Jonathan Lethem

I should've read this in 2020. It would've suited the mood of that plague-stopped world perfectly.

Since I didn't, I read the book without any frisson whatsoever. As always with Lethem's writing, the sentences pass with their unshowy but tremendously high level of craftsmanship causing them to slide directly into your brain. This, despite every character being pretty much...average. They don't stand out; they aren't meant to. This is a cozy catastrophe, not a Hero's Journey. I don't know if show more that was Author Lethem's intent but it's what we got.

The most vivid presence, the one truly blaringly alive character, isn't the blah "Journeyman"...an ycleture entirely self-generated as no one addresses or refers to the main character by that name...but Todbaum (literally "death tree") the thinly-veiled satirical caricature of 45. Plowing through the landscape, crushing all remaining shelter and destroying the livelihoods of all unlucky enough to be in his way, his nuclear-powered engine of destruction was made before the catastrophe of The Arrest so is the only surviving example of technology that Lethem posits destroyed us. Now, in the post-Arrest world, people are clueless and helpless. Then here comes Todbaum to destroy them anew with his sociopathic indifference and hoarded tech.

Pretty on-the-nose as a caricature of 45, but equally applicable to the billionaire class and their survival bunkers as a whole.

What would've worked better for me, personally, in 2020 was the laying-bare of the then-president's sociopathy before January 6th, 2021, rendered fiction about his toxicity irrelevant to the point of becoming distasteful. I was mildly amused, and always entertained, by the story. I was never inside it, or moved to want more of it. I read the book and appreciated the author's skill. I didn't invest in anyone inside the story but watched passively as events happened to and around them.

In a way I suppose this is as close as I can get to the experience of people who consume stories by staring at them on TV. I accepted what I was shown. I never once thought about whys, or hows, or what-ifs. What's here is all there is. This is not my preference, to be honest; it leaves me outside and while I expect that was the point, I didn't enjoy it much.

For me, this was a case of wishy meets washy in a beige future world that's too much and not enough like the present for it to work as allegory, satire, or parable. I'd be angry and upset with it, except that it's too well-made, too craftsmanlike, to truly disappoint that much. While it delivers what it promises it will, it doesn't delight the way Author Lethem most assuredly can. show less

This was one hell of a trip. If you're into the whole noir-style smart-mouthed jaded detective thing, this hits that note really well, but the near-future world it's set in takes everything to a whole new level. Reminds me a little of The Big Sheep, another novel heavily influenced by Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick. I loved both novels, but Gun feels a bit less like self-conscious parody, I'd say. It has a lot to say about society at large, not just the sort of low-life characters who show more caught up in murder mysteries. show less

I was very impressed at first. But it was really the mask that was impressive, using that intimidation to cover a vulnerability with the protection of both emptiness and threat. We need to win, to defeat the other and to avoid becoming the other against whom someone else will win. But it's all just a game; the boundaries between us being porous to anyone willing to notice. But without boundaries, you can't tell a winner from a loser.

The boundary once known as the Berlin Wall was the source show more of wealth to the "whale" whom the protagonist initially targets as a source of income until the tumorous growth he'd developed to keep the outside at bay becomes nearly fatal. He is saved by his enemies and returned to his childhood, until the same boredom that is the reward of those who can control everything seeps out of the book and engulfs the reader. To his surprise, he ceases to care what happens to the protagonist or to anyone else. It turns out life was never a game of chance to begin with--that the mask of clever writing can't hide the emptiness within. When the gambler once again returns to inhabit his roll, its glamour is absent and we are surprised it was ever there; but others are still finding it a source of wonder and I, the reader am left to wish I had never fallen for it in the first place.

I could give this book 2 stars or just 1, but that would just be spiteful--an attempt to hide my initial fascination of which I am now embarrassed.

It's too late now for me, though you may still have a chance. Imagine I am offering you the doubling cube. Turn it down. Go read Motherless Brooklyn again instead. show less

It's a terrific coming-of-age story, a terrific space Western, and a really smart reflection on human nature. But you can't quite hold it directly. There is something about it, like the sun out West, where it seems too bright to approach directly. The shattered sense of this future America sets it off on that foot; the scene at the beginning at Coney Island. We almost don't want to look but at the same time feel compelled and so those two impulses meet somewhere just off to the side of the show more thing itself. That's a masterful achievement if I do say so.

More TK at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/11/21/girl-in-landscape/ show less