Lethem, Jonathan

Average customer rating:

It is a different type of book,--you should read it anyway
This one's a sheep in wolf's clothing
Wordplay
You don't love me yet
Slacker nostalgia

You Don't Love Me Yet: A Novel
Jonathan Lethem
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 038551218X
Release Date: 2007-03-13

Amazon.com

With his sixth novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, Jonathan Lethem continues to show off his dexterity with the form, following up the coming-of-age epic The Fortress of Solitude with a dreamlike, comic portrait of the Los Angeles art scene. Lethem craftily sets up his ruse with a letter of complaint from Falmouth Strand (a seemingly minor character) who warns us that the book we are about to read completely misrepresents the truth. Falmouth is a former installation artist who has turned from sculpting objects to "manipulating people's despair, pensiveness, ennui." For his latest project, he has posted signs around Los Angeles: "Complaints? Call 213 291 7778." The novel centers around Lucinda (the perfect, unwitting instrument for Falmouth's manipulation), a bass player in a would-be indie rock quartet with nearly enough good songs for a 35-minute set (if you don't count the two they don't like anymore). Lucinda has vowed to stop sleeping with the band's lead singer Matthew (for real, this time), launching a search for true love as drunken and misguided as the band's search for a decent name. She abandons her upscale barista gig to answer complaint calls for Falmouth's conceptual art piece. Before long, she finds herself drawn to a regular whose curious words are "like a pulse detected in a vast dead carcass" of daily complaints. By way of Lucinda, the "genius" complainer's words spark the band's next song, setting them on a shaky upward trajectory all too familiar in the art world. Various characters want (or don't want) to take credit for the song's apparent success, but who deserves it? The complainer who nonchalantly rattled off the words, Lucinda who wrote them down, the remaining band members who collaboratively put them to music, or Falmouth himself, who passively engineered the whole thing?

Fans of Fortress and Motherless Brooklyn may find this novel's levity too drastic a shift, but even though Lethem is having a great time here with wordplay, a motley cast, and Lucinda's sexual meanderings, You Don't Love Me Yet is anything but a simple entertainment. He plays with our notions of art and authorship, enjoying a bit of advanced cribbery himself as he experiments with Shakespearean antics and inexplicable love match-ups. At every turn, Lethem seems to be asking sticky questions: Can anyone create the consummate intersection of dream, desire, and reality that art (and great sex) embodies? Will it last, and should it? Can any one writer capture that moment with a few meager words? If they did, how long would it take for it to be reduced to meaningless slogan? --Heidi Broadhead

Book Description

From the incomparable Jonathan Lethem, a raucous romantic farce that explores the paradoxes of love and art

Lucinda Hoekke spends eight hours a day at the Complaint Line, listening to anonymous callers air their random grievances. Most of the time, the work is excruciatingly tedious. But one frequent caller, who insists on speaking only to Lucinda, captivates her with his off-color ruminations and opaque self-reflections. In blatant defiance of the rules, Lucinda and the Complainer arrange a face-to-face meeting—and fall desperately in love.
Consumed by passion, Lucinda manages only to tear herself away from the Complainer to practice with the alternative band in which she plays bass. The lead singer of the band is Matthew, a confused young man who works at the zoo and has kidnapped a kangaroo to save it from ennui. Denise, the drummer, works at No Shame, a masturbation boutique. The band’s talented lyricist, Bedwin, conflicted about the group’s as-yet-nonexistent fame, is suffering from writer’s block. Hoping to recharge the band’s creative energy, Lucinda “suggests” some of the Complainer’s philosophical musings to Bedwin. When Bedwin transforms them into brilliant songs, the band gets its big break, including an invitation to appear on L.A.’s premiere alternative radio show. The only problem is the Complainer. He insists on joining the band, with disastrous consequences for all.
Brimming with satire and sex, You Don’t Love Me Yet is a funny and affectionate send-up of the alternative band scene, the city of Los Angeles, and the entire genre of romantic comedy, but remains unmistakably the work of the inimitable Jonathan Lethem.</p>

Customer Reviews:

It is a different type of book,--you should read it anyway.......2007-06-10

When I first read the jacket, I felt that I must read this book. I lived in Los Angeles observing the indie scene, haunting the zoos and the contemporary art scene in LA and SD. I felt mystified by the characters -- probably similar to the feelings I felt when I would go to these bars and art shows and eavesdrop on conversations and wonder about the people around me. Of course this book was funny and that is why you should read it. At times I wondered, would this be funnier if he lived in LA or is the case that I just lived on the west and wrong side of La Cienega (In reality two different worlds).

This one's a sheep in wolf's clothing.......2007-05-23

Mr. Lethem can really write, and one would rejoice in Lethem's verbal abilities, his descriptions, his economic way of reducing universal scenes and modern experiences into tight, pithy prose, but why did he choose to cover the solipsistic adventures of jaded hipsters, written in said gorgeous prose, in such a way that I feel cheated? Something akin to that teenage frustration and disappointment after surviving a bout with a chunky Danielle Steele -- except that with Steele you go in knowing exactly what you're getting? You Don't Love Me Yet started off very promising, the reader is sucked right in with the many possibilities and promise a writer can indulge his or her reader writing about hip band dynamics, depressed kangaroos, complaint hotlines and ridiculous performance artists, and add to that stew an intoxicating setting: Los Angeles. But the opportunities with setting and circumstances and subject matter were either ultimately dropped or wasted to focus the spot primarily on the yearnings and needs of the deeply unsympathetic main character, a young and hip female whose life is defined by the male company she keeps and her unflattering alcoholism. The bedroom scenes were sometimes titillating, but then I confess I really didn't much care for any of the lovers -- or characters for that matter (except the kangaroo; was that the point?) -- and I finished wondering if the book was smut or guilty pleasure posing as lit, and I felt flim-flammed. Is this because the author has got nothing to say here, really, but he says it so beautifully, so he flim-flams us into thinking he's saying everything? Or is his object and meaning too esoteric for lesser mortals? In either case, I really wished Mr. Lethem had serve us a good story and not demonstrated the tired hipster disdain for his fellow man and his reader by serving up characters we don't care about and, frankly, it would seem, he doesn't care about. What this book was about, I couldn't say.

Wordplay.......2007-05-21

The active word is "fun." The characters and plot are fairly lightweight but Lethem's words dance and sizzle without coming as across as over-the-top pyrotechnics. The writing feels unforced. The writing is packed with tasty surprises. As someone who plays in a band, I connected well with the band practices, the big party scene, and the radio show. Lethem's writing about song development was dead-on. By the way, anyone who likes gorgeous rhythms and soaring melodies should check out the Vulgar Boatmen's disc, "You Don't Love Me Yet." That song generated one of the dedication quotes at the beginning of the book but Vulgar Boatmen are a fantastic band. If you like The Silos, The Feelies (I know, not exactly huge reference points) or perhaps The Bats, check out Vulgar Boatmen. I think it's been awhile since they have produced anything but what a band -- and what a song. I'd put the book in the same category: a beautiful, enjoyable ride.

