Reading Jonathan Lethem ...?

Lucky Alan >>> King of Sentences

I liked Men & Cartoons, have been planning to read Fortress for months, and keep bypassing Gun cause I'm trying to soak up 'serious' 'literary' 9ugh) stuff for the sake of my writing reservoir for the next 6 months.

Gun is worth it overall though?

Gun is fun, you can read it in, like, a day.

(I think ILComics has a thread about the comic?)

You Knew It Was Coming: Lethem Hired By Marvel

I just finished *Motherless Brooklyn*, which I bought in Brooklyn when trying to shed dollars, and read much of on the aeroplane back through the changing night. I thought it marvellous - probably the best thing I've read by JL. *The Fortress of Solitude* I am very fond of, in my own strange way, but it's very sprawling and long and, as said upthread, uneven, and makes more of local hip references than MB does. MB is compact, energized, driven, compelling; very dry and droll also.

In *Men & Cartoons* I quite liked the first story and 'Vivian Relf', and the cover art is smashing. *The Disappointment Artist* I think too thoroughly self-absorbed, really. I also read *The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye* (US version, different from UK I believe), some of which is again impressive, some feeling more half-baked.

have you read any of the pre-fortress of solitude novels, 'fox? i kind of feel like his stuff since is trying to square the two different sorts of writer he is, or invent a whole other writer who might have written , coincidentally, one of the books he actually did write

never been that much of a fan of motherless brooklyn, although i guess finding that someone can, suddenly, write convincing and idiomatic crime fiction, without doing so before, is more of a talent than i perhaps give it credit for

his comic book, 'omega the unknown', with an artist who is called something like 'pharrell dalyrymple', is rather good

I'm reading Disappointment Artist now, enjoying it thoroughly. The essay on The Searchers made me want to watch it again.

Thomp, no I guess I haven't read any novels pre-MB, though in my own crazy way I feel like I've read a ton of JL. This must be partly just the osmosis of having so much of it looking at me from my shelves every day.

i guess finding that someone can, suddenly, write convincing and idiomatic crime fiction, without doing so before, is more of a talent than i perhaps give it credit for

Weren't Gun and a couple others basically sci-fi crime novels?

Yeah, pretty much. Noir-ish.

x-post: yah gun was totally a crime/noir novel - dont know abt the other ones, werent they more straight-ish sci-fi?? i'm thinking of amnesia moon + girl in landscape.

Amnesia Moon and Girl in Landscape are straight-up sci-fi, but they both have strong mystery elements. Each features a protagonist engaged with a central riddle that propels the story. Superficially less true of And She Climed Across the Table. That one's a love story, but it treats love and the loved as essentially unknowable, and the characters are consumed by what they can't know about one another. So, maybe it counts, too.

"At perihelion Dylan felt himself to be a note of music, one delayed, now floating upward."

Just now reading Fortress of Solitude -- several years too late, I suppose. I'm only 1/4 of the way through or so, but it's spectacular. I'd worried that it would be watered down, tamed in comparison to his other novels, but it's better and richer in every way. The characters, the culture, the sense of place and time, the point of view, everything about it makes me high. Love the wish-fulfillment stuff about the ring, which has just shown up, but I'm worried that it will unblance the texture of the story. Looking forward to finding out...

regarding the post prvs to last -

gun = sci fi hardboiled
moon = sci fi dystopia
table = sci fi campus novel
landscape = sci fi western

although that's kinda limiting.

the sentence you quote, contenderizer - is that from the baseball game ..? whenever i see sentences quoted from that novel i never remember reading them, ha

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in re this:

i guess finding that someone can, suddenly, write convincing and idiomatic crime fiction, without doing so before, is more of a talent than i perhaps give it credit for

Weren't Gun and a couple others basically sci-fi crime novels?

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 6 July 2008 23:50 (1 month ago) Link

i don't think gun with is a convincing & idiomatic crime novel (whatever i meant by that at the time) insomuch as a sci fi novel that's wearing the idea of being a crime novel as a kind of funny hat - this isn't meant to be a slur

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the pinefox upthread mentions fortress's "local hip references": this is interesting, because i thought that that book did the business of being immersed in popular culture incredibly well, and i don't know at what point i'd draw the line between the references that are local, hip & those that aren't

The line is from the nostalgic wallball game that Dylan and Mingus start up with Arthur Lomb, when Dylan first feels the effects, just before the bit about "Grandmaster DJ Flowers" block party set.

