Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem

Men and Cartoons is a collection of stories by Jonathan Lethem, who wrote Motherless Brooklyn and Gun with Occasional Music, both of which received positive reviews from this site. The cartoons of the title are not, as the cover art would suggest, the humorous variety that provide connotation to the word "cartoonish," but superhero comics, which appear in various manifestations throughout the nine stories contained here. In that way, Lethem seems to be one of a long string of male postmodern authors intent on deconstructing the comic book, but most of these fall somewhere south of Kavalier and Clay in quality.

The book starts off very strong with a story called "The Vision," which begins with the narrator recalling a friend of his from grade school who never took off his superhero costume, only to discover that in adulthood the boy (having abandoned his altar ego) has moved in next door. The narrator attends the Vision's party, where they play the party game Mafia. It's a pleasantly melancholy investigation of what games and play mean to adults and children, and Men and Cartoons is at its best when its absurdity and strangeness is complemented by these small, disaffected moments. The best of the bunch are "Vivian Relf," about a man and woman who keeping meeting by accident, and "The Glasses," which is nothing but a conversation between two opticians about why a customer's glasses seem to be smudging all the time.

By contrast, the strangest stories in the compilation usually fall flat, such as "The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, is Interrupted by a Knock at the Door," or "Super Goat Man," about a superhero who upon his retirement takes up teaching at a small Northeastern college. The gimmicks here are clever, but the disconnect from any real human emotion is simply too strong. No wonder, then, that "The Spray" retains that strangeness but works in quite simple a fashion--it's about a spray that creates an image of anything that you have lost or forgotten, whether it be a stolen television set or an ex-boyfriend. (Also, it's the clearest connection that Lethem makes to Philip K. Dick, whose influence seems to be all over the place.) An excerpt:

I jumped up. "If you spray me I'll spray you," I shouted. The spray hit me as I moved across the room. The wet mist fell behind me , like a parachute collapsing in the spot where I'd been, but enough got on me. An image of Lucinda formed, glowing and salmon-colored.

Lucinda was naked. Her hair was short, like when we were together. Her head lay on my shoulder, her arms were around my neck, and her body was across my front. My shirt and jacket. Her breasts were mashed against me, but I couldn't feel them. Her knee was across my legs. I jumped backward but she came with me, radiant and insubstantial. I turned my head to see her face. her expression was peaceful, but her little salmon-colored eyelids were half-open.

"Ha!" said Addie. "I told you it would work."

All in all, not a bad collection, and worth the ninety minutes it might take to read. I wouldn't read it before Motherless Brooklyn, though.

Gun With Ocassional Music by Jonathan Letham

I knew all at once I didn't care about the woman who'd left me like this, that I didn't want her back and I didn't want revenge, and I didn't want Celeste or any other woman besides the one with me right now. I wanted Catherine, I wanted her with everything I had—except I didn't have it anymore. What I had to offer, what I should have had to offer, was missing... I wanted Catherine, but I wanted to take her with a different self, a self that wasn't available. The thing I wanted wasn't lost in the past at all, and never had been. It was lost in the future. A self I should have been, but wasn't. A thread I'd let go of in myself, thinking I could live without it, not seeing what it meant.

It seems appropriate that I'm posting this review right after Chris posts his review of Ubik, because Gun With Occasional Music is essentially a noir in the Dick-ensian setting. The style is hard-boiled, the plot labyrinthine, the ladies beautiful and cold and the men strong and solitary. And, of course, there are the babyheads, infants with adult intellects; anthropomorphic animals including a kangaroo assassin, an array of government-sponsored drugs with names like Forgetorall.

Conrad Metcalf, a tough-guy private investigator, is living a fairly comfortable life when his services are requisitioned by a man, Orton Angwine, who is accused of a murder he didn't commit. Metcalf reluctantly takes the case and, of course, finds that its roots go much deeper than he originally anticipated. I'm giving the plot the short shrift here--there's quite a bit more of it—but I'd rather focus on the world and themes in the book because a) someone might want to read this book, and b) it's just more interesting.

There's a lot going on in Metcalf's world, much of it related to the theme of identity. On the surface, there are the obvious connections: who is framing Ortwine, who is behind it all, and so on, but Gun takes these questions and digs deeper. Metcalf himself is something of a male-female hybrid, left without the ability to feel sexual pleasure after a transplant gone wrong, and he struggles with his place in relation to the women he meets throughout the story, most notably with Catherine in the included excerpt. Further, the concept of identity is further confused by the government's encouragement to citizens to use drugs of various sorts, drugs which make them forget, sleep, and enjoy themselves. This aspect reminded me quite a bit of Brave New World. Another interesting aspect is Letham's invention of Karma, not the Buddhist idea but a concept more closely tied to the colloquialism “Good Karma”. Karma in Gun's world functions as sort of a universal currency that controls not a person's ability to buy and sell but their ability to enter places of business, get jobs, or even form relationships. In short, a person's ability to live is governed by Karma which is regulated by the government based on behavior ultimately leading to a lack of autonomy among the populace. Even asking innocuous questions is considered unbelievably rude. This leads to a lack of individualism and, of course, governmental corruption and societal manipulation by those with the money and/or Karma to do whatever they want.

One issue I often have with science fiction is that, given its nearly limitless narrative potential, it rarely spends time examining the deeper questions of humanity. That's something I love to find in my reading, even my genre reading, and something Letham delivers. But fear not, sci-fi fans: there's also a kangaroo assassin.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

"Ziggedy zendoodah," I said aloud. My erection dimmed, energy venting elsewhere. "Pierogi Monster Zen master zealous neighbor. Zazen zaftig Zsa Zsa go-bare." I rapped the scalp of the sitter in front of me. "Zippity go figure."

The roomful of gurus and acolytes came to agitated life but not one of them spoke a word, so my burst of verbiage sang in the silence. The lecturing monk glared at me and shook his head. Another of his posse rose from his cushion and lifted a wooden paddle I hadn't previously notice from a hook in the wall...

"Pierogi kumquat sushiphone! Domestic marshmallow ghost! Insatiable Mallomar! Smothered pierogiphone!" The flood came with such force, I twisted my neck and nearly barked the words.


Lionel Essrog is an orphan, raised practically from youth by a low-level mobster named Frank Minna in the Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens neighborhoods of Brooklyn, and along with three other orphans forms the nucleus of Minna's detective-service-cum-crime-operation-cum-fake-car-service. As you can see from the passage above, he also has Tourette's.

Which, when your line of work revolves around subtly discovering and keeping information, can be quite the drawback. Lionel is a sort of anti-Philip Marlowe, a detective who exudes anything but cool and goes undercover very poorly. But in the opening chapters of the novel Minna is murdered, and since one of the other orphans is incarcerated and the other two locked in a battle for supremacy of Minna's mini-empire, the lot of finding Minna's killer falls to Lionel.

The mystery here is slight--it involves Minna's long lost brother and a cadre of Zen Buddhist monks operating out of the Upper East Side. The revelations that aren't telegraphed to the reader early on remain murky at the story's end, and the whole goofiness barely elevates the novel above the level of a Monk episode.

But Lionel is an intriguing character to follow; a captive of his own tics who doesn't seem capable of connecting with any other human being except his dead boss. The Zen angle seems inspired by a lot of silly prime-time detective dramas, but at the same time it provides an interesting balance to Lionel's troubled psyche--the Zen monks have what Lionel can only dream of possessing: control over the tumultous waters of the spirit. In fact, Lionel--endlessly complicated, and tangled up within his own mind--matches the mystery genre a lot better than the orderly, logic-driven detectives that seem to dominate it.

As an aside, I have to say I enjoyed this a lot more than The Brooklyn Follies--among other things, The Brooklyn Follies seemed to have a big hard-on for the Park Slope life but never really provides the reader with local color to sink his or her teeth into. It could have been any reasonably sized blue city. But Motherless Brooklyn's Court Street is unmistakable, and to my delight includes a few locales well-known to me. It even makes a stop in my neighborhood, Greenpoint, where Minna is murdered and stuffed in a dumpster. I feel certified.

P.S: I think that Brent, Carlton, Nathan and Jim would all enjoy this--plus, Edward Norton is supposed to be directing/starring in a film adaptation released next year.