Having Read Some of Jonathan Lethem's Lesser Known Works . . .

Jonathan Lethem is a great writer, as I see it. And I know, I'm always going off about who I think is a great writer. I'm beginning to suspect that's, like, the reason this blog exists (that and fun, free use of italics). But where was I going with this? Ah, and yet, I'm lukewarm with respect to the couple of books I've read of his that aren't "Motherless Brooklyn." Those two are, "You Don't Love Me Yet" and "As She Climbed Across the Table."

Funnily enough, with the Internet, if you search for just a little while, you're bound to find something resembling coincidence. And I did! Mark Athitakis mentions Lethem and alludes to "You Don't Love Me Yet" in an article about Advanced Genius Theory, a theory making the rounds these days that apparently suggests artists of a superior quality aren't exactly in decline as they age and change, and so likewise does their work, but that their fans (and the critics) have lost their grip on how to reasonably evaluate them, for one or more of a plethora of reasons. The fault lies squarely on the receiver, not the artist. The artist him or herself doesn't care whether you appreciate what he or she is doing, after all, or so says the theory, which was specifically fleshed out by Jason Hartley in his book, "The Advanced Genius Theory: Are They Out of Their Minds or Ahead of Their Time?" It's interesting, and I'll no doubt investigate the whole deal further, but it's not exactly applicable here. Or at least it's applicable, but only insomuch as it applies to Jonathan Lethem and "You Don't Love Me Yet."

Athitakis writes:

In the interest of helping fill out the theory a little, I tried to figure out which writers might fit the bill. The first one who sprung to mind was Jonathan Lethem, because Lethem once wrote an article made up of plagiarized sentences and then tried to work in some of his theories about it into a bad novel about a rock band ["You Don't Love Me Yet"], but that seems like an Overt move, and being controversial in itself isn't enough to be Advanced.

If I'm understanding him correctly, Athitakis explains that there are, in specific, two different kinds of writers who, when all is boiled down, can be classified either as fitting the "Advanced" label and all accompanying presumptions made of an artist who fits the Advanced Genius Theory's description, or an Overt. And Overt is an artist whose works meet the criteria of the highfalutin, haughty critics, which Hartley apparently defines in some detail, including things like verbosity and length of the book (if it's a book that's the artwork in question; and it should be long), so explains Athitakis' classification of Lethem.

I admit I didn't know about Lethem's impetus for writing "You Don't Love Me Yet." I found it a bit heavy-handed when I read the novel, but I didn't quite realize there was more behind it than meets the eye. Baggage, carry over, subtext? Bosh! Who'd have thought? But yes, there is. The theory and thought behind the novel prove more interesting than the novel itself, having now read both his article in Harper's and "You Don't Love Me Yet." The collage idea (and read the article with the provided link if you're curious to understand it specifically) that Lethem promotes is a good one, a well-reason one, but his novel illustrates its travails as much as its merits. So many times you feel like the story is making an interesting point, only to have that scrap of intrigue interrupted by plot points functioning in a different way, to express a different point that he's also thrown in as part of the general tableau. It's just a muddled story that never really cohered into anything terribly interesting, just flashes of cool ideas that were squelched just as quickly.

I haven't forgotten the other faulty Lethem novel I mentioned, "As She Climbed Across the Table." Again, there's a lot that's good about this novel, and in fairness, it operates far less on an experimental platform like "You Don't Love Me Yet" -- at least as far as I'm aware. But in it, too, something feels forced or foisted upon the reader. The idea is interesting enough, physicists have opened up a kind of void, "the Lack" as it quickly comes to be called, that they determine through various means and measurements available to them is choosing certain particles that pass through it to the exclusion of the others. The idea expands beyond particles when it's suggested they see what else it prefers, so begins the experiment to see if it wants strawberries or bananas and every other item imaginable. And lack then begins to take on an inter-spacial symbolism for the frivolity of feelings like love, of how you can't ask that someone love you, they do or they do not.

And so, at the same time lack is opened, the rift grows in the love life of the story's protagonists, Philip, a professor of interdepartmental studies at the university in which this experiment is taking place, and Alice, one of the two physicists and professors performing the experimentation with lack, and who simultaneously becomes completely infatuated with lack to the exclusion of Philip. Meanwhile, Philip remains completely obsessed and devoted to Alice, with much of the rest of the story revolving around how he can win her back. The metaphor, while a good one, is not entirely good enough to sustain a novel, and the character of Philip strikes me as not quite realized, although I see how that could be the author's intent. Still, even if Lethem wanted Philip to seem somewhat two-dimensional, in the absence of Alice, presumably, it nevertheless didn't make him a terribly compelling character to follow, and difficult what's more to root for. I just didn't care one way or the other what happened to him, making the conclusion far more vanilla than it should have been.

