#19
Title: Men and Cartoons: Stories
Title: Men and Cartoons: Stories
Author: Jonathan Lethem
Publisher Doubleday
Year: 2004
Genre: Short stories
Year: 2004
Genre: Short stories
160 pages
+ Deft characterizations, deadpan delivery of outlandish premises, fun cover art
- There's not much wrong with it. The last story seems weak as an anchor for the collection.
This is my 4th Lethem and the most delightful short story collection I've read recently. Lethem's focus here is on relationships--with oneself, with others--and the failure of communication. In many of the stories, intrusive encounters and unwitting coincidental meetings (with people previously known and unknown) provide the painful and sometimes humiliating impetus for the conclusion, which is often the narrator's awareness that he has disconnected or failed. This sounds grimmer than the collection actually is. Lethem's environments, as always, are fascinating and deceptively easily established; his dialogue is clever and wry without being offputting; his characters seem genuinely surprised or merely bewildered by their own lives. The conflicts that befall them are emotionally universal, yet at the narrative level bizarre. While none of us is likely to encounter the Sylvia Plath Sheep, we are all too familiar with the existential consequences brought on by that encounter. Even when they behave badly, Lethem's protagonists are likeable schlubs, and familiar schlubs at that.
This is my 4th Lethem and the most delightful short story collection I've read recently. Lethem's focus here is on relationships--with oneself, with others--and the failure of communication. In many of the stories, intrusive encounters and unwitting coincidental meetings (with people previously known and unknown) provide the painful and sometimes humiliating impetus for the conclusion, which is often the narrator's awareness that he has disconnected or failed. This sounds grimmer than the collection actually is. Lethem's environments, as always, are fascinating and deceptively easily established; his dialogue is clever and wry without being offputting; his characters seem genuinely surprised or merely bewildered by their own lives. The conflicts that befall them are emotionally universal, yet at the narrative level bizarre. While none of us is likely to encounter the Sylvia Plath Sheep, we are all too familiar with the existential consequences brought on by that encounter. Even when they behave badly, Lethem's protagonists are likeable schlubs, and familiar schlubs at that.
A unifying theme present in many of these stories is the comicbook superhero, some of whose avatars are more successful than others. In addition, the collection uses minor images and motifs to bridge the stories. Some are thematic similarities ("The Spray" makes missing objects visible, then in "Planet Big Zero" the narrator comments, "so much of life becomes invisible"); others are more like puns (Toscanini's glasses in "Planet Big Zero" foreshadow "The Glasses").
Though I enjoyed the whole collection as a group, "The Spray" and "Big Planet Zero" were my favorites. "The Glasses" is the most poignant, and the only story that seemed to demonstrate the triumph of connection over isolation, albeit subtlely. "The National Anthem" is the anchor story and the weakest in the collection. It seemed too self-conscious and I was not engaged by it. Perhaps it was too reflective in a collection that otherwise used more eventful narratives. Perhaps it would have been more satisfying if it had reprised the comics motif. Whatever the reason, it is unsatisfying, and the only low point in an otherwise fine and sophisticated collection.
The back cover art on the hardback edition is in the form of the ad pages that used to run in comic books (think "X-Ray Spex!"). Some are blurbs about the stories; some are spoofs of ads ("Raise Fun-Loving AQUA CHIMPS/JUST ADD WATER!/Or mustard or vermouth or Drano or whatever. It's never too early to learn how fleeting love can be...."). You can see it using Amazon's Search Inside feature.
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