The incomparable Jonathan Lethem returns with nine stories that demonstrate his mastery of the short form.
Jonathan Lethem's third collection of stories uncovers a father's nervous breakdown at SeaWorld in "Pending Vegan"; a foundling child rescued from the woods during a blizzard in "Traveler Home"; a political prisoner in a hole in a Brooklyn street in "Procedure in Plain Air"; and a crumbling, haunted "blog" on a seaside cliff in "The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear." Each of these locates itself in Lethem-land, which can be discovered only by visiting. As in his celebrated novels, Lethem finds the uncanny lurking in the mundane, the irrational self-defeat seeping through our upstanding pursuits, and the tragic undertow of the absurd world(s) in which we live.
Devoted fans of Lethem will recognize familiar themes: the anxiety of influence taken to reductio ad absurdum in "The King of Sentences"; a hapless, horny outsider summoning bravado in "The Porn Critic"; characters from forgotten comics stranded on a desert island in "Their Back Pages." As always in Lethem, humor and poignancy work in harmony, humans strive desperately for connection, words find themselves misaligned to deeds, and the sentences are glorious.
From the Hardcover edition.
Industry Reviews
"Rich and darkly comic. . . . Astutely cunning social and political satires sit alongside experimental flights of absurdist fantasy and parable, with traces of Lethem's unique slant on magical realism sprinkled in as well. Comparisons might be drawn to writers ranging from Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami to Margaret Atwood and J. D. Salinger. All of Lethem's stories are enlivened by his wit and provocative wordplay." --Chicago Tribune
"Lethem works in an interesting literary space between realism and absurdism, modernism and postmodernism, satire and a particular brand of [Don] DeLillo-inspired darkness. . . . His talent is large." --The New York Times Book Review
"Jonathan Lethem at his bizarre best." --Los Angeles Times
"Lethem's words execute graceful turns and explosive leaps to whatever tempo he sets. . . . Rewards await the reader who commits to this slim volume. . . . Lucky Alan is a beguiling addition to a shelf full of uniquely inventive books by a master of genres." --The Miami Herald
"A great introduction to the sometimes heartbreaking, often surreal world of Jonathan Lethem. . . . A testament to the writer's refusal to play by the rules." --NPR Books
"Nearly every sentence captures Lethem's sharp wit and copious imagination." --Publishers Weekly
"Reality-bending fables from the master. . . . Weird, charming, playful, Lucky Alan is great fun." --The Guardian (London)
"Taut, darkly funny. . . . [Lucky Alan] excels at creating these moments of absurdity that exist not merely for their own sake, but on some level to expose our own tendency to accept the unacceptable, to live hypocritically, and to assuage our guilt with comforting words and superficialities rather than meaningful action." --The Huffington Post
"A wild ride across the boundaries of language, artifice and genre. . . . This is the joy of reading Jonathan Lethem: you never know what you're going to get. . . . You might guess that Alan's luck runs out, but you'll never guess quite how: Lethem is always one step ahead." --Financial Times (London)
