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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
The writer talks about his new novel's ambivalent take on New York, and how cultural obsession can lead to madness
By Kerry Lauerman
Read more: Books, Interviews, Jonathan Lethem, Authors, Books Interviews
Photo by Mara Faye Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Oct. 23, 2009 | As Jonathan Lethem grew into what critics like to call one of our most important novelists, he became increasingly difficult to pigeonhole; fluid across genres, Lethem's biggest books ("Motherless Brooklyn," "Fortress of Solitude") can feel like sparkling new works from a new author rather than someone you've enjoyed before. His latest, "Chronic City,"
"Chronic City" features one hapless Chase Insteadman, a former child actor adrift in New York as his fiancée, an astronaut, hovers above, prevented from returning to Earth by an orbital minefield. He soon falls under the mad spell of Perkus Tooth, a writer and inveterate cultural critic-obsessive, who becomes friend and Svengali, sharing with him his love of all things Brando and an increasing paranoia.
Lethem stopped by the Salon New York office to discuss his new novel, his Brooklynite critique of Manhattan, his MacArthur "genius" grant and the dark side of cultural obsession.
Most anyone with a deep love of film, books, movies has had a Perkus Tooth in their lives at some point, sort of tutoring them on the good stuff. I read that Paul Nelson was an inspiration.
Sure, Paul Nelson was part of that image for me. I mean, Paul Nelson was not frantic, actually. And he wasn't a dandy, and he wasn't a pot smoker, so there's a lot of ways in which if you knew Paul Nelson you'd never associate the two. But something about Chase's innocence meeting Perkus' cultural worldliness comes from the fact that as a 20-something -- 21, 22 -- I kind of fell into Paul's sphere for a little while and he gave me this instant education in his version of American vernacular culture. Ross Macdonald, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, Chet Baker. And it was this flood of references for me to sort out and absorb and he became very important. A lot of the things that Paul taught me to value are still really the center of my sensibility.
But there was also something poignant about the amount that Paul depended on the power of his cultural searches and what they unearthed for his sustenance. It was like they were his oxygen, and I adored it and I think I identified with it at the same time as it can't help but serve as a kind of warning ... just so many people I know who have at some point become voracious about cultural collecting, cultural searching -- their identification tips over. I've done it. And it's, to me, so human and so poignant and so compelling and also terrifying to go into that place. And you know, at the same time it's just finally a metaphor for what anyone does, which is search for meaning, constantly trying to ask yourself if you can find in the environment somewhere, the natural world, your family tree, some version of politics or culture or in this case pop culture, a description that makes you understand why you're here. So in that sense it's not culturally specific at all.
What do you mean by a "warning"?
Well, just as critical theory, critique, tips into paranoia -- finding patterns that don't exist -- collecting can cross that line from being the quest for value into being the quest for the subterranean, impossible artifact that will somehow validate all of your existence ... You know, I used to know, I still do know, a lot of [Bob] Dylan collectors, and he's begun demystifying a lot of the secrets by issuing them himself, but these things used to circulate as talismanic objects. And there was always the myth of the song that was even better, the musician who'd come out of some session and say, "Well, yeah sure, you heard 'Blind Willie McTell' because you've got a tape of it, but there was another song that he debuted in the studio that day that was never written down and we all begged him to play it again and he never did." And it's sort of like, "Well, if that song's even better than 'Blind Willie McTell,' then what about the song that Dylan wrote but didn't play that day, or what about the song that Dylan never even wrote! That might be the best one!" It's a path of madness, and certainly I wanted to portray that terrifying descent to some extent.
What's fascinating about a character like Perkus is there's no echo chamber, it's all in his head. He's coming up with his own fictions, really, without any enablers.
In that way it relates really strongly to a book like "The Fortress of Solitude," which is overtly nostalgic. I mean, Perkus is his own fortress of solitude. He's trying to keep a diorama of the version of New York City that means the most to him alive. And for him the Tompkins Square riots are still fresh news and Tom Verlaine breaking up Television is like a fresh tragedy. It's all at the edge of his nerves, the world that means the most to him, and he's trying to bring other people into that system of values.
