Chronic City??? final thoughts

[Joseph Tracy]

I liked the Corrections. Not great, not a revelation, but solid  
engaging storytelling, real craftsmanship.
I never read Motherless Brooklyn. Maybe he is getting worse instead  
of better.
On Aug 30, 2010, at 12:46 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Motherless Brooklyn was loads of fun, though...
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> all kinds of spoilers follow:
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> ok, the actor dude was being utilized by the mayor and so forth as a
> news story husband to I guess draw interest to the space station?
>
> a-and, he actually knew the astronaut lady when he was a sensitive
> (but not gay) kid back home in Indiana
>
> and, because he was supposedly so stoned out that he did not catch on
> until the very end, we are meant, perhaps, to tie his inattention to
> (or blame it on) his stoner habits and his punk-litterateur friend, as
> being exemplars of the trends to which (to its detriment, perhaps) the
> eyes of the cultured West were drawn, as they were simultaneously
> drawn away from the spectacle of "man's progress into Space"
>
> a-and the one guy is thinking about raiding the cyberworld to get the
> chaldrons, thus putting all kinds of emotional energy into something
> rather sterile, and everybody's fallen away from reality...
>
> That is, as David Bowie said, this ain't rock'n'roll, this is
> (de-)genocide...a decky-dance...
>
> Motherless Brooklyn: Lethem's "Secret Integration"
>
> Chronic City his V. -- or maybe his "Entropy" -- ie, you've got the
> upper room (space, where the ladyfriend's at), and you've got the
> downstairs where the party's at (the loony guy's crib, where you've
> got the makings of a Whole Sick Crew, when you factor in the lawyer
> guy, his ladyfriend, and the bum who turns out to be a computer
> adept), and you've also got the Street where the Tiger is running
> loose and chewing up stuff...I really wish the waitress would've
> managed to escape, though...
>
> and I miss the presence of a Stencilian POV...
>
> Personally, I wouldn't rule out ol' Lethem following up with somethin'
> better, but he's kinda rough on his dramatis personae -
>
> I looked in Wikipedia because I was confusing him with Jonathan
> Franzen - then remembered kinda perusing The Corrections, and thinking
> he was rather tough on his characters too...
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> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 12:04 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>  
> wrote:
>> Well i forced myself to finish the Lethem Novel. I will never read  
>> another
>> of his books. Truly , painfully dreadful.  Ineptly using fake  
>> suspense to
>> ineptly sustain  fake introspection to reveal  the warm goo at the  
>> bottom of
>>  a con job. It doesn't entertain, It doesn't  engage emotionally,  
>> it doesn't
>> reveal or challenge intellectually;  it is a book jacket con job  
>> through and
>> through, a clever Hollywood outline without a soul. Even though it  
>> is a
>> library book I still feel as though my pocket was picked.
>>
>>
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