universal rule as I suppose in theory graffiti could look like anything.

In general, this novel is much more indulgent toward crime (petty crime - graffiti, petty theft from shops, firing water hydrants at motorists, etc) than I would want to be. I am sorry to say that I feel that JL, like the character, has a desire to be cool and fit in with the big boys which makes him effectively endorse behaviour that is anti-social and wrong.

I say this having not nearly, on this rereading, reached the later section where it discusses prison and thus approaches crime from, presumably, another angle. I am just talking about the first part.

But the notion of public space as "ours" is incredibly problematic within The Fortress of Solitude anyway because it's clear that the people within the book don't see it that way - "ours" never means everyone's. And I mean both the characters we spend time with and the changing swathe of humanity in the background. I think Lethem gets gentrification better than any author I've read (except maybe Richard price) - the faultlines where "theirs" becomes "ours" and vice-versa.

I suppose that graffiti and petty crime, maybe crime in general, is one expression of the conflicting tiers of 'ownership' within cities, from the theft of Dylan's bike onwards.

Chronic City addresses similar themes as well, less successfully.

From my POV the theft of the bike is a heinous act by a horrible person. Such a theft is arguably less of a victimless crime than graffiti (though for the reason I've given I don't think graffiti is victimless either).

I want to reread CC, as recently going to NYC made me think again about the specificity of Manhattan, especially upper Manhattan, as part of the theme of that book.

The racist bullying, humiliation and intimidation of the central character, in general, upset or annoy me in the first part of TFOS.

But this should perhaps be set against the occasional, or increasing, obnoxiousness of that character, which might make all this seem 'deserved' or something (though such a trade-off doesn't really add up).

Surely it's supposed to upset you? The later obnoxiousness of the character doesn't come into it at the time. It's been a while since I read this though, I seem to remember the book sagging considerably in the adulthood section, but what came before that was so great I almost didn't care at the time.

Everyone seems to say that the later section is mediocre in that way. I'm not sure, when I glance forward at it it looks like fun and I look forward to rereading it.

I meant the obnoxiousness of the character when still a child. He is not very nice to the girl on p.181, for instance. And he is into graffiti, which, as we know, I don't like, so I think him obnoxious on that score.

I do think that the first section contains some good writing.

Including

Up from the canyon floor, out of the deep well of streets, gazing out into the Brooklyn Beyond is like standing in a Kansas prairie contemplating distance. Every rooftop for miles in every direction is level with that where you stand. The rooftops form a flotilla of rafts, a potential chessboard for your knight-hops, interrupted only by the promontory of the Wyckoff housing projects, the skeletal Eagle Clothing sign, the rise of the F-train platform where it elevates past the Gowanus Canal. Manhattan's topped, but Brooklyn's an open-faced sandwich in the light, bare parts picked over by pigeons and gulls.

re the crime theme, somewhat contradicting my earlier perception, I should note that the Aeroman project involves 'fighting crime'. I like this.