Jonathan Lethem's CHRONIC CITY, surreal and beautiful sf explores the authentic and the unreal

Jonathan Lethem's extraordinary new novel Chronic City tells the story of Chase Insteadman, a washed up, grown up child actor living off his sitcom residuals in wealthy, Upper East Side New York. Chase is caught between two improbabilities: his fiancee, a dying astronaut stranded on a space-station walled off from Earth by a Chinese orbital minefield, from which vantage she commands daily headlines; and Perkus Tooth, a media-obsessed Philip-K-Dickian ex-rock-critic who lives in a weed-smoke- filled cave of a rent- controlled apartment from which he obsessively watches obscure movies and reads obscure books.

Chase's story -- magnificently told in Lethem's most poetic language -- is the quest for authenticity. An actor, Chase finds himself acting the part of the grieving widower-to-be, of the handsome beefcake at the swanky party, of the sincere sidekick to the ascerbic and unintelligible Perkus Tooth. And as Chase begins an affair with Oona Lazlo, a celebrity ghostwriter autobiography writer, he finds himself even more drawn to the questions of what is real and what isn't?

For example: is America at war? Depends on which edition of the New York Times you read -- their "war-free" edition is flensed of all mention of the war. Or how about this: what is the true nature of the "escaped tiger" that is destroying Manhattan one bodega and run-down apartment building at a time? Is it really a two-storey-tall tiger? Or is it (as Chase's City Hall insider pal insists) a cover story for a rogue 2nd Avenue Tunnel-digging machine that got lonely and now marauds beneath New York?

The story grows progressive weirder and more mystic -- there's a sub-plot involving the true nature of Marlon Brando's relationship with the "Gnuppets" (a thinly veiled version of the Muppets); another involving a fictionalized version of Second Life; a third involving "chaldrons," mystical vessels that can only be found on eBay, where you are always, always outbid.

In some ways, Chronic City is the bookend to one of my favorite Lethem novels, the brilliant Motherless Brooklyn (if you can find the audiobook read by Steve Buscemi and only available on cassette, jump at it). Motherless is all about the gritty, the real, the urban -- street kids who work as hoods-for-hire for a dirty private eye. In its own way, it's also about authenticity -- about whether the "authentic" street identity of the characters is just a role, just another put-on.

By moving uptown to the genteel and posh precincts of rarified wealth and pathological intellect, Lethem is able to summon all his PK Dick chops, to channel the media-nuts who circulate in literary scenes, to ask important, hard-to-articulate and impossible-to-answer questions about what is genuine, what is artifice, and when it matters.

Chronic City

• [Cory Doctorow]

  @2: Because on seeing the cover (which is an advertisement for the book’s contents), it is sometimes nice to know what sort of book is behind it. Remember, the natural environment of a cover is a retail establishment, not your bookshelf. In that environment, the book may be alongside of several others that are not fiction, and it is a fitness function for successful covers that they entice people into picking up the book; in the instance in which someone is looking at a new release table for a novel, the words “a novel” are good for selling the book.

  • [smammers]

    Do you mean to tell me that not everyone sorts their personal library into fiction and non-fiction categories??

• [Spinface]

  I’ve been wondering about Marlon Brando’s relationship with little furry guys forever!

  I read Omega the Unknown but didn’t investigate Jonathan Lethem any further. This sounds excellent, though. Thanks for putting the review up.

• [Zebra05]

  Re: “Novel” designation…I hate picking up a book and finding out that it is a book of short stories and not a “Novel”. Not that I have anything against short stories :-)

  I think it should be “chaldron” with an r.

  Just finished the book and though not my favorite Lethem I will still recommend it highly. It absorbs you into a full blown experience of New York (American) weirdness.

• [Cory Doctorow]

  @Zebra05: Right you are, Chaldron!

• [jeffgbrock]

  I tried to read this and found it to be utter gibberish. There is no framework to the story, no continuity, no narrative. It is one step above randomly pointing at words in the dictionary and reading them. reminded me of ‘naked lunch’, another example of appalling bad writing attempting to pass itself off as art.

