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Jonathan Lethem
- Thread starter novella
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beer good
Well-Known Member
Procedure in Plain Air : The New Yorker
Thanks for the tip, StraightA. Will try to read it tonight.
I recently read Lethem's second short story collection, Men And Cartoons. Not a bad effort at all, but funnily enough (considering how good an essayist he is), I'm not sure the format suits him. Several of the pieces here feel like outtakes from a longer story, that sacrifice the character and thematic developments of a novel but don't quite pack the punch of a great short story. If you've read Fortress of Solitude (and you should) there's really not much new in stories like The Vision or Planet Big Zero, and sci-fi stories like Access Fantasy may be entertaining but come across as too obviously Vonnegut-meets-Bradbury without the sharp observations of either. That said, The Spray is a brilliant idea done very well (a couple are robbed, the police use a mystical spray to identify what's missing from their apartment, and the couple then turn the spray on each other to see what's unspoken between them...), The Dystopianist, Thinking of his Rival, is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door is not just a great title, and Super Goat Man makes the perhaps best use yet of Lethem's fascination with comic book heroes by featuring a jaded and retired superhero trying to make a living as a college teacher in Nixon's America - and then showing us exactly why heroes retire, and what happens to those who trusted in them; superhero deconstructions are a thirteen per dozen these days, but Super Goat Man is one of the better.
Lethem is never not entertaining, and when he gets it right, that Pynchon-lite walk through an America built as much by Stan Lee as by Abraham Lincoln, populated by people trying to pick up the world their forebears handed them in bright colours promising caped baddies and upstanding heroes that somehow never delivered, works very well in short story form as well. But Men And Cartoons is a little too slight, with one or two stories too many that just fizzle out without going neither SPLAT nor POW.
Thanks for the tip, StraightA. Will try to read it tonight.
I recently read Lethem's second short story collection, Men And Cartoons. Not a bad effort at all, but funnily enough (considering how good an essayist he is), I'm not sure the format suits him. Several of the pieces here feel like outtakes from a longer story, that sacrifice the character and thematic developments of a novel but don't quite pack the punch of a great short story. If you've read Fortress of Solitude (and you should) there's really not much new in stories like The Vision or Planet Big Zero, and sci-fi stories like Access Fantasy may be entertaining but come across as too obviously Vonnegut-meets-Bradbury without the sharp observations of either. That said, The Spray is a brilliant idea done very well (a couple are robbed, the police use a mystical spray to identify what's missing from their apartment, and the couple then turn the spray on each other to see what's unspoken between them...), The Dystopianist, Thinking of his Rival, is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door is not just a great title, and Super Goat Man makes the perhaps best use yet of Lethem's fascination with comic book heroes by featuring a jaded and retired superhero trying to make a living as a college teacher in Nixon's America - and then showing us exactly why heroes retire, and what happens to those who trusted in them; superhero deconstructions are a thirteen per dozen these days, but Super Goat Man is one of the better.
Lethem is never not entertaining, and when he gets it right, that Pynchon-lite walk through an America built as much by Stan Lee as by Abraham Lincoln, populated by people trying to pick up the world their forebears handed them in bright colours promising caped baddies and upstanding heroes that somehow never delivered, works very well in short story form as well. But Men And Cartoons is a little too slight, with one or two stories too many that just fizzle out without going neither SPLAT nor POW.
dude
Member
I just read Chronic City and am amazed at how bad it was. The story was so incredibly abstract and just plain weird. It was almost like he was describing some really bizarre dream he had. The kind where everything looks and sounds real yet there are many things that make no sense at all, but it doesn't seem that out of place where in the real world, it would be cause for major alarm.
He's definitely very talented and this story had to have taken a long time to perfect because there is so much to it, but it goes nowhere and nothing ever happens (save a few moments). The characters are all ridiculous. Aside from the main character, they're all a bunch of pseudo-intellectual wastes of time, which accurately describes this book as a whole.
He switches from first-person to third-person (while still being told in the first-person point of view, as if he's there in the scene and he's not) several times throughout the book. That bugs me.
If there is some deeper meaning to this book, some metaphorical riddle that you have to read between the lines to figure out, then I could care less. One of the most inane books I've ever read.
He's definitely very talented and this story had to have taken a long time to perfect because there is so much to it, but it goes nowhere and nothing ever happens (save a few moments). The characters are all ridiculous. Aside from the main character, they're all a bunch of pseudo-intellectual wastes of time, which accurately describes this book as a whole.
He switches from first-person to third-person (while still being told in the first-person point of view, as if he's there in the scene and he's not) several times throughout the book. That bugs me.
If there is some deeper meaning to this book, some metaphorical riddle that you have to read between the lines to figure out, then I could care less. One of the most inane books I've ever read.
saliotthomas
New Member
Sorry i missed it Dude, i know we read this at about the same time.
I also had some mixed feeling about it.
Strangely enough, it reminded me of Foucault pendulum.It involve the same types of guys obsessed with conspiraty, doing sharp researches in small flats with little sleep and hight on cafein, trying to bring dark powers out in the light.
Expect that with Lethem, they also are high on pot and there domain of inquiery is about Marlon Brando super power, holographic chaldrons, association betwin music, dope to open extra visons.
And as in Eco there is a certain amount of self delusion, so have those New yorkers not ever been to sure of their digs. Which in there case seem more obvious for it involve a two storey high tiger in NY, a three legded pit bull with her own flat and a girl friend stranded in space by a chinese field mine.
The main probleme for me was with the ending, where Lethem try to give a certain logic to the all shlibong, he sort of try to justify and relate things which were better left alone and myterious. And to come back to my dubious association with Foulcault, it would have been the same if Eco finished the book in giving credibility to the supernatural powers of evil.
There is a lot of good in Chronic city, and i liked ideas and style, the paradoxal conviction, intensity and the shallowness of the characteres, it's just that a good or a bad ending alway cast a all new light on an entire book. The last chapiter spoiled it for me.
I also had some mixed feeling about it.
Strangely enough, it reminded me of Foucault pendulum.It involve the same types of guys obsessed with conspiraty, doing sharp researches in small flats with little sleep and hight on cafein, trying to bring dark powers out in the light.
Expect that with Lethem, they also are high on pot and there domain of inquiery is about Marlon Brando super power, holographic chaldrons, association betwin music, dope to open extra visons.
And as in Eco there is a certain amount of self delusion, so have those New yorkers not ever been to sure of their digs. Which in there case seem more obvious for it involve a two storey high tiger in NY, a three legded pit bull with her own flat and a girl friend stranded in space by a chinese field mine.
The main probleme for me was with the ending, where Lethem try to give a certain logic to the all shlibong, he sort of try to justify and relate things which were better left alone and myterious. And to come back to my dubious association with Foulcault, it would have been the same if Eco finished the book in giving credibility to the supernatural powers of evil.
There is a lot of good in Chronic city, and i liked ideas and style, the paradoxal conviction, intensity and the shallowness of the characteres, it's just that a good or a bad ending alway cast a all new light on an entire book. The last chapiter spoiled it for me.