Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem's new novel Dissident Gardens went on sale this week. It's my favorite Lethem book since Motherless Brooklyn, his most autobiographical work, and a literary novel that sits in one of my personal sweet spots (from the Depression to the Red Scare, with the rise and fall of the Communist Party in the US--love it). Here are ten reasons why you should read this book.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Read Dissident Gardens

1. It has a killer opening sentence: "Quit fucking black cops or get booted from the Communist Party." Well that's an attention grabber. I mean, Gianna says similar words to me everyday, but it's a line worthy of note in a novel. Who's delivering the message, and who's receiving it? How is a black cop connected to a Communist woman? This opening line is so great that the venerable New York Times printed the f bomb without astericks. Boom.
2. The cover. You can judge this book by it. 
3. One of the main characters, Rose, is the cranky lady in your neighborhood who screams at the kiddies, but instead of screaming because they trample the flowers, she screams at them for not adopting her extreme leftist politics.
4. Rose's husband was too much of a pushover to hang with her. So she sleeps with the black cop and helps raise his son. Let's face it: Rose cannot and will not just let things lie. Sort of like Gianna.
5. Miriam, her daughter, rebels by becoming a Beatnik/hippie type. Rose may or may not shove Miriam's head in an oven within the first chapter or so.
6. Right. Jonathan Lethem is working his way through every neighborhood in New York. He's the quintessential New York writer of this generation.
7. Also, Lethem based Rose on his granny, who really was a big ol' commie. Let's spend a moment picturing J. Edgar Hoover examining pictures of little Johnny in his grammy's file. (Eh...maybe not. That's creepy.)
8. Lethem works some magic with this novel, so while on the one hand you get an epic family saga, on the other you get a framework for connecting radical political thought in the United States, from the Communist Party to the Beatniks to the hippies to the Quakers to the university academics.
9. It's a good story too.
10. Could this book win a Pulitzer Prize? Yes. Yes it could.

An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 20

J-Leth

I confess that I'm cheating a bit today since the book that inspired this post won't come out for another few months. Still, I just checked, and somehow we've never really spent any time talking about Jonathan Lethem. I think maybe Gianna accidentally boycotted Lethem when she wrote off Jonathan Franzen. That's okay. I'm here to clean up her messes.

I wouldn't characterize myself as the ultimate Jonathan Lethem fan because he's written a bunch of books that I haven't yet read. I have now read three of his books, though, and I liked all three. If you're new to J-Leth, as the cool kids call him (or I just made it up), start with Motherless Brooklyn. It's a great book group book, and it's quintessential Lethem in setting. The guy loves New York City. Also, Lethem loves to play with form, and this is his detective novel. And his protagonist, Lionel Essrog, is a Tourettic limo service driver who barks and cusses and (in Lethem's skilled hands) reworks the English language in wonderful ways. Lionel's boss Frank, a minor mobster, is killed, and Lionel's world is thrown into turmoil as other drivers and lowlife thugs jockey for position.

In Chronic City, Lethem takes Manhattan. Chase Insteadman is a former child star, minor celebrity, and hipster type, living off royalties and appearances on the Upper East Side dinner party circuit. People only ever ask Chase about A) his child star fame, and B) his fiancee, who is an astronaut stranded on the space station orbiting the earth. He meets a charismatic, drug-dealing, cool guy named Perkus Tooth, and together they partake of herbal treatments (the book is called Chronic City, after all) and search for authenticity in a world that is completely fake. It reminded me a bit of The Truman Show, and this book also has the most intense eBay auction ever captured in fiction. It also may be the only eBay auction ever captured in fiction.

That leads me to Dissident Gardens. This is Jonathan Lethem's new novel, which goes on sale in September. This is a big novel, and one that will show up on the year-end lists as one of the best books of the year. It reads like a major achievement. This is a family story centered around Rose Zimmer, a righteous busy body living in Sunnyside Gardens, a Queens neighborhood. Rose is a big ol' Commie. She's the Red Queen of Sunnyside, and she spends large amounts of time sharing her political views, worshiping Abraham Lincoln, and fighting with her daughter Miriam. Miriam comes of age in the radical sixties, marries an Irish folk singer, and has a son, Sergius, who's raised by Quakers. There are great comic moments in Dissident Gardens--one favorite passage involves Rose's nephew Lenin "Lenny" Angrush pitching a name for the new baseball team that will ultimately become the Mets, but his idea is the Proletariats--but this is also a serious book about family, broken ideals, and the dangers of philosophy interfering with emotional bonds.

I normally read a novel in a few days. With Dissident Gardens, I've been living in Jonathan Lethem's world for almost a month. As I've worked my through this book, I've come to love the characters and their passions. Their flaws. Lethem apparently based some of the book on his own Communist grandmother, and the personal connection shows in his writing. Add this book to your list of titles to look forward to in the fall.

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 9

I am actually between books right now so I was browsing some advance readers when I spied my 33 1/3 series on the shelf. I picked one up and fell in love with this fantastic series all over again.

You can stop reading here if you aren’t curious about music. You can also seek counseling because brother, something is wrong with you.

Each book is dedicated to a single album, or a time and place. It’s the best idea for a series ever. I’m not including Game of Thrones in that statement, so calm down. I’ll highlight a few of my favorite titles and give you the lowdown on three brand new releases.

Prince’s Sign O’ the Times by Michaelangelo Matos. Liz attempted to make fun of my love for Prince a couple of weeks ago. Rest assured my fellow Princetonians, she will be punished. And yes, you can use "Princetonians." Matos writes about Prince’s masterpiece (yeah, it is, so shut up) as it related to his life, how it changed his way of looking at the world. Me too, Michaelangelo…me too.

Kick out the Jams by Don McLeese makes my list because while I had heard of MC5, I actually knew very little about them and was only familiar with Rage Against the Machine’s version of the song “Kick Out the Jams.” This little book blew me away and completely inspired me. I can’t listen to Rage or the White Stripes without hearing the influence. McLeese by the way gets extra points because it’s from a boots on the ground aspect.

Talking Heads’ Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem.  I like to think that Lethem and I were both sitting on our beds listening obsessively to the Talking Heads at the same time.  Lethem makes no bones about it, he was absolutely, totally obsessed with this record.  You get the sense he wrote this book with the same intensity that the record originally filled him with.

Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs by LD Beghton is a total insider's look at this triple album. It's exactly the book you want to read if you want to read about 69 Love Songs, that is to say it's funny, smart, and includes a crossword puzzle.

 

PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me: A Story by Kate Schatz is one of (I think) two or three titles in this series that are fiction (Joe Pernice wrote a fiction piece inspired by Meat is Murder). Schatz’s story is everything Harvey’s record is--dark, smart, and full of rage. She uses each song on Rid of Me as a chapter title and then infuses the lyrics into the story.

I could go on and on, write about Achtung Baby, Shoot Out the Lights, If You’re Feeling Sinister, Kid A, Born in the U.S.A, Pretty Hate Machine, or Dummy…but you get the point.  Three more in the series hit the street last week; They Might Be Giants’ Flood, Andrew WK’s I Get Wet, and Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melodie Nelson.

I’ve read about a dozen in the series, which means I only have about 75 more to go!

[Liz here. I don't have a clue what the hell G's talking about here. And Prince is dumb.]