You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
almartin 's review for:
Dissident Gardens
by Jonathan Lethem
Shit jammed in the pages of this one:
-jetBlue ticket to Orlando (long story)
-Joe Lhota women's health handbill (he gets a triple question mark from Planned Parenthood on all the issues)
-flyer advertising the opening of the WTC West Concourse
-Google NYC building pass dated 10.22.2013
what I'm saying is, it's mid January, BDB is mayor, and it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a work of fiction if you can let it sit half-complete on your shelves for two months without a second thought. But let me try to justify 4 stars/"really liked it" nonetheless.
I am an ardent defender of Fortress of Solitude - I thought that book was straight-up magic, possibly because it is a love song to BK and I read it roughly around the time I moved here. Let's start by pointing out that despite the NYC/coming-of-age stuff at work here this is not that book, although there were about 20 pages (298-317, specifically) where Lethem is operating at Fortress of Solitude gear.
There are undoubtedly a lot of smart things to be said about the US Communist party / Sandinista / Quakerism / Occupy! through line - and indeed, that's the tack that the jacket copy takes; "Three generations of all-American radicals." Utopian thought doesn't seem to serve anyone very well - without giving away too much of the plot arc, I think it's a fair conclusion in the Dissident Gardens universe radical political thought will get you dead, or at a minimum alienate everyone you care about.
In my view, anyways, the OWS / radicalism-repeating-itself isn't the strength of the book - it's the structure and storytelling. À la the shit-just-got-weird flying parts of Fortress of Solitude, there's a really effective chapter built entirely from a Stasi police file. The entirety of Part III was particularly strong - Lethem jumps around between characters and across time; ripping apart the world that he set up in Parts I-II.
Last thought - Dissident Gardens seemed the least believable and most cliche in the chapters written from the point of view of women. Is it possible that Lethem isn't that good at writing female characters? In the first part of that n+1 No Regrets panel I recall someone being down on him for this very reason.
-jetBlue ticket to Orlando (long story)
-Joe Lhota women's health handbill (he gets a triple question mark from Planned Parenthood on all the issues)
-flyer advertising the opening of the WTC West Concourse
-Google NYC building pass dated 10.22.2013
what I'm saying is, it's mid January, BDB is mayor, and it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a work of fiction if you can let it sit half-complete on your shelves for two months without a second thought. But let me try to justify 4 stars/"really liked it" nonetheless.
I am an ardent defender of Fortress of Solitude - I thought that book was straight-up magic, possibly because it is a love song to BK and I read it roughly around the time I moved here. Let's start by pointing out that despite the NYC/coming-of-age stuff at work here this is not that book, although there were about 20 pages (298-317, specifically) where Lethem is operating at Fortress of Solitude gear.
There are undoubtedly a lot of smart things to be said about the US Communist party / Sandinista / Quakerism / Occupy! through line - and indeed, that's the tack that the jacket copy takes; "Three generations of all-American radicals." Utopian thought doesn't seem to serve anyone very well - without giving away too much of the plot arc, I think it's a fair conclusion in the Dissident Gardens universe radical political thought will get you dead, or at a minimum alienate everyone you care about.
In my view, anyways, the OWS / radicalism-repeating-itself isn't the strength of the book - it's the structure and storytelling. À la the shit-just-got-weird flying parts of Fortress of Solitude, there's a really effective chapter built entirely from a Stasi police file. The entirety of Part III was particularly strong - Lethem jumps around between characters and across time; ripping apart the world that he set up in Parts I-II.
Last thought - Dissident Gardens seemed the least believable and most cliche in the chapters written from the point of view of women. Is it possible that Lethem isn't that good at writing female characters? In the first part of that n+1 No Regrets panel I recall someone being down on him for this very reason.