Chronic City

A Novel

By: Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

The acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies.

Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.

Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus' countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.

Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.

©2009 Jonathan Lethem (P)2009 Random House

Critic reviews

"Exquisitely written...Funny and mystifying, eminently quotable, resolutely difficult, even heartbreaking, Chronic City demonstrates an imaginative breadth not quite of this world." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

"Astonishing....Knowing and exuberant, with beautiful drunken sentences that somehow manage to walk a straight line.....Turbocharged....Intricate and seamless....A dancing showgirl of a novel, yet beneath the gaudy makeup it's also the girl next door: a traditional bildungsroman with a strong moral compass." (New York Times Book Review)

"Exuberant literary revving.....Lethem's vision of New York can approach the Swiftian. It is impressively observant in its detail and scourging in its mocking satire. There are any number of wicked portraits....His comments on New York life are often achingly exact....So pungent and imaginative" (The Boston Globe)

Very Original

This was a very refreshing bit of something completely new and different. I bit surreal, even. Motherless Brooklyn is one of my all time favorites. Lethem is brilliant with making topics in philosophy easy for the likes of you and me to ponder on by using quirky, brilliant, damaged or even ubernormal characters in his work. Really clever and fun.

A Futuristic Look at Hipsters in Manhattan

What did you love best about Chronic City?

Excellent dialogue, great characters, and the interesting but obscure (probably to most?) pop-cultural references.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I didn't have one. I thought the characters were great overall but no particular stand-outs for me.

Which character – as performed by Mark Deakins – was your favorite?

I don't have a favorite here. I thought the characterization was strong overall.

If you could take any character from Chronic City out to dinner, who would it be and why?

I'd probably go with none. These are more the types of characters I would rather enjoy reading about than hanging out with.

Any additional comments?

'Chronic City'' is somewhat of a mysterious parallel vision of Manhattan's Upper East Side. The story is full of humor and is populated with a cast of young, off-beat, and exceptionally named characters. There's little in the way of narrative but it's a highly entertaining listen as the story is loaded with obscure film and pop culture references, a good deal of dry humor, a touch of science fiction, and strong dialogue. This is literary fiction, so it's not going to be for everyone, but for those seeking this type of mix it should be a fun listen.

A New Favorite

I read Lethem's article "The Ecstasy of Influence" for Harper's, and was very excited by the exploration of thought surrounding contemporary artistic appropriation, updating Howard Bloom. That article lead me here to "Chronic City." I wasn't disappointed. In fact, this has become one of my favorite audiobooks. The grand ideas woven into a fun narrative peppered with myriad obscure cultural references makes this is the kind of book that I find hugely satisfying.

the boomer generation Bellow

This is an excellent performance rich with texture and nuance. I consider Lethem up there in the genre of one Saul Bellow. Boomer Bellow. Nice find.

Vivid and intelligently original

Lethem, with Chronin City, writes a vivid character driven story that is refreshingly original, intelligently witty and observant, tight and edgy dialogue, and with a strange theme that our lives are all about distractions, signified by the novel’s interweaving of a purported tiger lurking around New York City unseen, the news following the lives of astronauts stranded on the space station because of Chinese space mines, and the personal story of the former child actor, protagonist, Chase’s girlfriend Janice Trumbull being one of those astronauts. This is as much about an ensemble of character round Perkins Tooth, a former rock critic. who is obsessed by Marlon Brando, and chaldron (pottery) photo then hologram, that propels the plot and brings the story to its strange, almost conspiracy theory denouement. This is an engaging story with interesting characters that are appealing due to their eccentricities, foibles, backgrounds, obsessions.

Don't listen to the naysayers!

What's with the negative reviews? I loved this book, and I loved the performance. I felt at home in Lathem's imaginary world. Of course, I felt Chronic City, with its quirky adventures and bizzarro NYC, is more in sync with folks like Eileen Myles and Ted Berrigan and Patti Smith Perhaps than Jonathan Franzen's sad despairing FREEDOM riders. Oh well. For me I'm glad I didn't listen to the naysayers. I would have missed quite a ride. Or whatever it was.

What is truth?

This book deals with the question of truth. It is told from a very specific perspective--an ex-child-actor-star living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan--but deals with a universal topic (assuming the universe cares about truth).

This is not a book for those looking for plot. It is about experiences, and is itself an interesting experience. Jonathan Letham has a great style that kept me interested in his words regardless of what they described.

Mark Deakins is a great narrator. He was able to create and maintain specific voices for each character, and obviously prepared well...he always had the right tone when reading dialogue, as opposed to some who, reaching the end of the dialogue, realize that the tone should have been sarcastic, tired, bored, etc. only after reaching the end of the line.

This is a book that makes you (or at least me) think about it even weeks after finishing it. I'd probably rate it 4.5 if I could add half a star.

When in doubt, don't.

This book got good and bad reviews. Believe the bad ones.

I rarely give up on an audiobook once I've paid for it, but with this one I'd rather listen to nothing. Pure unrelieved inanity. Sorry to say this, because I loved The Fortress of Solitude.

Is it possible to give a negative rating

I listen to 3-4 audio books a month and I have been listening to them for 10+ years, this is among the worst if not the WORST. Its a total waste of time. So, boring and almost self-indulgent that I would rather do just about anything else!

Blech

This is the first audiobook review I've been compelled to make...after a promising opening paragraph, this book went downhill. It's so New York-centric that it's almost incomprehensible. Too bad. It had promising pieces. Sadly they were buried under a long, unnecessary non-plot. With heavy editing, there might even be a story here.
Not worth my precious credits.