Agree that Lethem doesn't seem to be using Fortress to flog a set of hipster trading cards. I'd say he's chronicling a moment in a place, and since the intersection he's working carries a measure of retrospective cultural currency, some of the references do seem hip -- but that's secondary to Lethem's intent. He's just trying to get it all in.

...though, admittedly, a line is walked. "Grandmaster DJ Flowers" alone is enough to half-justify pinefox's complaint, now that I think about it.

Finally reading Gun now btw and thomp your comment is incisive and instructive!

Surprised that you didn't like Motherless Brookly, thomp, as it seems much like Fortress of Solitude to me -- in terms of how well it nails a place and time, building a cultural history as much as repeating one. The genre trappings didn't interest me half as much as the main character, setting and tone, all of which I loved. Maybe too cute by 10%, but not enough to sink things. Then again, I lived a few blocks off Court Street at the time I read it and could walk around trying to snoop out the locations mentioned, so that colors my appreciation.

...though, admittedly, a line is walked. "Grandmaster DJ Flowers" alone is enough to half-justify pinefox's complaint, now that I think about it.

-- contenderizer

^^ this, or whatever we're saying these days.

i think my problems with motherless brooklyn were i) i wanted him to do more with the narrator's Tourette's ii) the whole structure didn't really amount to much more than 'yup, i have managed to write a crime novel'—tho, now i think about it, i'm not sure any of his books have wrapped themselves up in ways that i was 100% on.

i mean it's still better than his rock novel.

the thing about the streets makes me think of rereading sherlock holmes as a grown up and instead of it being in weird old detective town everything was, like, two minutes walk from the borders on charing cross ... i'm not sure what that adds, or takes away ...

HOOS how are you finding it? I think it's my least favorite of his skiffy ones, though possibly just because it's the only one I have reread.

1) fortress
2) brooklyn (although this was the first one i read and it was so long ago)
3) gun
4) table
5) landscape
6) moon
7) indie band

(not counting short stories)

interesting. my 1) and 7) are the same, but my 2) through 6) are exactly reversed.

which yes technically means 4) is the same as well--

Fortress
Brooklyn
Landscape
Moon
Table

having not read the other two (forgot about Indie Band -- is it really that bad?)

i think he needed to bang out a quick, low-ambition one just to be like "hey critics, i already wrote fortress, not gonna do that again, k?" so i don't think he's lost it or anything. it's not like it's unreadable but it's not great.

i'm w/ thomp in that i dont really get the love for motherless brooklyn. it seems to me the one that's been most acclaimed?? i remember a lot of critics finding fortress really overwritten + they were more ok w/ brooklyn.

motherless brooklyn was a lot more enjoyable than fortress of solitude. i think with FOS, he tried to write this sweeping narrative that just didn't work for me.

motherless brooklyn was really fun, i thought, but fortress of solitude dragged for me

i really liked his plagiarism piece in harper's

yes to both of those last posts. i also hated the switch from first person to third (or from third tp first, can't remember) in fortress of solitude

That ranking I posted yesterday was premature, 'cuz I haven't even finished Fortress yet. A little over halfway through now, and while it isn't dragging at all, I'm liking the book's midsection a lot less than the opening chapters, which I loved. Don't mind the shifting authorial POV, though. Fortress goes back and forth in voice all the time, 1st person to 3rd, even some 2nd person you's thrown in there. Works just fine as a means of reflecting Dylan's awareness and self-awareness at the same time.

What's starting to bother me, though, is the fact that the narrative voice digests the emotional/narrative significance of everything as it happens. I understand that Dylan is an overthinker, and that the narrative voice is mostly his, so it's appropriate for the writing to embody his obsessive self-awareness -- but nothing's left to the reader. There isn't much narrative subtlety, ambiguity or delicacy. Dylan seems to far too clearly see and understand both his own motivations and those of the people around him. And when he doesn't, the surprises seems somewhat clumsily telegraphed and programmatic.

Also starting to agree with Pinefox about the novel becoming a patchwork of hip cultural references, spat out in the manner of one of those cinematic montages that shuttle you quickly from the Vietnam era to the present day, marking the passage of time as a series of cliched "you were there!" banner images (the emergence of hip-hop!, punk rock!, crack cocaine!). Early chapters seemed to choose much less obvious cultural signifiers, and did a better job of presenting them within a framework of observational authenticity, as credible & compelling personal experience. Still liking the book quite a bit, but I'm starting to have reservations.

