JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of seven novels. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Lethem has also published his stories and essays in The New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among others.
"Astonishing....Knowing and exuberant, with beautiful drunken
sentences that somehow manage to walk a straight
line.....Turbocharged....Intricate and seamless....A dancing
showgirl of a novel, yet beneath the gaudy makeup it's also the
girl next door: a traditional bildungsroman with a strong moral
compass."--New York Times Book Review
"Chronic City is a feverish portrait of the anxiety and isolation
of modern Manhattan, full of dark humor and dazzling
writing....proves both funny and frightening."--Entertainment
Weekly
"Exuberant literary revving.....Lethem's vision of New York can
approach the Swiftian. It is impressively observant in its detail
and scourging in its mocking satire. There are any number of wicked
portraits....His comments on New York life are often achingly
exact....So pungent and imaginative"--The Boston Globe
"Ingenious and unsettling...Lethem pulls everything together in a
stunning critique of our perceptions of reality and our
preconceptions of the function of literature."--San Francisco
Chronicle
"Exquisitely written...Funny and mystifying, eminently quotable,
resolutely difficult, even heartbreaking, "Chronic City"
demonstrates an imaginative breadth not quite of this
world."--Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A fluid sense of reality pervades these pages, which explore high
society, urban politics, avant-garde art, celebrity mania and the
dangers of information overload in an age where context is devalued
or ignored....the quality of Lethem's prose and the exuberance of
his imagination are reasons enough to read it.....When it comes to
style, Lethem has few equals."--Miami Herald
"The novel functions much like Manhattan used to – a mad scramble
of connections made and, more often, missed…make(s) a reader ache
for a city long gone." –Esquire
"Entertaining....a prosopographical investigation of New York City
by way of a handful of strange, unclassifiable characters (and some
remarkable writing)....splendidly observed"--Wall Street
Journal
"Brilliant....exquisite wit and dazzling intricacy of every single
paragraph......roves he's one of the most elegant stylists in the
country, and he's capable of spinning surreal scenes that are equal
parts noir and comedy.... evocative and engaging....As a
reflection on modern alienation and the chronic loneliness that
afflicts us in our faux world, this is beautifully, often
powerfully done."--The Washington Post
"A sprawling book about pop culture and outer space…realistic and
fantastic, serious and funny, warm and clear eyed. One of the new
generation's most ambitious writers, Lethem again offers a novel
that deals with nothing less important than the difference between
truth and lies. And some stories about good cheeseburgers."--The
Daily Beast
"A stellar, multi-layered novel." – GQ
"Lethem has often sought to interweave the realistic and the
fantastic; in Chronic City the result is nearly seamless." - New
York Magazine
"[Lethem is] a writer who resists pigeonholing....it's hard to
remain unsusceptible to his euphoria"--Los Angeles Times
"Friction, charisma, unpleasantness, and threat are key to this
tale of scintillating misfits.....dizzyingly brilliant urban
enigma"--O Magazine
"One of America's finest novelists explores the disconnections
among art, government, space travel and parallel realities, as his
characters hunger for elusive meaning…… All truths and realities
are open to interpretation, even negotiation, in this brilliantly
rich novel….Lethem's most ambitious work to date."—Kirkus Reviews,
starred "Pow! Letham has done it again. When it comes to
brainy adventures full of laughter and heart this master has few
equals. What a joy from the first page to the last."—Gary
Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's
Handbook "I'm reminded of the well-rubbed Kafka line re: A
book must be the axe to break the frozen sea within us. Lethem's
book, with incredible fury, aspires to do little less. It's almost
certainly his best novel. It's genuinely great."–David Shields,
author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
Jonathan Lethem's work has gone from postapocalyptic sci-fi to autobiographical magical realism. In Chronic City, he weaves these elements together, blending a number of actual recent events to create his own surreal urban landscape. The nearly mythological construction of the Second Avenue Subway spawns a strange destructive tiger that defies capture as it transforms the old city into a scary new one. A pair of eagles illegally squatting on an Upper East Side windowsill are summarily evicted. Best of all is the economic abyss that one once encountered above 125th Street. Here, Lethem has dropped a manmade fjord, a performance art chasm. At the heart of this city is former child star Chase Insteadman. Lately, he is better known as a celebrity fiance to fatale femme astronaut Janice Strumbull, who is stuck in orbit because of Chinese satellite mines. Lately, though, his greater concern is his friend Perkus Tooth. Perkus is a pauper scholar, a slightly delusional Don Quixote character whose windmills are called chaldrons, imagined vases that bring inner peace. Somewhat like the tragic poet Delmore Schwartz who Saul Bellow fictionally eulogized (and Lethem acknowledges) in Humboldt's Gift, Tooth cuts with equal parts genius and madness. Though he never really rises above a plasterer of "broadside" rants, he's a recognizable artifact of New York circa 1981. Between bong hits-yes, for you potheads, Chronic is his favorite brand-and downtown cultural references, conspiracy theories hiccup from Perkus's lips. A