You don't love me yet.......2007-05-12

I had read several rave reviews of this book so I had anticipated an exceptional novel. Perhaps it's my age or the fact that I live in a small town in the South, but the characters were not believable, their emotions and personalities were flat and the ending was not satisfying. It was overall a depressing book.

Slacker nostalgia.......2007-05-07

OK I used to be a rock wannabe, so I'll write a novel about all those days long past that I long for and what would have could have happened. Who can blame him? It's fun, it's sexual, it's youth at its ambitious, slackerish best. Given that premise, Lethem has a great time and so does the voyeuristic reader. It's a rolicking good ride, and nobody has to come of age in this story about the victories and angst of those youthful years when everything is permanent, deficient, promising, bereft, and endlessly shifting in the irresponsible mood of the moment. Join Lethem in this fun joust with life, you won't regret it. And it helps that he's a great writer with quite a turn of phrase.

Average customer rating:

Kinda disappointing...
Lyrical, Thoughtful, One-of-a-Kind
Excellent and Contemporary
Sheer pleasure
Motherless Brooklyn, Fatherless World

Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375724834
Release Date: 2000-10-24

Amazon.com

Pop quiz. Please complete the following sentence: "There are days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don't even recognize my own _." If you answered face, then your name is obviously not Jonathan Lethem. Instead of taking the easy out, the genre-busting novelist concludes this by-the-numbers string of words with toothbrush in the mirror.

This brilliant sentence and a lot of other really excellent ones compose Lethem's engaging fifth novel, Motherless Brooklyn. Lionel Essrog, a detective suffering from Tourette's syndrome, spins the narrative as he tracks down the killer of his boss, Frank Minna. Minna enlisted Lionel and his friends when they were teenagers living at Saint Vincent's Home for Boys, ostensibly to perform odd jobs (we're talking very odd) and over the years trained them to become a team of investigators. The Minna men face their most daunting case when they find their mentor in a Dumpster bleeding from stab wounds delivered by an assailant whose identity he refuses to reveal--even while he's dying on the way to the hospital.

Detectives? Brooklyn? Is this the same Lethem who danced the postapocalypso in Amnesia Moon? Incredibly, yes, and rarely has such a departure been pulled off with this much aplomb. As in the "toothbrush" passage above, Lethem sets himself up with the imposing task of making tired conventions new. Brooklyn accents? Fuggetaboutit. Lethem's dialogue is as light on its feet as a prize fighter. Lionel's Tourette's could have been an easy joke, but Lethem probes so convincingly into the disorder that you feel simultaneously rattled, sympathetic, and irritated by the guy. Sure, the story is a mystery, but Motherless Brooklyn could be about flower arranging, for all we care. What counts is Lionel's tic-ridden take on a world full of surprises, propelling this fiction forward at edgy, breakneck speed. --Ryan Boudinot

Book Description

From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.

Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.

Customer Reviews:

Kinda disappointing..........2007-06-09

I really like Jonathan Lethem as an author. His books are usually quite interesting, clever, and humorous. Motherless Brooklyn disappointed me. The humor was not there, I seriously think Lethem tried to be funny but it simply failed. The characters were especially bland, and it was hard to become "attached" to Lionel the main character/narrarator. He spent too much time informing us that Lionel has Tourette's Syndrome, not enough time developing the story. The Tourette's was seriously (as someone previously stated in their review) the crutch that this book propped itself up on. Had it spent more time on the story, the book would have earned at least 4 stars because the story was interesting when time was spent explaining it. Gun, With Occassional Music is a much better detective story in my opinion. After a while, while I enjoyed parts of the book, I found myself reading it so that I could finish it. For serious Lethem fans only.

Lyrical, Thoughtful, One-of-a-Kind.......2007-06-07

Nothing about this book should be compared, I believe, to any standard genre fiction. The only standard is clear, compelling writing with believable characters and honest events. So rich is Lionel's world, and he is such a keen observer, that the experience is lifted to a feeling of depth like few other pieces of modern-day writing. The plot is really about self-discovery, about stepping outside your comfort zone, and about finding a home. So many wonderful, touching scenes side-by-side with compelling tension and a terrific, underlying drive to the plot.

Excellent and Contemporary.......2007-05-27

Lethem is in a rare class of contemporary writers. His work enfolds you into a time period in Brooklyn, NY exploring all that makes the boro unique. This work is fascinating for the NY reader and the non NY reader alike. His characters are well crafted and his plot line solid. The book does explore themes of mafia and deceit which are always entertaining.

Sheer pleasure.......2007-03-01

I had a wonderful time reading this book. I laughed out loud. I savored everything Essrog had to say. I can see how some might lack the flavors necessary to appreciate this book, but for those of us with that special wiring, this book is a classic. Enjoy.

Motherless Brooklyn, Fatherless World.......2007-01-19

Watching a man having her words slit by his mirror image is an odd way to create a story world. Not least because of the characters intellectual borders are clearly a redundant side issue. Letham's story world is bigger than his players 'standart day breaks-in, their perspective into the easy imagination and academic language that guiding the readers behind the main characters mind; easily Essrog's back ground much more loaded by the "f" words- in "Clockwork Orange" Burgess was avoided easy cultural referances and creates much-needed language of it's own world. "Naked Lunch" has a griping -word based ideas- which filled the spaces between words and worlds. "American Psycho" simply referances Betaman's point of view with dark light of brand-obsessed/ state of mind. But in "Motherless Brooklyn" Tourette as a pixie who draw the concept within; sadly missed-direct the ideas above the style itself. It is structurally weak and too self-consciously multitalker/thinker. It's style over content novel. And it hasn't got Brautigan or Vian kind of style value in it.

Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik

Average customer rating:

The Definitive PKD
a great collection
PKD Would Be Proud
Unfortunate Choice

Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik
Philip K. Dick
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

ASIN: 1598530097
Release Date: 2007-05-10

Book Description

Known in his lifetime primarily to readers of science fiction, Philip K. Dick (1928-82) is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethem's words, "wielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him." Posing the questions "What is human?" and "What is real?" in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced works-fantastic and weird yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculation-that are startlingly prescient imaginative responses to 21st-century quandaries.

This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick's most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic future, was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Ubik (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryogenically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory "half-life," pursues Dick's theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions. As with most of Dick's novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books.