Excellent post. The "You Were There!" bits surely are justified though, because Dylan and Mingus *are* there - it's not like an 80s Wonder Years or anything. Given that it's set in Brooklyn at that time, I'm not sure how those cliches (if that is what they are) could be avoided. Plus, from reading The Disappointment Artist, it seems to be at least loosely autobiographical - so I don't think cliche is entirely fair

reading GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC at last, about halfway through

he's amazingly good at this schtick

even better, I suppose, in M Brooklyn

really if all his 1990s work is this good, no wonder people were so blown away

I really want to read M Brooklyn, even though Fortress left a bit of a bad taste in my mind (though I devoured it in like four days)...I thought the part at the end where Lethem blasts through Mingus's life post-prison leapt off the page in a way that little else in the novel did...I also thought the hipper-than-thou references were a bit distracting...

I like Lethem as an essayist but only sometimes...his pieces on comix and Cassavettes are great-pretentious, though his essay on sampling was imo boring-pretentious...

Did anyone read that Lethem story about a future where all the old basketball greats have their skills embedded in their shoes, and there's a weird lotto system where NBA players get assigned these old shoes and one guy gets Michael Jordan's shoes, and of course he becomes badass?

I really want to read M Brooklyn, even though Fortress left a bit of a bad taste in my mind (though I devoured it in like four days)

Read it! It saved Lethem for me. I was ready to give him up after Fortress, but on a whim I checked MB out from the library and was sooooo pleased. I do feel that, insofar as GWOM is a rather direct aping of the Chandler style whereas MB is kinda an updating of it, GWOM is more fun (and I enjoyed it more) but MB is more resonant and richer.

Did anyone read that Lethem story about a future where all the old basketball greats have their skills embedded in their shoes, and there's a weird lotto system where NBA players get assigned these old shoes and one guy gets Michael Jordan's shoes, and of course he becomes badass?

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:01 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Yeah they're exosuits rather than shoes, but I loved that story. It had a few moments of SEE HOW POSTMODERN I AM SEE (and how could you not with a premise like that--'what does the game mean when its just a reenactment of classic skills' etc blurgh etc we get it), but I forgave the pretensions on behalf of the wit and cleverness.

I don't remember any PM stuff in it, but I would like to see more scholarly analysis on this magic Michael Jordan shoes story.

not a book i would have expected an pinefox to like.

hm!

"In early 2007, Lethem began work on Chronic City,[20] which will be published on September 15, 2009.[21] In July 2008, Lethem said that Chronic City is "set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it’s strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles Finney and Hitchcock’s Vertigo and it concerns a circle of friends including a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghost-writer of autobiographies, and a city official. And it’s long and strange."[22]"

did anyone follow omega the unknown all the way through?

i did, it had its moments

oh ok

"Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.

Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.

Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique."

ha

"I was ready to throw off any sense that I was going to write sprawling social novels set in Brooklyn and become the Brooklyn Faulkner. Neither Motherless nor Fortress exactly fits that description, but the accumulated image of the two books seemed to project that.

I don’t know if it would have been easy or hard for someone else to follow through with it, but it was totally out of the question for me. And really, for anyone who had even glanced at the earlier work that’d be obvious. But there were a lot of people—an important critical framework—which had never glanced at the earlier work. YDLMY was a way to shrug that off with a degree of self-destructive glee, to say I’m going to disappoint people on a number of different levels so we can start over again about expectations."

i think he needed to bang out a quick, low-ambition one just to be like "hey critics, i already wrote fortress, not gonna do that again, k?"

― Jordan, Thursday, August 28, 2008 6:48 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

ha, so now he's writing a big manhattan novel?

i did like that story from the astronaut girlfriend's perspective that came out a few months back, i'm assuming that's in the book (although it would be cool if it was just a spin-off).

I'm not loving that precis. Too many writers, and some horrible names.

I don't know...Chase Insteadman sounds like one of the great character names of our time...

but no I'm not reading that...synopsis makes it osund like horrible tripe...Lethem has def. disappeared up somebody's arse...

short story that jordan's talking abt - http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/11/17/081117fi_fiction_lethem

i'd rank them like this:

actual good names: Richard Abneg

eh: Janice Trumbull, Perkus Tooth

really pretty poor: Chase Insteadman

kind of just awful: Oona Laszlo

i like oona laszlo a lot more than perkus tooth, which seems like a name for a d&d character (or at least a dickens character). maybe that's just because "oona" comes in a lot of crossword puzzles though.

i think i like all those names. i'm pretty corny tho