prevalent notion he has is that our reality is nothing more than a facsimile, a simulation of a hidden reality. Perkus's hyperactive brain only pauses when he lapses into his periodic "ellipse"-a kind of revelatory break. The only problem is his breaks are gradually increasing in frequency. Inasmuch as Perkus is a personification of the old New York and its highly endangered culture, Insteadman finds a moral duty to protect him. If Perkus is Insteadman's moral conscience, Richard Abneg, an opportunistic politico, is Insteadman's naked ambition. Though Abneg started as an East Village anarchist, through intellect and arrogance he rose to become a powerful aide to Mayor Arnaheim (a Giuliani-Bloomberg hybrid). Now he's dismantling the rent stabilization laws he once championed. Eventually, these two work together to save Perkus. Though Chronic City at times requires patience, it is a luxuriously stylized paean to Gotham City's great fountain of culture that is slowly drying up. Like the city itself, the book sways toward the maximal, but its prose shines like our skyline at sunset. The key to his city lies in the very notion of reality: Chase Insteadman's moniker implies that this former actor is now just a stand-in for a greater (perhaps former) reality. By the conclusion, I found myself wondering if Lethem hadn't originally written a shorter simulacra of Chronic City, when it was just an Acute City. From him I would expect no less. Arthur Nersesian is author of The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx (book two of the Five Books of Moses). His next novel, Mesopotamia, a thriller, is due out next year. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
"Astonishing....Knowing and exuberant, with beautiful drunken
sentences that somehow manage to walk a straight
line.....Turbocharged....Intricate and seamless....A dancing
showgirl of a novel, yet beneath the gaudy makeup it's also the
girl next door: a traditional bildungsroman with a strong moral
compass."--New York Times Book Review
"Chronic City is a feverish portrait of the anxiety and
isolation of modern Manhattan, full of dark humor and dazzling
writing....proves both funny and frightening."--Entertainment
Weekly
"Exuberant literary revving.....Lethem's vision of New York can
approach the Swiftian. It is impressively observant in its detail
and scourging in its mocking satire. There are any number of wicked
portraits....His comments on New York life are often achingly
exact....So pungent and imaginative"--The Boston Globe
"Ingenious and unsettling...Lethem pulls everything together in a
stunning critique of our perceptions of reality and our
preconceptions of the function of literature."--San Francisco
Chronicle
"Exquisitely written...Funny and mystifying, eminently quotable,
resolutely difficult, even heartbreaking, "Chronic City"
demonstrates an imaginative breadth not quite of this
world."--Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A fluid sense of reality pervades these pages, which explore high
society, urban politics, avant-garde art, celebrity mania and the
dangers of information overload in an age where context is devalued
or ignored....the quality of Lethem's prose and the exuberance of
his imagination are reasons enough to read it.....When it comes to
style, Lethem has few equals."--Miami Herald
"The novel functions much like Manhattan used to - a mad scramble
of connections made and, more often, missed...make(s) a reader ache
for a city long gone." -Esquire
"Entertaining....a prosopographical investigation of New
York City by way of a handful of strange, unclassifiable characters
(and some remarkable writing)....splendidly observed"--Wall
Street Journal
"Brilliant....exquisite wit and dazzling intricacy of every single
paragraph......roves he's one of the most elegant stylists in the
country, and he's capable of spinning surreal scenes that are equal
parts noir and comedy.... evocative and engaging....As a reflection
on modern alienation and the chronic loneliness that afflicts us in
our faux world, this is beautifully, often powerfully
done."--The Washington Post
"A sprawling book about pop culture and outer space...realistic and
fantastic, serious and funny, warm and clear eyed. One of the new
generation's most ambitious writers, Lethem again offers a novel
that deals with nothing less important than the difference between
truth and lies. And some stories about good cheeseburgers."--The
Daily Beast
"A stellar, multi-layered novel." - GQ
"Lethem has often sought to interweave the realistic and the
fantastic; in Chronic City the result is nearly seamless." - New
York Magazine
"[Lethem is] a writer who resists pigeonholing....it's hard
to remain unsusceptible to his euphoria"--Los Angeles
Times
"Friction, charisma, unpleasantness, and threat are key to this
tale of scintillating misfits.....dizzyingly brilliant urban
enigma"--O Magazine
"One of America's finest novelists explores the disconnections
among art, government, space travel and parallel realities, as his
characters hunger for elusive meaning...... All truths and
realities are open to interpretation, even negotiation, in this
brilliantly rich novel....Lethem's most ambitious work to
date."-Kirkus Reviews, starred "Pow! Letham has done it again.
When it comes to brainy adventures full of laughter and heart this
master has few equals. What a joy from the first page to the
last."-Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian
Debutante's Handbook "I'm reminded of the well-rubbed Kafka line
re: A book must be the axe to break the frozen sea within us.
Lethem's book, with incredible fury, aspires to do little less.
It's almost certainly his best novel. It's genuinely great."-David
Shields, author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be
Dead
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