Jonathan Lethem started strong. Has he continued strong? Definitely in some cases, maybe not in others. Well, that's most of us.
There are some books I'm looking forward to getting into in the coming weeks, but Gun, with Occasional Music was sitting on my shelf so I figured I'd revisit it. It's a mixture of hardboiled detective writing with science fiction of both the gosh-gee and dystopian variety. So in some ways following in the footsteps of Philip K. Dick, although the two authors are quite distinct.
I won't detail the case that lead character Conrad Metcalf works on in this book, because that would take all night and there'd be no point. But elements of the setting include "babyheads" who age into cynicism while keeping their infant bodies, evolved talking animals of numerous stripes, the legal abolition of the printed word, and deep freezing those who fall afoul of the law. "The law." Actually the last is connected to the eeriest aspect of this future, "karma", an artificial goodwill that can dip dangerously low if you step out of line in any amorphous way. Eerie because it resembles the idea of "social credit" that's taken hold in China and perhaps elsewhere.
Anyway, the book hangs together well, so I feel pretty good about liking it the first time.
2 comments:
I hadn't thought about Jonathan Lethem in quite some time despite the fact that Motherless Brooklyn was a favorite of mine when we lived in Portland. What could have been a difficult read was made straightforward by the way Lethem portrayed his Tourette syndrome character by making his internal conversations secondary to the tics. In fact it was easy to feel a kinship with this lonely and often misunderstood young man.
At the time I wanted to read more of his books but the ones I considered seemed a bit too strange. I recall being interested in Fortress of Solitude but never took it to the cash register once I'd read some pages here and there. Not that I can remember why I was turned off back then but somehow the feeling stuck and I never did spend any more time researching his other novels.
Now a lot more time has passed and I may have to check out his more recent work. Your review of Gun, with Occasional Music has sparked my interest once again. I'd be interested to know which others take your fancy.
As to which grab me the most, I would say this one, his second Amnesia Moon, and of course Motherless Brooklyn. Amnesia Moon has to do with people who can change reality--including the past--by thinking about it. So a similar premise to Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven but very Dick-influenced as well. It's a road novel too.
As She Crawled Across the Table isn't bad either. The most recent of his books that I've read is The Savage Detective, which I didn't like. Basically, if the author of a mystery doesn't care about it, it's a lot to expect me to.
Of course I don't have to tell you about Motherless Brooklyn. It's great for the things you mentioned, definitely. It also manages to lend a certain sense of enchantment to its mundane contemporary setting. That's one reason I didn't like the idea of the movie changing the setting to the fifties. It's certainly possible that that novel represents a career high for Lethem which he won't come close to again. Time will tell.
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