Customer Reviews:

The Definitive PKD.......2007-06-08

In the 1960s, when he wrote these four novels, Philip K. Dick was not known, as he is today, as an acclaimed "literary" science-fiction writer and visionary who inspired many films. Since his death in 1982, his reputation has steadily soared, a little bit too late, and now this former genre journeyman toiling in obscurity has become the first sf author to be enshrined in a handsome omnibus volume in the esteemed Library of America series. Of course, I had to buy it even though I already owned multiple copies of all these novels. It is a genuine pleasure to read any of the LOA volumes, so lovingly produced they are. And this one especially so, compiled as it was by an author heavily influenced by Dick, Jonathan Lethem. You will never see a biographical chronology so interesting to read in its own right: we even learn that Timothy Leary called Dick during John and Yoko's bed-in and he put the famous pair on the phone to tell PKD that they wanted to film one of the four novels contained here, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Incidentally, Lethem's taste is impeccable. Though Dick wrote no fewer than 21 novels in the 1960s (plus a couple of dozen more before and after), these are without a doubt the four best: The Three Stigmata, The Man in the High Castle, Ubik, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One could easily compile another such volume with four more extremely strong novels of this period: Clans of the Alphane Moon, Dr. Bloodmoney, Now Wait for Last Year, and Martian Time-Slip. However, the ones collected here are the ones I would pick, if I could have only four. They are all absolute classics and support many rereadings. I remember when in the 1970s, I encountered Three Stigmata for the first time and could not totally make sense of it, but I was intrigued. It was hallucinogenic, it was trippy, it was theological. A few years later I found myself seeking it out again, rereading with a passion, finally really "getting it," and then compulsively seeking out everything I could find by PKD. It took me years but I eventually tracked down every last out-of-print forgotten paperback. Since then all his works have been reprinted and made easily available. But my original "discovery" experience is why this LOA volume means so much to me now. The Man in the High Castle is perhaps the best alternate history ever written, a speculation on what life would have been like if the Germans and Japanese had won World War II. Ubik is a brilliant ontological quest into the very structure of reality. Do Androids Dream, the novel on which the film Blade Runner is based, is among other things a meditation on what it means to be human. These four novels have become like cornerstones in my own life's journey. For them to have been given this respectful and definitive publication is something that brings me a lot of pleasure, and would also, I think, have pleased Philip K. Dick.

a great collection.......2007-05-18

This ought to be one of three volumes of Dick's novels; in that case it would probably be the best. A full set of six including the short stories would be invaluable. I would also like to see the Library of America produce a Robert E. Howard volume.

PKD Would Be Proud.......2007-05-16

This handsome volume of four of PKD's most acclaimed science-fiction novels from the '60s is a pure delight. To be included in the company of John Steinbeck and Saul Bellow (two other authors graced with 2007 Library of America releases) doubtlessly would make PKD smile: finally vindicated! I'm not sure that his days of horsemeat-eating and penny-ante royalty checks are truly assuaged by this posthumous honor--but better late than never. The chronology of Dick's life and works at the volume's close is detailed and heartwrenching. Hopefully Dick's inclusion in the Library of America series will further increase his worldwide status as a major American talent who transcended the limitations of his genre, creating dystopian visions of lasting significance for humanity.

I hope we soon will be feted with a companion volume of four of Dick's mainstream novels--perhaps [...]
Wherever you are, PKD--hat's off! It's not just kibble anymore.

Unfortunate Choice.......2007-05-14

The Library of America (LOA) has decided to broaden the canon of American literature by issuing a good deal of writing that is not traditionally considered literature. This includes important political documents, high quality journalism, and historical works like the great works of Parkman and Adams. This is really admirable. LOA has decided also to publish the better work from some distinctively American popular genres. This has led to publication, for example, of Raymond Chandler's novels. This is also admirable.
LOA has apparently decided to publish some Science Fiction and has led with some of the novels of Philip Dick. This is a mistake. Dick has aroused some enthusiasm in academic circles because a good deal of his work has a modernist/experimental character. As stated in a blurb on a recent paperback edition of one of his novels, he is a poor man's Thomas Pynchon. Dick, however, was a markedly uneven writer. Some of his work is decent but much is not written particularly well. Genre fiction is often judged by extra-literary criteria. In the case of the best Science Fiction, this is usually a sort of gee-whiz intellectual novelty. Dick is hardly outstanding by this criterion. His work tends to fall between two stools, as a modernist/experimental writer, he is hardly first rate. If you want Thomas Pynchon, you should read Thomas Pynchon. Neither does he represent the intellectual novelty of better Science Fiction.
If LOA really wants to bring out good collections of Science Fiction, they should consider the following. A good short story anthology, which might include a couple of Dick's stories, would be excellent as there is a substantial body of good Science Fiction short stories. A selection of the small number of good novels, including books like Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz and Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would be good. If they want to do single author volumes, then Ursula LeGuin and Cordwainer Smith would be the only reasonable candidates.

Average customer rating:

Slow reading, but probably worthwhile
A Gorgeous Book
Hopeless
Four stars for the first half
A Pretty Good Book, A Great Writer

The Fortress of Solitude
Jonathan Lethem
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0571219357

Book Description

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."

This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions—what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money—are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore.

This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist.

This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives.

This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption.

This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.

From the Hardcover edition.

Download Description

¿Lethem has done a number of things here, any one of which is impossible for any but the very finest novelists. He has vividly and lovingly and truthfully, through thrilling evocation of its music, its popular culture, its street games, argot, pharmacology, social mores and racial politics, recreated a world, a moment in history that I would have thought lost and irrecoverable. He has created, in young Dylan, a genuine literary hero. He has reinvented and reinvigorated the myths of the superhero, of black-white relations, of New York City itself. But most of all, from my point of view, he captures precisely¿as only a great novelist can¿how it feels to love the world that is, on a daily basis, kicking your ass.¿
--Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Wonder Boys

¿THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE is luminous, stinging with truth and life. A story of two boys, a Brooklyn story, an American story that gives in its very specificity the force of the universal.¿
--Paula Fox, author of Desperate Characters and Borrowed Finery

"Wondrous and sweeping, this story evokes perfectly the nuances of friendship and the often odd arrangement called family. The drum of loss beats poignantly beneath the surface, as this tale moves from the streets of Brooklyn to the West Coast and back, presenting us the with baffling and tender gift of acceptance."
--Elizabeth Strout, author of Amy and Isabelle

"The Fortress of Solitude is a grim, brave, soaring American masterpiece."
--Richard Russo

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Slow reading, but probably worthwhile.......2007-04-11

I found this book VERY slow going. To some extent this is because the writing is very rich--like eating fudge or chocolate cake. You can only eat a little bit at a time, even though it's delicious. I wonder how much of my reaction is that of a baby boomer white woman in the face of the much younger, multiracial cultures depicted in this book. But I had trouble making it through 25 pages a day (to meet my book club deadline) and if I didn't "have to" read it, I might not have finished it.

I think that some of the book's problems involved insufficient editing--it might have made 2 good novellas, rather than one very long novel, and tighter editing might have made it a better book as well.

Yet, I am glad I read it. I learned a lot and believe that Lethem will be one of our great American novelists if he keeps producing work.

