Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem 3.5 Stars

I’ll get this out of the way quickly: Chronic City is something of a gimmick book, sort of like Memento or The Sixth Sense. I’m not going to give the gimmick away (although I imagine that just by advising that there is in fact a gimmick, I’ve primed you to look for it and therefore not to be surprised when it is/isn’t revealed), and admittedly there is some controversy over whether the gimmick in question exists, but it does, and it even manages to succeed with the “WHOA MY MIND IS TOTALLY BLOOOOOWN MAAAAN” effect that gimmicks rarely achieve.

It helps that it’s written very well; on the movie-parallel spectrum, it’s much closer to the first one I mentioned than the second one.* While at its core it’s about a trio of stoners who get on E-Bay and bid on weird obelisks or go to the local diner or do what it is that stoners do (hint: smoke marijuana), it’s very clever and at points hilarious. There is a specific scene involving David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (which is renamed “Obstinate Dust” because, well, more on that because later) that ends with the classic line “Obstinate Dust, meet infinite hole.” I will let you, the reader, go out and find this.

This occurred towards the beginning of the book, during a point where I was still thinking “why the freak doesn’t Lethem just use the actual name of the book? Sure, it’s kind of satire and sure, he doesn’t paint the book in its best light, but it’s not like DFW’s estate is going to sue him.” As it turns out, the naming overall is… how shall I say it, a little on the kooky side. The love interest and the weirdo iconic music critic/artist friend are named, and no, I am not making these names up, Oona Laszlo and Perkus Tooth. Perkus Tooth dates a woman named Giorgina Hawkmanaji, who pretty much only owns that name so that Tooth can refer to her as “the Hawkman”. The main character, a B or C list celebrity you might invite to a function when all of the real stars are otherwise occupied, carries the name Chase Insteadman.

Yet somehow the book doesn’t fall apart with the strain of these admittedly cringeworthy names, or the other weird renamings (another prime example: there are several references to Muppets but they are called Gnuppets in this). It actually lends weight to the gimmick, as do the increasingly weird goings-on that surround Insteadman, Tooth, and Laszlo in New York City, events that range from a giant tiger on the loose in the subway to Insteadman’s wife (who is, incidentally, not Ms. Laszlo) getting trapped in a space station and/or dying of cancer.

Speaking of that, it’s bleedingly obvious to me what’s going on here but I have spoken to more than one person who insists that my take on things is just plain wrong. I’ve got to admit, I kind of like that. There is sometimes a sense of failure when an author portrays something but doesn’t toss up enough spotlights and on-ramps to let the reader understand that yes, this is what he is doing. This is not what I would call a subtle book, and yet… I guess it is a little bit on the subtle side.

*Side note: not to toot my own horn, but I remember “getting” M. Night Shymalan’s first movie within around the first 5 minutes. It’s kind of a pedestrian film when you don’t have that OMG I AM TRIPPING BALLS moment.