Jonathan Lethem knows how to spin a 'purty' good yarn. Not unlike like Scott McClellan, I suppose. Although his most recent novel You Don't Love Me Yet (Doubleday, 2007), has been receiving some mixed reviews, I'd still like to check it out. Unfortunately, I've got a summer book list as long as Patrick Swayyze's dick (which I've heard is, like... long), but I'd like to squeeze this one in. Possibly right between the Kama-Sutra and Lolita. Weird, huh? However, I will, ever so highly, recommend checking out Gun, with Occasional Music (Harcourt Brace, 1994), Lethem's debut novel.
This book is completely fucking odd. As in Ridley Scott (pre- Russell Crowe) could have one hell of a field day with Gun if it were ever optioned. It stars a straight-thinking and quiro hero, Conrad Metcalf, a hard-boiled detective from the near-future, with the erogenous zones of a woman Metcalf could have been perfectly played, 20 years ago, by none other than a young and dreamy Kurt Russell (*sigh*). Alas, he's practically a senior citizen nowadays (at 56) but damn, if he's not just as dreamy(*sigh*). But, I digress. For reasons of expediency, here's Wikipedia's plot synopsis:
"Metcalf is hired by a man who claims that he's being framed for the murder of a prominent urologist. Metcalf quickly discovers that nobody wants the case solved; not the victim's ex-wife, not the police, and certainly not the gun-toting kangaroo who works for the local mafia boss."
Sounds intriguing right?
A few more teasers:
-Thanks to technology, children can become smarter and more cynical than adults; such children are known as baby-heads.
-Animals, too, can be given the intelligence of a human being through bioscientific techniques.
-Psychology is no longer viewed as a science , and psychologists behave like Jehovahs Witnesses, the Church of the Latter Day Saints and other itinerant proselytizing religions.
-Karma is also subject to transactions through portable debit cards.
So don't be a baby-head and take Gun, With Occasional Music out of your holster and start pluggin' away.
Bibliography:
- Amnesia Moon (1995)
- As She Climbed Across the Table (1997)
- Girl in Landscape (1998)
- Motherless Brooklyn (1999)
- The Fortress of Solitude (2003)
http://www.jonathanlethem.com/
2 comments:
So you've FINALLY become a critic..... I think we all knew it would happen someday!
j/k
:)
yikes. sorry you had to see me post-two bottles of cheap chardonnay. oh what a saturday night can do to a person.
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