A Gorgeous Book.......2007-03-22

No car chases, no cliffhangers, and so what? This is a tremendously rich story, the kind of book I hate to see end. The characters are amazing thanks to Lethem's gift for creating a full-scale world with relentless, nuanced, and precise language. Of course there is a plot, but the anticipation is not in seeing what happens, but in how people become themselves. I loved, loved, loved this book.

Hopeless.......2007-03-11

Dylan's parents have decided to raise him in an up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood. His mother, also raised in Brooklyn, thinks it will be good for him to grow up as a real city kid. She doesn't see the problem with Dylan being the only white kid on his block, one of only three white kids in his entire elementary school. Dylan's parents both seem oblivious to the fact that Dylan is a constant target of harassment by other kids.

When Mingus moves into the neighborhood, it seems like salvation is at hand for Dylan. Mingus is black, his father is rich, and, most important, Mingus is cool. For some reason he becomes friends with Dylan, and Dylan has hopes that association with Mingus will mean his life will become easier. Instead, he finds things getting more and more complex.

Although only four months apart in age, Mingus is a year ahead of Dylan in school, so the two move in different orbits. Mingus is unable or unwilling to offer Dylan the protection Dylan is desperate to have. However, when the two of them do meet up, there are as close as friends can be. Mingus introduces Dylan to drugs and graffiti, while Dylan introduces Mingus to a ring that holds magical powers.

As the boys grow older, their lives move in radically different directions, yet they always seem linked in some way, never quite able to break away from each other and from the old neighborhood.

This book was infused with a sense of utter hopelessness. There were glimpses of possibility for the characters, but then none of them were able to escape from their neighborhood, or kick the drug habit, or settle down to have a family. There was no satisfaction in the ending, and important questions were left unanswered. Why did Rachel leave? Why did Barry seem to hate his son so much, when his neglect was a main cause of Mingus' behavior? Why "Dose"? How did Dylan manage to end up in a stable job when he'd totally screwed up with drugs every opportunity that came his way? How did Arthur end up pulling himself together?

And the most important question of all: what was the point of the book? This book rambled and meandered, and in the end simply petered out. Very sad.

Four stars for the first half.......2007-02-25

The writing in this childhood memoir is fantastic, magically poetic at times. Lethem conveys with rich clarity the terror, the neediness, the occasional thrills of a white boy in an overwhelmingly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood. The omniscient viewpoint is jarring at times - Dylan is much more richly realized than the other characters whose minds we inhabit - but it is effective as it helps build up this hyper-real density. Dylan is fantastic. Lethem inhabits the mind of an elementary and middle school child with utterly convincing insight.

However, this is not exactly a page-turner. There is no real plot, at least in the first half of the book, and experiences lasting only ten seconds can fill out a whole page or more. Perhaps if I'd been on vacation I could have taken in the whole book, but reading it in bed after a long day was heavy going at times.

In fact I quit about half way through, as I had to return it to the library. I really think I'd had enough anyway. Looking at other reviews, I gather the second half gets weird, and I'm not sure I like the sound of where it goes.

Anyway, Jonathan Lethem is an incredibly gifted writer - all credit to him for this ambitious novel.

A Pretty Good Book, A Great Writer.......2007-01-16

Almost four stars. I felt like i was reading two different books at times. I enjoyed reading about this kid growing up in Brooklyn with his dad, his friends, school, survival, drugs, stickball...and then all of a sudden it takes a very strage turn. Now he's got this ring...the story now requires the reader to strecth the bounderies of what is believable. It came as a complete surprise, but still i was ready to keep going. The second half of the book seems to lose its focus. Why wouldn't a kid with a magic ring use it more often? I was bored to tears reading about the Prisonaires. And i was bored reading about his father's artwork, and his trip to California. The ending was lame. i can't see it going down like that. But still it was worth the price of admission.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Modern Library Classics)

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Timeless Entertainment
A Modern Masterpiece
Nihilistic buffoonery that opens the door to truth, understanding and redemption.
Mind-warping and mind-expanding!
Thursday's Child has far to go

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Modern Library Classics)
G.K. Chesterton
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375757910
Release Date: 2001-10-09

Amazon.com

In an article published the day before his death, G.K. Chesterton called The Man Who Was Thursday "a very melodramatic sort of moonshine." Set in a phantasmagoric London where policemen are poets and anarchists camouflage themselves as, well, anarchists, his 1907 novel offers up one highly colored enigma after another. If that weren't enough, the author also throws in an elephant chase and a hot-air-balloon pursuit in which the pursuers suffer from "the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon."

But Chesterton is also concerned with more serious questions of honor and truth (and less serious ones, perhaps, of duels and dualism). Our hero is Gabriel Syme, a policeman who cannot reveal that his fellow poet Lucian Gregory is an anarchist. In Chesterton's agile, antic hands, Syme is the virtual embodiment of paradox: <blockquote> He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realization; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.... Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left--sanity. </blockquote> Elected undercover into the Central European Council of anarchists, Syme must avoid discovery and save the world from any bombings in the offing. As Thursday (each anarchist takes the name of a weekday--the only quotidian thing about this fantasia) does his best to undo his new colleagues, the masks multiply. The question then becomes: Do they reveal or conceal? And who, not to mention what, can be believed? As The Man Who Was Thursday proceeds, it becomes a hilarious numbers game with a more serious undertone--what happens if most members of the council actually turn out to be on the side of right? Chesterton's tour de force is a thriller that is best read slowly, so as to savor his highly anarchic take on anarchy. --Kerry Fried

Book Description

G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and, ultimately, a spellbinding allegory. As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, The real characters are the ideas. Chesterton's nutty agenda is really quite simple: to expose moral relativism and parlor nihilism for the devils he believes them to be. This wouldn't be interesting at all, though, if he didn't also show such passion for giving the devil his due. He animates the forces of chaos and anarchy with every ounce of imaginative verve and rhetorical force in his body.

Download Description

Widely considered as Chesterton's masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) defies classification. Subtitled 'A nightmare' by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective story. Drawing on contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb outrages, The Man Who Was Thursday is firmly rooted in its time and place - turn-of-the-century London - but it also defies temporal boundaries. Police Detective Syme finds himself drawn into a world that seems to have gone beyond humanity when he is elected 'Thursday', one of the members of the Central European Council of seven monarchs. Dreamlike, prophetic, and frequently funny, the novel attacks contemporary pessimism and, through a bizarre series of pursuits and unmaskings, returns Syme - and us - to earth more aware of its beauty, promise, and creative potential.

Customer Reviews:

Timeless Entertainment.......2007-05-18

Chesterton sure knows how to write a thriller. Its turns are anything but predictable; its twists are also anything but nonsensical.

Despite Chesterton's intimation that it is simply a nightmare, I find it highly allegorical. Perhaps what's in a man's heart just comes out on the page, whether he intended it or not.

