anyone read any JONATHAN LETHEM?

B

Buick6

too punk to drunk
He's becopme tres-chic with the hoity-toity tutti-fruity VVoice/Salon set, so I immediately had a gag reflex to vomit. He'd been compared to Anyway I bought a handful of remainders of his the titles:

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE
GIRL IN LANDSCAPE
AMENSIA MOON.

So far only read AMNESIA MOON and I really liked it. For that book anyway, he really works the post-cyberpunk or 'slipstream' type sci-fi genre, and does it incredibly well. The story focuses on a bloke living in a Mad-Max type post-apocalypse landscape where tribes rule and people seem to forget what happened before some bizarre 'apocalyptic event'. The story takes on a road-movie type scenario, but then gets really strange into that shifting reality type PKD 'Time out of joint' world, and even pre-dates some of the concepts nutted with in the MATRIX.
Anyway I found it quite enjoyable and mind-bending, which is kinda hard into today's 'literal/political' lit climate. It's a book full of ideas, and interesting ones to boot.
Any other Dissensus read any of his other books and enjoyed them?
 
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jenks

jenks

thread death
I picked up Fortress of Solitude with a similar sense of unease - hyped and hip, full of music, grafix refs, i was worried it'd be too, y'know, cool.

But i absolutely devoured the book - loved the way he bled music/comix/NY graffiti culture into a fantastic story about growing up in NY in the 70s.

I then read some of his short stories and now i'm looking to get his non-fiction collection just out in paperback here.

I think he does the complexities involved inmale friendship very well. He has a pop culture eye but it's not a box ticking exercise, instead it's about how these iconic images affect our growing. He is like a more consistent Rick Moody (Ice Storm).
 
N

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
Fortress of Solitude I thought was spectacularly good, short story collection okay, and Motherless Brooklyn pretty awful.
 
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