And Philip is especially disappointing when you compare him to Lionel Essrog of "Motherless Brooklyn" who couldn't really be much more complete, with all his ticks and foibles and hapless affability. Which, then makes "As She Climbed Across the Table" akin to "You Don't Love Me Yet" for the simple fact of the ambitiousness of an idea / philosophy taking precedence over the actual storytelling, which if you ask me is always detrimental to whatever the author is attempting to accomplish.

Thomas Pynchon said something similar in critiquing one of his own apprentice storytelling efforts of "Slow Learner," viz. -- "The lesson is sad . . . but true: get too conceptual, too cute and remote and your characters die on the page."

EATMEBAILEY: Reading Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn

As you may notice is kind of the theme around here, I like to read and talk books. I have no mission statement. But if there were one (and perhaps one day, who knows?) it would undoubtedly include some proviso on the reading/talking books subject, mandating their inclusion in affairs here or whatever it is exactly that provisos can establish. In other words, books are an important part of what we do, and I encourage you to feel the same.

With that said, I read another book: Jonathan Lethem's 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award winner, "Motherless Brooklyn." Amazingly, a decade later it's still good! But before I get to effusive praising criticism let me say I've enjoyed a few different non-traditional detective novels this year including "Inherent Vice" by Thomas Pynchon, "The New York Trilogy" by Paul Auster (which and whom I write more than a little of in the preceding blog post) and "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon -- and "Motherless Brooklyn" features a protagonist more sympathetic and idiosyncratic than any of those listed. His name is Lionel Essrog, and his surname is as garbled as his Tourettic speech, an affliction he suffers that I initially considered a potential insensitivity risk, just by its very nature, but ultimately I decided Lethem employs Essrog's tics with an even balance of tact and humor.

In fact, while there were moments when Essrog's tics got a little distracting -- no doubt Lethem's intent, but distracting nonetheless -- overall I found their placement extremely funny and also perfectly suiting the frenzied circumstances in which he found himself -- specifically all that happened after the murder of his boss and mentor, Frank Minna, owner of L&L Car Service, which Essrog explains is not actually a car service but a front for a detective agency. Believing himself to be a true and capable detective, Essrog thus begins his quest to find the killer, repeating compulsive expletives like "eatmebailey!" ("Bailey" the non-existent object of his tic's ire, he explains), while being largely suffered by those aware of his condition and inspiring a wide variety of reactions from those who are not.

The story could be strictly a comedy if it were harder to like and sympathize with Essrog, i.e., if Lethem were more callous with him and made him a bumbling jester to be laughed at and, perhaps, ridiculed. (I know it's unlikely he'd do this with a character diagnosed with Tourette's, but you could circumvent the issue fairly easily by establishing instead that Essrog was merely eccentric and not actually disabled.) But because he is instead so well-developed and so evidently desirous of respect and someone who recognizes his flaws but can look past them, you begin to understand what motivates the character. One particularly telling sequence occurs during a conversation between Essrog and Kimmery, a woman he becomes infatuated with. The conversation is regarding Essrog's ceaseless pursuit of the killer in the immediate aftermath of Frank's murder, to wit:

She sighed. "I don't know, Lionel. It's just, I'm not really sure about this investigation. It seems like you're running around a lot trying to keep from feeling sad or guilty or whatever about this guy Frank."

"I want to catch the killer."

"Can't you hear yourself? That's like something O. J. Simpson would say. Regular people, when someone they know gets killed or something they don't go around trying to catch the killer. They go to a funeral."

"I'm a detective, Kimmery." I almost said, I'm a telephone.

And while Lionel Essrog as a character study is really fun and fascinating, the detective narrative he's inserted into leaves something to be desired, I think. It does not come off as standard boilerplate, and without revealing more than I should to anyone who might want to read it (although I suppose a Spoiler Alert! might be apt from here onward), I can say I was less than blown away by how the various plot threads tied together. Happily, they did tie together, there were no massive plot holes (always a plus). Still, and perhaps because the story is meant to center on Essrog and his growing awareness of the various ways he's been kept in the dark and used by Frank Minna, there are no big climactical revelations -- things just seem to become slowly and seamlessly apparent, in a manner suggesting Essrog always somehow knew this was the case. But when the veil of illusion slowly glides away and it's clear everything Essrog assumed to be true isn't, he accepts his new reality and continues living just like any other person would.