It's interesting that Chesterton picked anarchists as symbolic of the greatest evil of Satan. The book definitely lends itself to allegory, and it seems to have a very ambitious goal: to answer why there is evil in the world. The answer is also very interesting: good people suffer so that in the end when the accuser stands, righteousness will prevail not because it is untested, but exactly because it has been tested and purified. Sunday/Sabbath is a very interesting figure: simply by his presence he exposes everything. The greatest evil and anarchy is the deception that turns brothers against each other, and that evil is nothing MORE than a great deception. It's a very interesting concept, and plays throughout the book in the theme of the rash vows the Days promised to various others--and specifically, Thursday's promise to Gregory.

The book is to be savored like a fine wine: with good food and slowly. You definitely need a few nights to absorb it, and, plan on a rereading. Personally, I loved it. I'm kind of sad *that* dream is over!

A Modern Masterpiece.......2007-04-18

Chesterton, the master of paradox, hits his stride in this dream of paranoia. For those of you who like your thrillers to pack their punches in terms of caliber, pints of blood shed, or body-count, you can all sod off. This is a thriller for the mind and the soul -- its aim is to save you from yourselves.

If you want your English simple, straighforward, fed to you in easy subject-verb-object format, leave as well. This is more post-modern than any of those douchebags you've been fed in your graduate classes at U.C. Santa Barbara.

If Chesterton is not the greatest modern author, then that is only because T.S. Eliot or Evelyn Waugh is slightly better.

The chief pity is that Americans -- most direly in need of this sort of instruction -- will not read this work.

Nihilistic buffoonery that opens the door to truth, understanding and redemption........2007-03-26

Because of our own doing, evil has been given a permanent place in our world, and G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, illustrates that fact perfectly.

At the very beginning of the novel, the daylight scene of the neighborhood changes by nightfall to a reality that is mind-bending and questionable, at best: "More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, when the extravagant roofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as a drifting cloud. " Page eight. As that evolution of perception can be placed upon an environment, again by our doing, how can that affect the perception of the people who are occupied within its confines? It does, yet it does so on a deeper plain. When is the presentation of goodness real goodness versus goodness out of obligation or duty? And can the person discern kindly obligation vis-a-vis authentic Christian goodness? Or are the two so firmly meshed together that they can not be extricated, for past events have indeed raised that question mark. It is a slippery slope, and one must always be on guard when goodness is used in order to obtain something compared to when something is offered freely without expectations or obligations, and we are speaking about the philosophical, and especially the theological here. Who can be trusted, and who can not be? Even though the act of proving oneself is cyclical, who is more credible, the one or the other, and what if the two are a part of the same circle and there is a divide, as say in religion? Who will predominate? Who is truer to God? And are facades used to mislead people? It has happened before.

What I enjoyed very much about The Man Who Was Thursday was that it raised an assortment of these types of questions upon my reading it, and they too were applicable in regards to faith and the Catholic Church, whose exposed duplicity (and I say that without spite) also raised a vast array of questions. As human beings are inherently fallible, religious or otherwise, it is faith (choose your denomination) that is the stabilizer for the unsteady human condition: "'You were,' said Syme seriously, and hung the heavy lantern over the front. There was a certain allegory of their whole position in the contrast between the modern automobile and its strange, ecclesiastical lamp." P. 137. The strange, ecclesiastical lamp was doubtlessly symbolic of the light of Christ, the light of God, who is Truth in times of duplicity and doubt, where people, the anarchists, who appear to be anything what they really are. And when you can not even trust those who are close to you, which happens quite frequently to the characters in The Man Who Was Thursday, via fumbling idiocy and gnawing black doubt, you can only trust the light and blood of Christ as the last vestage of hope, for that love is life changing, and pages 163 through 167 are vital to the minute comprehension of that unknown gloriousness, for Sunday, towards the latter end of the novel, for escape purposes, rises via the aid of a balloon in a bumbling form of resurrection that is humanly endearing, pleasing and desirious in its own right.

Another element that makes The Man Who Was Thursday so appealing is that it has such an in-your-face truth offering in respects to people of power and authority and those who abuse that authority that is anything but faith-oriented: "The only crime of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel. I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come down from them..." Page 180. For someone in any capacity of religious or poiltical authority, who abuse their power and overlook their fallibility, to be privy to an act of evil (you choose what evil) and yet stay stoned silent, that is where that Light needs to seep into. Let not pride or the haughty veneer of what one is or desires to be prevent that.

In order to accept faith, one must know fully what he or she is, and that is what makes the novel so uplifting and jolly; it is an optimistic novel, because it mocks the bleakness of nihilism. Chesterton even has the happy-go-lucky audacity of inserting himself in the novel, but he does so with the full knowledge of where he came from, and where, in the end of life, he is fortunately going towards. "Chesterton is so thrilled by his acrobatic stroll along the razor's edge of nihilism that he earns hus sunniness a new on every page."--xvi. It is because he was never alone. We do seem to forget that every now and then.

Mind-warping and mind-expanding!.......2007-03-22

The Man Who Was Thursday is a Christian allegory, but it is not a simple allegory of the Christian faith, ala The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. This book is an allegory by a Christian thinker, for Christians. The Anarchists of this book are not the real-life bomb-throwers, but represent free will - the freedom to do evil. The policemen represent the Christian's desires to reign in the evil, and Sunday represents the Universe, the ultimate giver of good and evil.

Is this a great philosophical work, a key to understanding the ultimate nature of God? Well, you'll have to read that and decide for yourself. As for me, I found it to be a fascinating and at time unsettling work. It's easy to see why this book is considered a Christian classic, and its also easy to see why so many people read it and declare that they had no idea what it was about.

This is another one of those mind-warping book that is difficult to understand, but mind-expanding as you begin to grasp what the author is saying. I highly recommend this book!

Thursday's Child has far to go.......2007-01-30

The plot of this book is crafted with mechanical precision. Start to read and you've pulled the switch and it all gets rolling. Each word, sentence and paragraph accumulates into a picturesque ride moving initially at a cruising pace. Then the story continues to develop page-by-page gaining momentum and the reader at warp speed is drawn completely into Chesterton's improbable world. It is a not so subtle allegory of broadly drawn characters and events informed by what I interpret as the author's deeply held religious convictions. Here is planet Earth and the jolly, impish God overseeing every little thing of his creation. It's rough out there all right but hard work and great fortitude will see us mortals through. This is just what Thursday and the other bogus "anarchists" find through all their trials and lunacy. The Man Who was Thursday is not a great book (there are many people that think it is) but it is entertaining; clever through rather sophmoric. It occurred to me that the old Monty Python gang could have made it into a great movie that would have done justice to its zaniness. Maybe Tim Burton?

