Queen Anne Books

“The New York subway is a vast disordered mind, obsessing in ruts carved by trauma a century earlier. This is why I always take taxicabs.” This excerpt from Lethem’s newest novel, available October 13, is a typical observation from the book’s main narrator, former child TV-star Chase Insteadman. It’s one of the many passages I flagged as I enjoyed this rambling, beautiful, graphic, sad, and funny work.
Chase is now in his late 30’s, doing rounds of NYC socialite dinners where he is charming and tragic-back in vogue because of his doomed romance with Janice Trumbull, an astronaut stranded in a space station. He stumbles into a life-changing friendship with the enigmatic (and, like many of the characters, bizarrely-named) Perkus Tooth: a former cultural critic whose life has settled into its own ruts of marijuana-smoking and obsessive discussions about cinema, Marlon Brando, Gnuppets (Lethem’s trademark-skirting version of Muppets), and transcendental pottery. Perkus and Chase investigate truth, beauty, relationships, and the mysteries of a New York City plagued by a rampaging tiger, an ominous grey fog over Wall Street, and a winter that seemingly will not end.
Yes, Chronic City is weird, but it’s filled with brilliance. It’s a bit like Alice in Wonderland crossed with Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but it’s more creative and unique than that. Read a few pages and give it a try. You, too, may want to take a bite out of Lethem’s Big Apple. ~Tegan