Yesterday I finished the advance reading copy of Jonathan Lethem’s next book, You Don’t Love Me Yet. Let me preface this by explaining the level of anticipation this held for me: I was pretty excited. Really. I’d had it for about a week before I started reading – I sort of wanted to savor it, but I also hesitated to start it now, in November, since it has a March release date. I really hate that. I always look at things like that as a bookseller – will I remember enough of this book in 5 months to be able to sell it? Why do publishers send these things so far in advance? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, but at a book a week, I’ll have read like 25 other books by the time Lethem’s hits the shelves. I also had to finish the book I was currently reading, which was apparently SO memorable, that I cannot remember what it was. I generally try to not read multiple novels at the same time – a novel & a nonfiction – OK, but with 2 novels it feels like the plots & characters get interchanged or blurred, or that they start to visit the wrong novel, since they’re both living in my head (Jane Eyre would have a really hard time in Fight Club, know what I mean?) During the Lethem, I was also reading (& still reading) Robert Greenfield’s Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell with the Rolling Stones, which actually fit in very well with the Lethem. (The Greenfield is also OK, but it’s not particularly erudite or enlightening and reads like he’s on speed – which may be alright for that particular piece of history – but it’s really only for people who think Exile is the greatest album ever recorded in the history of mankind. And I do.)Anyway, I have to say, I was a bit disappointed with the new book. Maybe it was the level of twitchy anticipation I had, I don’t know. I was looking forward to him leaving his of late comfort zone. His last novel was pure genius, (Fortress of Solitude) but his subsequent collection of short stories (Men & Cartoons) and the collection of essays (The Disappointment Artist) really felt like splintered pieces of his own psyche or his autobiography – which would be fine, if Fortress hadn’t been the perfect format for that. As a fan, I relished every word, don’t get me wrong, but at this point, I was ready for him to explore something else. It felt rut-like to me, which may be totally wrong, since I’m clearly not JL, nor am I particularly qualified to tell him he’s in a rut, for godsakes. But, in You Don’t Love Me Yet, the first 2 acts had me, totally, completely. The characters are interesting, expressive, strange & the situations JL puts them in are hilarious, weird, & human. Lucinda answers phones at a call center that fields general complaints. Nothing specific, just whatever people feel like complaining about. Matthew “rescues” a kangaroo from the zoo because he feels it is suffering from ennui. So he takes it home where it can live in his bathtub & eat cabbage. Denise works at “No Shame”, a masturbation boutique. (sadly, I felt like this comedic tidbit was never explored enough here. So much potential!) And, in typical JL fashion, Bedwin sits at home, a recluse, watching the same Fritz Lang film over & over again. They’re all in a band together, but despite all these excellent quirks in their lives, the band lacks that certain spark that will propel them out of the basement & onto the airwaves. To make a long story short, the third act is more about Lucinda & her confused love for the mystery man in her life – whom she met on the complaint line, of course – and the rise & fall of the band as a band. It fell flat, to me. I stopped caring or sympathizing with Lucinda after awhile. And the rest of the characters, I felt, never really allowed me to look into their lives in the first place. There are fleeting glimpses, like the examples I mentioned before, but they lacked real substance, in a way. They look like people, but they don’t leap off the page like perfectly developed characters should. JL is capable of this, of course, but this is actually the first time I could say this about his characters. In fact, Lionel Essrog from Motherless Brooklyn and Dylan Ebdus & Mingus Rude from Fortress are some of my favorite characters in all of literature. But these guys in Y.D.L.M.Y don’t have that snap of reality. That crispness of vision. They’re a bit blurry and underdeveloped. But this is just one man’s opinion. And it is a pretty funny book. Maybe, dare I say it, it would have been a great short story (or two).
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2 comments:
Don't you feel like this was the book we could have let Lethem start with? That if he had dug this up and said, "hey, this is the first novel I tried to write before all the other ones with their breath and scope and imaginativeness." and we could have let him have it. We would have liked it, but at the same time acknowledged that the subject matter is easy. Maybe it's because I'm on the West Coast, and so somehow the L.A. setting and plot seems so obvious. Bands, sex, what it is to be cool. These are the things I'm trying to learn how to not write about, because they're so visceral and come so quickly to you when you're young. How shows feel, how it is to drink to rock and roll oblivion and sleep around. I don't know. That's all. It's still good, and if it were anyone else that I could take on their own merits I'd have been okay with it, I think, but I wanted so much more from him.
You're remark that his new book seems more like a great idea for a short story than for a novel makes sense. Lethem is downright spooky when he's got a full head of steam going--"Motherless Brooklyn" is one of those few sad/funny novels where the poignancy doesn't a retrofit on a reworked Playhouse 90 script , and "Fortress of Solitude" equals Richard Power's "Time of Our Singing" in being a new kind of American Novel, the problems of fitting into a mainstream culture that denies access despite persistent mythology to the contrary--but he does at times seem slight and often in a rush to get to the next piece while he's still writing the current one. "The Disappointment Artist" was not the best respresentation of this man's essaying abilities; seeming rushed, you know he could have done better. He is in for the long haul, though. A major writer, a fantastic talent.
Incidently, thanks for the link to my blog, but please be advised that I've changed the web address. It is now: http:// ted-burke.blogspot.com.
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