Gun, with Occasional Music (Harvest Book)

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First Time's The Charm
Lethem in the rough
Great First Novel
Would you believe it?
Over the top, but...

Gun, with Occasional Music (Harvest Book)
Jonathan Lethem
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156028972

Book Description

Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.
Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.
Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.

Customer Reviews:

First Time's The Charm.......2007-03-08

Lethem's first book doesn't crackle and sparkle with the literary virtuosity of his later works ("Motherless Brooklyn" and "Fortress of Solitude"), but it is a fine example of the nimbleness of his creative spirit.

"Gun" follows private inquisitor, Conrad Metcalf, around a futuristic California, where animals and babies are forcibly evolved, societal compliance is enforced with measurable karma, and it is no longer acceptable to ask questions. Metcalf's latest client has been killed, and the case is being pasted to a patsy by the big dogs in the government pound. Metcalf makes things uncomfortable (for himself as well as everyone else) in his pursuit to uncover the truth.

It's not an easy task. Metcalf is dogged by a trigger-happy kangaroo, the loss of his masculine nerve endings (literally), and people who take legally-sanctioned drugs designed to induce amnesia. He skims off the dross with typical flat-footed panache, employing the standard P.I. lingo (and glum stubborness) made famous by Chandler and Bogey (although not with quite as much skill).

Although, at heart, this is a tribute to the world of literary noir, Lethem gives us a glimpse of his future import by sewing hefty totems into his weird (but fully realized) world. Orwell it ain't, but it sure comes close; Lethem has more to say about how we enslave ourselves, rather than how others do the enslaving for us.

By turns funny and fast-paced, clever and creepy, slick and sharp, "Gun" is a great diversion. It's certainly not an example of an artist at the top of his game, but it IS an example of an artist learning quite deftly how to break all of the rules. More than anything else, this is Lethem showing us just why he's a writer to begin with -- because he loves it. In the hands of someone as talented as he, it's hard for a reader not to share his enthusiasm.

Lethem in the rough.......2007-01-24

It seems that all I ever read these days is Jonathan Lethem and bizarro authors like Carlton Mellick III. The bizarro guys are pretty good and fun to read in a freaky surreal-ish kind of way, but they aren't master craftsmen of the written word. Lethem is. Gun, with Occasional Music is his first book, but probably the 7th I have read. After getting used to the style of his recent work I can really tell how strong his writing has become. He is an excellent author. Even with his first book, you can tell he is an excellent author. But he has definitely improved over time.

PROS: 1) If you like classic crime noir and weird science-fiction, you'll love this book. It is a mixture of those two. Basically, it is just your usual old time crime novel set in a future of mutants and intelligent anthropomorphic animals 2) The mystery unfolds quite nicely. Not only the mystery of the plot, but also the mystery surrounding this odd world Lethem has created. 3) Once you get into it you won't be able to put it down.

CONS: 1) While the writing is good, it is still pretty mediocre in comparison to any of his other works. 2) It was originally published by a sci-fi genre publisher, so it feels like run-of-the-mill genre fiction. So if you are a fan of the literary elements of Lethem's work more than the sci-fi elements you might be disappointed. 3) Though it was intentional, the characters are pretty cliche to that of classic detective stories. This might be a good thing or bad thing. Since I am not a fan of detective fiction, it was more of a con for me.

Overall, I give this book 4 stars. It is definitely worth reading. It's just not as good as most of Lethem's other work. I might have enjoyed it a bit better than As She Climbed Across The Table, but it wasn't as unique and smart as that book. Casual readers might like this one best, so start with here if you don't read a lot of literary fiction. Otherwise, start with Girl in Landscape or Motherless Brooklyn.

Great First Novel.......2006-06-29

Jonathan Lethem's witty first novel is a sci-fi/private-eye romp through the futuristic mean streets of Oakland. Postmodern gumshoe Conrad Metcalf gives Sam Spade a run for the money as he pursues the leaders of a society corrupted by government-sponsored drug addiction. Evolution therapy has spawned the "babyheads" (hard-drinking infants who carouse all night and have adult heads), and their genetically-altered counterparts, the "evolved animals." Remembering and asking questions is discouraged, a state of affairs enforced by "forgettol," "addicttol," and "regrettol." Inquisitors deduct karma points from peoples' karma cards: the sentence for a "karma defunct" is suspended animation.

Metcalf's investigation takes us from a holographic haunted house to sleazy sex clubs, baby-head bars, murder sites and beyond. We meet drugged out femmes fatale, a murdered sheep, a pissed-off kangaroo, folks trying to hide things, others trying to forget, and those who can't remember what it was they were trying to hide. In a world where the printed word is illegal and the news is rendered musically, we can sleep safe knowing that Metcalf is fighting the good fight.

(originally published in San Francisco Review of Books, 1994. now defunct, © by author, todd jatras)

Would you believe it?.......2006-06-11

Midway through reading Motherless Brooklyn, I decided that Lethem was something of a genius and ordered Gun, with Occasional Music without even investigating the plot (I loved the title). When the book arrived, I read the jacket and felt a bit put off by the seemingly preposterous storyline, but decided to give it a shot anyhow. I was rewarded.

If you are considering reading the book and have doubts, read Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude first. I think you will then conclude that Lethem is a writer whose books are worth reading.

Over the top, but..........2006-04-22

Lethem can write rings around most writers, but with all his incredible ability to create mood and switch from one unique voice to another, he ultimately does not deliver a satisfying read.
The world of this book is bizarre but believable, with the accelerated evolution treatments (babyheads), and evolved animals, snf free government drugs, etc. The exaggerated wise guy private eye tough guy lingo, broken by unexpectedly hilarious passages (gun - with occasional music) is fun to read, and hard to put down. But the ending does not feel like a real ending, and there are no moral truths here.
I'm not being a baby here; it's not that I want a happy ending, just some sense of closure.

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Marc Joseph: New and Used
Jonathan Lethem , and Thurston Moore
Manufacturer: Steidl
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Release Date: 2006-09-15

Book Description

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As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel

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Scholarly wisdom
Not Recommended
Doesn't stack up
Why do they print this stuff?
Quirky little love triangle

As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel
Jonathan Lethem
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375700129
Release Date: 1998-02-24

Amazon.com

Particle physics, false vacuum bubbles, an alternate universe--this is the stuff of Jonathan Lethem's novel As She Climbed Across the Table. The tale echoes Alice in Wonderland in its mad tumble through a rearranged reality. Narrator Phillip Engstrand is a university professor who has made a career out of studying academic environments. Engstrand is in love with Alice Coombs, a particle physicist engaged in a bold attempt to replicate the origins of the universe. The result of the experiment is Lack, a very selective black hole that sucks some things into its void--a cat, a pair of socks, a strawberry--and rejects others, namely, a love-struck Alice. As Alice's unrequited obsession with Lack grows, Phillip becomes so desperate to save his beloved from this empty rival that he risks a journey down the metaphysical rabbit hole.

