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 Click for words events Love, Lethem, Love "The Fortress of Solitude" author Jonathan Lethem writes a romance, kind of
Jonathan Lethem has taken a turn for the farce.
The author of "Motherless Brooklyn," a stunning, layered and
near-mystic crime novel, "The Fortress of Solitude," his
semi-autobiographical, saddening, marvelous tale about two boys growing
up in Brooklyn through decades of gentrification and 2005's fantastic
collection of essays, "The Disappointment Artist," now offers "You
Don't Love Me Yet," a comedy of sorts, a strange, sarcastic and
charming tale of love and art and sex and music in Los Angeles. That's
right--California.
Lucinda, his protagonist, hears people's complaints over the phone as
part of an art installation. One day she falls for one particular voice,
who she dubs "The Complainer," whose elegant and biting musings on
life and sex touch her core. They eventually meet and fuck. He, through
a series of events, imbeds himself into her band, an outfit
just-this-close to its big break (though they can't pick a name for the
group). The other members are colorful enough--the enigmatic and moody
lead singer works as a zookeeper, the drummer works at a masturbation
sex shop called No Shame, a lyricist who suffers writer's block--and it
all leads to a big mess for each of them, making it abundantly clear
that Lethem, with these luckless, yet fruitful, characters, had a lot of
fun writing this book.
"I guess I'm just old enough now that I've seen my own twenties in a
kind of light," Lethem says. "I guess I was thinking a lot of the part
of life where you're kind of a wannabe, where everyone's kind of a fake,
trying on different selves, outfits, changing partners. Everything seems
important and permanent, and then it changes constantly."
For the book's setting, Lethem returns to the place that hosted his
earlier, earlier work--the West Coast. "It was great," he says of the
change. "I needed to leave Brooklyn alone for a while. `Fortress of
Solitude' was crucial for me to write, and it drew on all the stories
and essays [that were] in orbit at that time, but [here] I felt like I
was becoming an amateur again. With L.A., I'm not an expert, I've never
lived there. I was reconnecting with the irresponsible part of the
writing life, the game-playing, the being open to serendipitous
occurrences."
Lethem says that, after "The Fortress of Solitude," moving to
lighter fare was necessary. "It was inevitable," he says. "If you
look at a road map to serious writing careers, usually if you do
something as tortuous and monumental as `Fortress' you're not supposed
to shift into other modes--like I should be Faulkner, write twenty
novels about Brooklyn. Early in my career I wrote myself into an
identity as a science fiction or crime writer, and now Brooklyn has been
the most recent pigeonhole for me to elude."
He uses a picture of himself on the book's jacket, though he says the
work isn't entirely autobiographical. "Like `Fortress of Solitude,'
everything and nothing," he says. "I couldn't pretend there wasn't a
part of me in every part of the book--confessional in some ways, but
also transmuted and made strange by fiction, decisions I made, things I
combined it with...I can see my hand inside all the puppets--I know
there's a confession of myself in Lucinda, but also in Bedwin [the
band's lyricist with writer's block] and in Matthew [the zookeeper].
It's so funny the way I put a picture of myself on the jacket--it teases
at the idea that I'm in there somewhere, and I know I am, but not
one-on-one."
It's obvious in the book that Lethem truly cherishes these characters
he's created. "I adore them," he says. "It's so funny, [somebody
asked me] `Isn't the female bass player kind of a man's fantasy,' and
I'm like `Yes, of course! I want to have sex with all these characters,
they're all attractive to me!' There's something so appealing about
unfinished people--in the way that when you're in your forties you have
a crush on all the young people around you."
Lethem--who believes "The Fortress of Solitude" is still his best
book--says he enjoys writing novels the most, as opposed to his fine
essay and short-fiction work. "The thing I love most is writing a
novel, dwelling in that world," he says. "I love short fiction and
essays, because you finish quickly, you have that sense of discharging
an assignment. With novels you have to wait so long for that feeling of
accomplishment." He says that he writes every day, but not quite at a
rapid-fire pace. "I'm steady more than quick. I'm quite slow--if I
write three pages in a day, that's enormous. One is typical. But I try
to persist--I write that one, every day. When I hear people
talking about finishing drafts in weeks, writing twenty pages a day,
it's boggling."
Lethem's working on a new novel, but it's in its beginning stages
now, and he says it's difficult to talk about. "I'm going back to New
York, but not Brooklyn. Manhattan. It's contemporary and dark and
strange, rather than [having] a nostalgic quality. It's present day,
with an undertone of terror. I like it so far."
Jonathan Lethem discusses "You Don't Love Me Yet" on March 14 as
part of Columbia College's Story Week Festival, at the Harold Washington
Library Center, 400 South State, at 3pm. The event is free, but Salman
Rushdie also speaks, so get there early.
Also by Tom Lynch NONFICTION REVIEW
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Sea Dogs
Soundcheck
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The Unreal World
Syked Out
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State of Grace
Dead Calm
Bowlshit
Tip of the Week
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