  • [MrJM]

    Jeffgbrock, There are plenty of straight forward narrative stories on the market that you might enjoy.

    For example, Dan Brown’s books are very popular. And the Harry Potter stories and R. L. Stine novels might suit your tastes as well.

    Best wishes, etc.

• [elizo]

  I’m reading it now, about 10% in, can’t say I know what’s going on yet, but I’m surely entertained and turning pages…something I’ve never managed except by brute force with Pynchon…

• [Cranefly]

  I hope Lethem’s ready to drop 10% of royalties into the authenticity jar.

  That’ll be a buck from you as well, Cory.

• [Cori]

  Chronic City is very different from other Lethem I’ve read. I was reminded throughout of Thomas Pynchon’s writing – that slightly surreal quality paired with spectacular language. And has been the case with most of Pynchon’s books, I didn’t make it all the way through it before bogging down — but it was interesting enough to try again later. (Seriously, Gravity’s Rainbow took six tries & was worth it.)

  • [earbox]

    Not to mention those decidedly Pynchonian names, too.

  • [Tdawwg]

    You should pair it with Pynchon’s latest, Cori, Inherent Vice. They both have a wistful, addled, sorrowful tone. They’re both about ‘head culture and geekdom. And they’re both so haunting and bittersweet, with a real sense of what’s been lost lately, as well as what remains. And best of all, Vice is way less of a mindbreaking headache of a book than the rest of Pynchon’s oeuvre.

• [randalll]

  I read Amnesia Moon and really enjoyed it. I forget most books I read pretty quickly, to the point where I often start reading a book and realize I’ve already read it, but a couple years on I still think about some of the imagery from that book.

• [Anonymous]

  About a third of the way in and having difficulty with this book. From Cory’s initial description (gonzo media critic, search for truth, dense weird cityscapes) I had hoped it would be a more “grownup” version of Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis.

  Instead, like others have mentioned, the characters get high, there’s some weird stuff hinted at, and we’re left with page after page of how Brando is the messiah. But hey, if they ever make the movie at least eBay will get some premium product placement.

  This is quickly slipping from “must read” to “if/when I get around to it”.

• [wellsoliver]

  I just finished reading this and found it to be pretty meh. The story goes nowhere, it’s all rather aimless, and the writing borders on the self indulgent. It’s nowhere as interesting as Motherless Brooklyn or the first half of Fortress of Solitude. Some of the character development is amusing and unique, but otherwise, sort of an empty book…

• [Tdawwg]

  Best. Book. Evah. Mainly for what some above are caviling about: that it’s not plot-driven sentimental twaddle like Motherless Fortress of Gentrification. (Sorry, but I loathed those earlier books.) The fanboy hipster stuff has been modulated: Perkus Tooth is both the apostle and the bogeyman of all Lethem’s smart-assed geekish broken saint figures, a bittersweet avatar of nerddom’s pleasures and perils. Lethem’s advanced leaps and bounds with this one, mashing together Bellow and Dick and the Rolling Stones and 9-11 and Mike Bloomberg and and….

  Great book, great review, Cory. A lovely pendant to the holiday booklist last week.

• [indiecognition]

  In the story, does Chase Insteadman meet Reed Heavyhanded?

• [verkisto]

  From the summary alone, it reminds me of Matt Ruff’s Sewer, Gas, Electric, a funny yet quasi-serious look at life in the future. I’ve been a fan of Lethem for years now, and adore As She Climbed Across the Table, so I don’t need much encouragement to read his latest, but the summary definitely makes a difference.

  And if you haven’t read Matt Ruff yet, you should. Period.

• [Anonymous]

  Perkus Tooth sounds a bit like the pop culture academic from White Noise by Don DeLillo

• [Robert]

  Can someone please explain to me why “A Novel” is there? I have honestly never understood the need to put “A Novel” after a title. I don’t see what it adds.