Here the language of physics becomes the language of love: describing physics' "observer problem," Alice says, "Some people think the observer's consciousness determines the spin or even the existence of the electron." Later, as he stumbles to explain Alice's importance to him, Phillip tells her, "I'm not sure I really exist except under your observation." In this memorable little book, Lethem explores the cosmic possibilities of love.

Book Description

Philip is in love with Alice. As the novel opens, he is beginning to lose her. Not to another man, as he fears, but to, literally, nothing. Alice is a physicist, and a team at the University where both she and Philip work has created a hole, a vacuum, a doorway of nothingness inside the laboratory. They call it "Lack." Alice becomes obsessed with Lack, as Philip is obsessed by Alice.

The novel is at the same time an astute and wise portrait of unrequited love (albeit of a very unusual kind) a hilarious academic parody, a novel of ideas and a social satire. It is utterly original, but in the school of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Katherine Dunn, and David Foster Wallace.

Passion, humor, yearning and knowledge, blended together in a suspenseful love story that could be characterized as "American Magical Realism."

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Scholarly wisdom.......2007-02-21

I'm not sure what to think of Jonathan Lethem these days - each work I read by him is, for a time, effortless, close to perfect, and then finds itself veering into a land of bad bad choices. Reading his The Fortress of Solitude, I was left to wonder what the book would have been like if it were simply kept as its electrifying first half, instead of allowed to wander, halfheartedly, into its characters' imagined futures. A similar sensation takes hold in As She Climbed Across The Table - it's not that what becomes of its characters is bad, per se, as much as it is simply ignorant of the novel's wondeful strengths. The book doesn't conclude, per se, doesn't quite complete its central love story - a bizarre love triangle in which Alice, the main character's girlfriend, is drawn away by a hyperactive physics blackhole called Lack - nor does it quite fulfill it, as a first glance at its ambiguous, artsy ending might assume. That's an interesting choice, to be certain, but it also ignores what the book does right. That's because As She Climbed... is effortless not as a love story, but as a breezy satire on academic life. It trots in a revolving door of bizarre academic types, each using Lack - which is, clearly and repeatedly stated, a giant nothing - as a springboard to represent their own attempts at fulfillment, their own need to "get" a situation. Its characters - named in bizarro Pynchon-esque monikers like Georges DeTooth, Dr. Soft, Carmo Braxia, Gavin Flapcloth (!) - are then a wild evocation of pretention in action, a goofy take on collegiate pretentions. There's not much of a sense about Philip Engstrand, a pleasant enough lovestruck protagonist, but its love story itself is a bit of a pleasantry meant to present the lack in its characters' own self-images that make its lunacy possible. All of that leaves this novel breezy, easy to read, fun, and not much of anything. Still, its goofiness is a treasure, especially climaxing in the actions and reactions around DeTooth, the wigged, deluded deconstructionist who explains to a physicist that his response to Lack is to, "compose a document. Perhaps it will not mention Lack. Perhaps it will consist of only the word 'lack.'" The physicist's response is to start vomiting.

Not Recommended.......2007-01-27

I'll keep this brief. This book seems like it's trying to be weird for the sake of weirdness. Skip this one and try Lethem's other books, like "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Fortress of Solitude."

Doesn't stack up.......2006-09-21

Two of Lethem's prior works, "Gun with Occasional Music" and "Amnesia Moon", offer so much more to the reader than "As She Climbed Across the Table". The earlier novels had characters that were likable or despicable--at least they were interesting. The worlds of those other books were the product of an active imagination.

"As She Climbed Across the Table" manages to annoy where his earlier works captivated. The characters aren't interesting or likable and the setting is a modern-day American University. There's nothing to grab the user and make them love anything about the book.

Lethem throws in some random science talk in the last chapter to allow the book to be called science fiction. Otherwise, it's a soap opera--and a boring one at that.

Why do they print this stuff?.......2006-08-20

I might be classified as a slightly practical reader, which may explain my dislike of this book. However, unless you have acquired a taste for the highly abstract literature, you likely will dislike this book.

I swear I have tried to find some deeper meaning, someway to find a redeeming feature in this book - and have found none. The plot is not clever, the conversation is not funny or insightful, it is quite simply a goofy little story. I suppose you can painfully pull some deep inner meaning from some of the passages...but why waste your time when thousands of other books remain unread?

If you want to read a story as if it were written when the author was high on drugs, then this may be your book. As for me, the book, the author, and his whole genre is off my list. Its that bad.

Quirky little love triangle.......2006-03-23

As a big fan of Lethem's recent work (Motherless Brooklyn; Fortress of Solitude; collections of essays) I gave this story a try. I liked it but for reasons totally different then why I like other works of his that I have read. Usually I connect strongly to the main character in the other books because of something I have in common with them (i.e. living in the neighborhood they do; being a frustrated comic book fan). In this case the protagonist an I have very little in common but I still felt drawn into the story and really enjoyed it from the beginning. Not to give too much away but the bizarre love triangle that Lethem creates is a fun twist on both the romance and sci-fi genres. If this had been my first Lethem book I might not have read more because it would not have blown me away, but for fans of his work this is a great early work that shows a writer really developing his craft and a unique viewpoint.

Average customer rating:

Remaining the Purveyor of Originality

How we Got Insipid
Jonathan Lethem
Manufacturer: Subterranean Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1596060549

Customer Reviews:

Remaining the Purveyor of Originality.......2006-10-05

This little book carries the same unique charm that Lethem's other short works have displayed. Being most similar, I think, to his novella "This Shape We're In", they share the strange atmosphere of mystery and prohibition. The strange subject matter or as sci-fi as his writing can tend to get, it's always harnessed and made palatable (and literary) by Lethem's prose and creativity--two aspects that keep me coming back to his work, no matter the subject, length, or critical press (which has usually been positive).

The two stories presented, "How We Got In Town and Out Again" and "The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Horneboom", are firmly set in two worlds that let the readers in through relatable narrative, but paint pictures (almost literally in the case of "Hornebloom") of inhospitable cultures. It's this distance created by this overwhelming sense of caution that gives poignancy to the stories that wouldn't be there if they were open-armed and welcoming.

These were stories published previously in "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine" and "Full Spectrum S", respectively, though the real star is the longer "Horneboom". Published at the beginning of his career ("Horneboom" has echoes of "Gun, With Occasional Music") they are a great window looking back at the genesis of Lethem's professional writing. For those that know him from only "Motherless Brooklyn" and/or "Fortress Of Solitude", these two stories could be off-putting, but to actually shrink from them would be damaging to Lethem's character. Without weird stories such as these, or "Shape", or "Amnesia Moon", or "Gun", we wouldn't have the writer that Lethem is today, a man who (as evidenced by my title for the review) I hold in high regard. As the reader grows comfortable with these stories, it becomes apparent that the man that wrote these two stories, both overwhelmed by their quirkiness, is indeed the same man who wrote "Brooklyn" and "Fortress" as their respective quirks become even clearer in hindsight and with the reading of Lethem's other work. As Neil Young said of his own music, "It's all one song!" I think, in a way, the same could be said of what Lethem's trying to do with his work: everything is built around a stylistic thread continued from each previous endeavor, and even though the finished pieces don't necessarily look alike, the more you read the more of the thread you see.

