Reading Jonathan Lethem ...?

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.

A lot of drugs are taken in this book.

The idea that the third section of the book is less well-judged than the first is a familiar one. I think I now have to endorse it.

The whole Camden College sequence is a parade of unpleasantness. And the sequence at the commune house in San Francisco, that whole chapter, doesn't seem to belong in this book.

The broad satirical sections on Hollywood and the SF convention are readable, though.

I liked O-Jay-Jay-Jay, he still makes me chuckle

If that is something in the book then I think I can not have reached it yet in this rereading. I am on p.400 or so.

I reached it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8ZuRuZNIQo

re Part III: the whole VT and CA sequences seem ill-founded digressions; the pace and level of detail don't seem optimum. And yet, as soon as it gets back to Brooklyn, at the start of ch III: 10 I'm utterly compelled, every line of narrative and dialogue is a new thrill.

I'm afraid this is to say that, apparently, James Wood was right.

I finally read THIS SHAPE WE'RE IN. It's very imaginative. JL on top of odd, fizzing language, one of his strengths.

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/outborough-destiny-jonathan-lethems-dissident-gardens/

http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/79685/

this guy fell off so hard

just reading the character names gets me riled up now

she's named Rose, get it? GET IT?

I'm gonna read this anyway, because it's about grandparents similar to my own and takes place in the borough where I live. Will probably at least enjoy it on that level.

Starts off well but not sure if I'll make it all the way

The difficulties inherent in this project of redemption are evident in the novel’s greatest human creation, Lenny Angrush.

Aimless wrote:

--

I finished Motherless Brooklyn a couple of nights ago and it left a mixed bag of impressions. The prose was deliberately and rather heavily stylized but Lethem generally stayed on his chosen tightrope without falling off very often. In the end it was more a plus than a minus.

As for its plot and characters, those basic elements which most books rely upon for their impact, it was not a very good book. The gimmick of a narrator with Tourette's syndrome was at least carried off with internal consistency, but whether Lethem's confident portrayal was in any way accurate is hard to say and I am skeptical of it. If you took away the endless caressing of this feature of the narrator he would almost disappear. The story was goofy and pointless and the other characters showed only fitful signs of life.

It's easy to see why this book attracted reviewers' accolades; it presented a wholly new gimmick and the style is meant to dazzle you. It stands out in a crowd of sameness. But once you've been dazzled and put the book aside, it's about as impressive as a spent sparkler on July 5th.
--

I differ, and agree with Alfred and James Redd that this is his best work.

I don't make any claim that the book is accurate re Tourette's - I wouldn't know.

But it is one of those novels that have stayed with me and shaped my imagination for years -- the opposite of a spent sparkler. An ongoing memory of fireworks over Coney Island.

fwiw my brother who has tourette's loved the book

forgot to read dissident gardens, anyone read it?

not i but looks interesting + up my alley -- last book of his i think i read was the one about smoking pot in NY and virtual reality gaming

I did. Not very keen. Actually too close to the Rushdie and / or Pynchon model of narration and character, and as a novel of the US Left it comes across as a hatchet job which I don't think was the intention at all. I prefer CHRONIC CITY which has just been referred to - slack and rangy but more agreeable.

That is quite interesting / surprising that someone with Tourette's liked MB !

JL near his best! (TFOS)

--

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.

― the pinefox, Sunday, April 28, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink