I think that we'll still be reading Jonathan Lethem's "The Fortress of Solitude" a hundred years from now, which makes "Chronic City" all that much more disappointing. The book lacks an authentic human voice, is crowded with unnecessary subplots, and reads like a third-rate Pynchon knockoff. Lethem also seems to have picked up Tom's penchant for goofy character names and freewheeling sci-fi plots that don't quite cohere, but it's the lack of interesting, believable characters that really does this one in. A shame, really, since the human element is usually Lethem's strongest suit; the relationship between Dylan and Mingus, the two characters at the center of "The Fortress of Solitude" is one of the truest, and most affecting, accounts of friendship I've ever read. By contrast, "Chronic City"'s narrator, Chase Insteadman, seems devoid of interiority, and most of the supporting players come off as mere caricatures. I think Lethem's trying to riff on life in post-9/11 New York, but his choice of subject matter – Second Life? – makes him seem about two steps behind the times, and the plot never really gets going. The novel casts about for a reason to exist; I gave up halfway through. ( )

Bow-wow Whoa! Yippy-yo yippy Yeah! (ya understand?)

*Chronic City*

My browser, so helpful-so Jeeves, asks: "Did you mean chronicity?"

Chronicity n. the state of being chronic

investigating further...(like on kesey's bus)

Chronic: Adj.

1. (of a problem) That which continues over an extended period of time, often associated with suffering ("long suffering")
.
2. (medicine) Prolonged or slow to heal. The opposite of acute.suffering from such affliction
Chronic patients must learn to live with their condition

3. Inveterate or habitual.
He's a chronic smoker

4. (informal) Very bad, awful.
That concert was chronic

5. (informal) Extremely serious.
They left him in a chronic condition

Thank you Jonathem Lethem for one defining image - that of Perkus Tooth (fictonal deranged genius and graffiti artist at large once upon a time) and Ava (the loving, slobbering, three legged pitbull) dancing - paw in hand - to a cut from Some Girls "....shaddoobie...Shattered!" That moment I will keep pressed inbetween the pages of my brain like a five leaf clover. With "doobie" echoing like a morgue shelf door slamming.

Reading this small masterpiece (a Moby Dick of sorts wherein Chase Insteadman, child actor, as an Ishmael recounts Perkus Tooth's self destructive quest for the White Whale of weed insight which morphs from Marlon Brando to hologram vase to any of many brilliant digressions to Steve Martin in a film noir reminding himself of the danger of love)...reading this small masterpiece I had the overwhelming urge to raid my storage unit, hook up the VCR and hunt for a tape of Woody Allen's Manhattan, just to listen to the soudtrack Rhapsody in Blue in that obsolete format.

But even more I had an urge to shave my head, dress in an orange robe, take a baseball bat, find Jonathan Lethem, and beat him senseless in the manner of a Zen monk reprimanding a novice who had the temerity to answer a koan. ( HAH! The true sound of half a hand clapping is a slap in the face, idiot!) Then I realized, I was the novice, and Lethem was beating me wit dis fine schtick of enlightenment. Ouch!

Words...what are they good for...absolutely nothing? A war between those who write and those who...woof, woof, woof?

This is a book about nothing - a Seinfeld show - about mysteries which seem fatuous, unless you've ever understood why people on the upper East side, never venture below 29th street or beyond Central Park West. A book about the beauty of pigeons flying past a cathedral tower, like white wheelbarrows that seem so red beside Wallace Stevens.

A book, a rock, a leaf in fall, a wild thing, and ka-ching! It moved me. ( )

What is real? What is true? And, how can you really know for sure? That is the theme of this book.

The “City” is Manhattan, and “Chronic” is a brand of marijuana as well as having its ordinary meaning. Chase Insteadman is famous for being famous. He is at home among the super-rich denizens of Manhattan's Upper East Side. He is a former child actor, who is collecting his residuals from an insipid sit com that is forever showing on cable TV re-runs, Martyr and Pesty. At the start of the book, he meets Perkus Tooth at the offices of the Criterion Collection, which produces classic movies on DVD's. Insteadman is there to record voice-overs. Tooth writes liner notes for the company on a free-lance basis. They strike up a friendship. Tooth is an oddball intellectual to say the least, with his esoteric tastes in pop culture, his conspiracy theories, etc. Here's a sample from early in the novel, with Insteadman describing one of Tooth's running commentaries: “Did I read The New Yorker? This question had dangerous urgency. It wasn't any one writer or article he was worried about, but the font. The meaning embedded, at a preconscious level, by the look of the magazine; the seal, as he described it, that the typography and layout put on dialectical thought. According to Perkus, to read The New Yorker was to find that you always already agreed not with The New Yorker but, much more dismayingly, with yourself. I tried hard to understand.” So did I.

