Jonathan Lethem, Clothed

At the end of last October, though we were nearly somnambulant from writing papers and job application materials, M. and I convened at Coolidge Corner Theatre to hear Jonathan Lethem read from his new book, Chronic City. I had obtained tickets from the Booksmith a month in advance: I counted Lethem as one of my favorite active authors, even though I had only read a remaindered copy of Motherless Brooklyn (soon to be a movie) found at the Friends of the Library sale a couple of years earlier. The Booksmith had anticipated a large crowd, too much for its used book basement to contain, but the theater was only a quarter full, if that, and I think Lethem and his hosts were rather disappointed that attendance was so far below the mark set by Nick Hornby.

Undeterred, Lethem read almost the entire first chapter for us, and it was fantastic. Though my eyelids were leaden, the reading (and Lethem is quite adept and engaging as a public reader) kept me alert and engaged for the whole hour. (Poor M., much more exhausted by the month than I, did nod off.) He also answered a few questions (Writing a comic book was a life's dream but in the end unrewarding enough for him to do it again; the process of reading for the audiobook is too taxing for him.) before we repaired to the bookshop for the signing. I very seldom buy hardcover books, and I even less frequently stand in line for an author's signature, but this one seemed worth it. (Lethem signed each book efficiently, but did add a few flourishes beyond the normal illegible scrawl of a name.)

As excited as I was when I purchased Chronic City, I didn't find time to read it until Christmas break. It is a great book, extremely well written. (The reviewers at the NY Times, among others, agree with me, and have listed it among the best books published in 2009.) Word for word, sentence for sentence, Lethem is an outstanding writer: It is the quality of his prose which propels the novel much more than the plot, which involves, among other things, conspiracy theories, Manhattan writ large, marijuana (superficially essential, in the fashion of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or The Big Lebowski), and (tangentially) an astronaut marooned in orbit. (The narrative admittedly sags a bit in the middle of its arc but rebounds with verve and intelligence at the end.) Chronic City is perhaps the best novel I've read in the past five to ten years exploring one of the four great literary themes of this (post-?)post-modern era, the Great Metaphysical (epistemological? ontological? it all blends together) Conundrum: What (can I trust) is real? (The other three themes being, of course, We're All Connected (an idea worn thin ever since Go (definitely since Crash) by Hollywood's gimmicky repackaging of intellectually threadbare scripts into "deep" cinema), The End of the World (see Cormac McCarthy), and Zombies.) Though they are very different writers, now that we no longer have Kurt, I'm glad we have Jonathan.