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| Wednesday, November 25, 2009 11:39 AM |
| Book Report - Chronic City |
 by Fëanor |
This isn't really a proper book report, as I'm giving up on this book without finishing it, something I feel I'm doing more often of late than I used to. I got about halfway through, and then I just kind of skimmed through the rest to see what happened. A few characters die at the end. Whatever. I just wasn't moved by this. I'm not all that surprised, unfortunately. The only Lethem novel that worked for me from beginning to end was the first one I read, As She Climbed Across the Table. I was so crazy about that book that I immediately wrote a short story that was practically a remake of it. But almost every other book I've read by Lethem since then has disappointed me. His control of language is always excellent, with wonderful turns of phrase that I deeply envy, and he usually has a lot of great concepts and premises. But at a certain point he always loses me and I can never enjoy the end of the book. Chronic City never really even had me. It's a book about faded stars and intellectuals living in New York City and dealing with the problems of faded stars and intellectuals living in New York City. It's a bit sickening. They all have ridiculous names (Chase Insteadman, Perkus Tooth) and ridiculous lives, and they're all pretty much dicks of one kind or another. There are, as usual, some wonderful turns of phrase and some wonderful ideas - I love that the main character has an astronaut fiance trapped in orbit, and that a tiger that may actually be a runaway robot is terrorizing the city. But nothing all that much really happens. The characters all just wander about and talk and think and become obsessed with random things and have sex and lose eBay auctions. Blah. |
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