Me and the New York Times

The NYT picks their top ten titles for the year here: http://bit.ly/6RG0Yf

Funny how we both do a sort of list-y review of Lethem's Chronic City but they loved it and I didn't.

Ah well. Great minds sort of think alike while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Thanks NYT. I think this means we're going steady.

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

"How We Got Insipid", indeed.

422 pages, the better part of a month out of my life, lots of characters with silly names and sillier theories, minutiae heaped atop minutiae seemingly for the sake of more minutiae, escaped tigers, stranded astronauts, three-legged dogs, gray fogs, endless dope-smoking, holes in the ground and hiccups. All that work and this was what I got?

This one and that last rock 'n' roll novel of yours; two strikes, Mr. Lethem, though I'm certainly pulling for you.

May I suggest more Lionel Essrogs and fewer Chase Insteadmans or perhaps a return to gun-wielding kangaroos. I'll be waiting.

LOOKING FORWARD TO FALL

http://www.observer.com/2009/books/hey-look-all-these-novels-read


Here's a great look ahead at the biggest Fall list in some time. Some BIG names and some BIG books are just around the corner (and a few are already out)--Richard Russo, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Audrey Niffenegger, some guy named Dan Brown (never heard of him), Lethem, Chabon, Eggers. Yoi!

Get ready and start saving your dough.

You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

More than anything, this book made me angry. Not the righteous indignation of believing in what the author has written about; this made me angry because Lethem is such a better writer than this flimsy little novel. Now I know I can’t expect everything he writes to be Motherless Brooklyn (Lionel Essrog—wherefore art thou, Essrog?) or Fortress of Solitude; that’s too much to ask and it would be unfair. The thing is, if this was a first or second novel by a promising 30 year old Iowa MFA who’d kicked around L.A. in a band for a while and wrote a story based on that, I’d say “Let’s see what this kid has in a couple of years”. My beef is that by the time he was 30, Lethem was already writing promising and highly original work like Gun With Occasional Music and went on to write other really great stuff. I’m completely bummed because I was so looking forward to reading new Lethem. This is more like Lethem-lite and that just won't do.