Insteadman and Tooth are typical of the humorous names often given to the book's characters. When I first read the name Perkus Tooth, I immediately thought of Laszlo Toth, the man who attacked Michaelangelo's Pieta statute with a hammer, and the name Don Novello used for his phony correspondence with famous people. But, that is just how my mind works; so, it was probably only a coincidence when shortly later, another character, Steadman's sex/love interest, was introduced, named Oona Laszlo.

The story is something out of a Charlie Kaufman movie. Steadman's girlfriend is trapped in a space station with mostly Russian cosmonauts, after the Chinese place mines blocking the way back to earth. Her letters to him are published in the newspapers after being screened by the government. An escaped tiger is roaming the streets of Manhattan, causing extensive damage and fear in the residents, who track its path on the Internet. The New York Times publishes a “war free” edition. Tooth's rants contain many references to Marlon Brando (is he dead or is that a myth?), Norman Mailer, John Casavettes, The Gnuppets (yes, not the Muppets) and many only marginally known cultural figures of the second half of the 20th Century (if they are real at all; I'm not certain (Morrison Groom and Florian Ib can't be). An artist, Laird Noteless, is constructing another of his giant pits in the ground of the island. The Southern part of Manhattan is permanently enshrouded in a thick gray fog, but the World Trade Center is still there. Tooth discovers the enchanting, almost addictive properties of chaldrons, a type of vase or cauldron, while getting an acupuncture treatment for his cluster headaches. A chocolate smell permeates the city. And, then it starts snowing. And so much more.

I must say that I enjoy this kind of absurd madness. I found the book entertaining in way that I have enjoyed books by Pynchon, Vonnegut, DeLillo, Robbins and Wallace, and Kaufman's movies. If you like their works, you should find this book a satisfying read. ( )

The real and the surreal clash in Lethem's Manhattan

If Seinfeld was "the show about nothing," then Chronic City just may be the novel about nothing. It's beautifully written, but very little happens in the course of its 480 pages. To keep my comparison alive, you'd find your "Jerry" in protagonist Chase Insteadman--one of the many unusual names we'll discuss in a moment. The book's jacket copy describes him like this:

"Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a much-beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters."

Within the novel's text, Chase describes himself: "My distinction (if there is one) lies in the helpless and immersive extent of my empathy. I'm truly a vacuum filled by the folks I'm with, and vapidly neutral in their absence." In other words, a hard character to really care about.

Chase is surrounded by a group of equally oddly-named friends. Foremost among them is Perkus Tooth, the "Kramer" of the bunch. Perkus is long past quirky and deep into weird territory. He's a largely sequestered social critic who spends his days and nights getting high and sharing semi-coherent rants with a selected few. Perkus's life-long friend, Richard Abneg, a city bureaucrat, can be our "George." And their long-time associate, and Chase's secret lover, Oona Laszlo, rounds out our quartet as "Elaine."

My comparison with this long-dead television show is a little ridiculous, but at the same time, it's not crazy at all. These are caricature New Yorkers, doing their thing. Chase is the least objectionable of the bunch, but none of them are all that likeable. By far, the most sympathetic character is Janice Trumball, trapped in space and pining for her man. Her letters home were my favorite part of the novel, but they were few and far between.

So, I mentioned the names. To those already listed add Strabo Blandiana, Laird Noteless, Georgina Hawkmanjani, Anne Sprillthmar, and many others. The crazy names certainly weren't randomly selected, and it's no casual mistake when Chase is erroneously addressed as "Chase Unperson," and Perkus is later referred to as "Mr. Pincus Truth." Lethem winks at his readers with this passage:

"His name is Stanley Toothbrush."
"See, now you're definitely making fun of me, because that's idiotic."
"Stanley would be awfully hurt if he heard you. You have no idea how often people laugh in his face."
"Toothbrush... that's just a little hard to swallow."
"No more so than stuff you swallow every day."

The New York setting is as much, if not more, of a character than any of the others. (And the title references not only Manhattan, but a grade of marijuana. Did I mention the characters spend interminable portions of the novel getting high and having only vaguely comprehensible conversations?) Lethem's Manhattan is immediately recognizable; I've eaten at the burger joint the characters frequent. At the same time, it's a sort of bizarro Manhattan where the city and the citizens have to deal with tigers run amok, a pervasive scent of chocolate, and can choose to read the "War-Free Edition" of the Times. Muppets are Gnuppets, and are referenced constantly. What does it all mean?

I don't think anyone but Jonathan Lethem will ever understand what it all means, but by the end I understood what he was getting at. I just didn't care. As terrific as some of the writing is, the novel as a whole is rather tedious, and ultimately unsuccessful. I can't honestly recommend reading it unless, perhaps, you're a pothead with an extraordinary vocabulary. ( )

I think I liked it, but I don't think I quite got it. The backdrop of a post 9/11 Manhattan had the right feel, but this book reminded me of Dhalgren in that it seemed to question reality and offer no revelations. ( )