These stories are weird, but worth the read even if you don't really understand them (I sure don't, I'm not much of a science-fiction aficionado). They are put into context by the sharp afterword Lethem wrote especially for the book. This short, four page conclusion gives more depth to the stories as it places them within the timeline of Lethem's career, as well as fleshing out what kind of person and writer Lethem is. He's not ashamed of revealing himself and his influences and does so with flags waving. He admits these are early examples of his work, but still finds the value in their existence (and points it out).

Packaged in a smart dust jacket adorned with artwork by (I'm guessing) his brother (who has work printed inside as well), this book would be enough to impress your friends and family just on looks alone. Luckily, with a writer like Lethem, what's inside will lead you to even more wonder, even if that wonder is more head-scratching than revelatory.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Average customer rating:

On the moon...
One of Jackson's best, almost.
Oh, What a Great B&W Movie This Would Make
Captivating....
Amazing psychological thriller

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Shirley Jackson
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories Of Shirley Jackson

ASIN: 0143039970

Amazon.com

Visitors call seldom at Blackwood House. Taking tea at the scene of a multiple poisoning, with a suspected murderess as one's host, is a perilous business. For a start, the talk tends to turn to arsenic. "It happened in this very room, and we still have our dinner in here every night," explains Uncle Julian, continually rehearsing the details of the fatal family meal. "My sister made these this morning," says Merricat, politely proffering a plate of rum cakes, fresh from the poisoner's kitchen. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson's 1962 novel, is full of a macabre and sinister humor, and Merricat herself, its amiable narrator, is one of the great unhinged heroines of literature. "What place would be better for us than this?" she asks, of the neat, secluded realm she shares with her uncle and with her beloved older sister, Constance. "Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people." Merricat has developed an idiosyncratic system of rules and protective magic, burying talismanic objects beneath the family estate, nailing them to trees, ritually revisiting them. She has made "a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us" against the distrust and hostility of neighboring villagers.

Or so she believes. But at last the magic fails. A stranger arrives--cousin Charles, with his eye on the Blackwood fortune. He disturbs the sisters' careful habits, installing himself at the head of the family table, unearthing Merricat's treasures, talking privately to Constance about "normal lives" and "boy friends." Unable to drive him away by either polite or occult means, Merricat adopts more desperate methods. The result is crisis and tragedy, the revelation of a terrible secret, the convergence of the villagers upon the house, and a spectacular unleashing of collective spite.

The sisters are propelled further into seclusion and solipsism, abandoning "time and the orderly pattern of our old days" in favor of an ever-narrowing circuit of ritual and shadow. They have themselves become talismans, to be alternately demonized and propitiated, darkly, with gifts. Jackson's novel emerges less as a study in eccentricity and more--like some of her other fictions--as a powerful critique of the anxious, ruthless processes involved in the maintenance of normality itself. "Poor strangers," says Merricat contentedly at last, studying trespassers from the darkness behind the barricaded Blackwood windows. "They have so much to be afraid of." --Sarah Waters

Book Description

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

Customer Reviews:

On the moon..........2007-05-31

While certainly not as well-known as her famous short story "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson's novel "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" is still a great work in its own right; one worth reading and savoring. A word of warning however; this is not a who-dunit or a psychological thriller, as some readers might think. Don't expect shocking plot twists, morally-grounded characters, or a neatly resolved ending. This is, instead, a powerful and hauntingly beautiful exploration of madness, culpibility and family dysfunction closer to Patricia Highsmith and Lovecraft (see "The Outsider" and "The Tomb") than Agatha Christie. At the center of it all is the wildly disturbed, and strangely likable, Mary Katherine ("Merricat") Blackwood, whose psyche is gradually revealed to the reader throughout the novel. At times loving, cruel, innocent, hateful, tender and controlling, Merricat is above all facinating. Jackson definitely shows true literary genius, balancing reality and fantasy to create an unforgettable story. If you prefer interesting characters, real psychological tension and a rich gothic atmosphere over the conventions of the suspense/thriller genre, read this book.

One of Jackson's best, almost........2006-08-07

This novel, written by the Stephen King of her day is a psychological horror story. About two young women who are forced to live alone by cruel townspeople. Then one day the older is seduced by a cousin appearing as a "friend." Although not as good as two of the author's most famous works "Lottery, Haunting of Hill House." The characters are very well drawn and the writing disturbing. In fact there is one scene in the book that was very similar to one I had and was so affected by it that I almost "lost" the novel.

Oh, What a Great B&W Movie This Would Make.......2006-06-26

If someone could be described as deliciously evil, I guess it would be Constance Blackwood -- never eat her food if you reviled her good nature.

The central characters are Constance -- a late 20's spinster matriarch -- who tends to a few surviving relatives. Before the times outlined in this book, a meal Constance had prepared poisoned her mother, her father, her aunt and her uncle. Her uncle lived, but extremely infirmed. Her teenage sister Merricat (Katherine) lived without infirmity -- for reasons we learn later in the book.

The people are polite in a Victorian way. Merricat is tomboyish like Scout of "To Kill a Mockingbird." With the vast land holdings, Merricat's world is her "Secret Garden." Their world is brilliantly innocent in the land and home provided by their dearly deceased parents. Yet, their poisonous meal is complicatingly ferocious and conniving.

Constance's inner feelings about her place with the family are slowly revealed to us. But, not entirely. Much like the painting movements of the middle 20th century, this 1960's novel's minimalist disclosure of the girls' characters and reasons for Constance's murderous actions are the mastery of the art to which we view.

Many of the items herein may be symbolism at its sublest. Written post-McCarthyism era, the rioting judgmental crowd may symbolize more than small people with small minds. Constance may be more than a young spinster who is tired of parental pressures.

This is a page-turning book. Short in length, and fast in style, Jackson delivers a ghoulish, eerie, and creepy experience to us. Oh, what a great black and white movie this would make.

Captivating...........2006-04-21

This is a captivating and hard to put down book. Needless to say I read it in one sitting. The writing transports you to a world that's almost upside down....twists and turns. Dark corners. You're not quite sure what's real and what isn't. It was an enlightening journey, don't miss it!

Shirley Jackson...when she's good.....she's GRAND. Check out her other works as well.

Amazing psychological thriller.......2006-04-13

This is one of those books I will never forget, one that I will re-read soon. I don't like to recommend books, but I have to say this is one of the most chilling things I've read in many years.

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