A Different Kind of Tension is organized chronologically 1990 - 2024, starting with the earliest published work. Tone-setter more than story, “Walking the Moons” is a very short piece about a man in a virtual reality simulator walking a treadmill on a moon of Jupiter. Human nature ensues until mother nature comes knocking to highlight the absurdity of his attempts at experiencing reality in a sim. Unfortunately prognostic. “Program's Progress” is a Rudy Rucker or Paul Di Filippo-esque (bizarro) tale of an uploaded man (thing? consciousness?) who abuses his position for pleasure drugs and gets demoted back to stationary (immobile) life. He has "adventures" in clever, subversive fashion.
Continuing with virtual reality,”Forever, Said the Duck” may or may not be a sim featuring a couple playing with avatars in a kinky way. Not sure this is science fiction - not a critique rather a question. I've never been in a virtual sim but imagine in the 90s this was fair game. “Five Fucks” tells of a woman who meets a man, spends two weeks with him, and returns home to find a missing persons report has been filed by her neighbors. Things only get worse for her, and the world, after. Lethem riffs off the notion there is a downside to the pleasures of the flesh, and the story culminates in a darkly humorous scene. “Sleepy People” is a magic-realist dystopia in which a lackadaisical, dispassionate, uninterested woman finds a man sleeping on her porch and halfheartedly takes care of him. Hooligans assault her while neighborhood militias run rampant. Pay attention or society evolves.
Possibly an idea dragged from a drawer and never polished, “The Spray” is an indulgent story that ends quickly. A couple get their hands on can of spray that detects stolen goods after the police investigate a burglary at their home. There are antics aplenty when the spray is applied to the people. Not a poor story, only a short street for fiction. Lethem perhaps biting off more than he can chew, “Access Fantasy” ostensibly presents a cyberpunk-ish future where a man living in his car enters the neighborhood of the affluent to investigate a murder. Possible that the story is full-on satire (versus my impression it is only partial satire), it does an average job fleshing out the target of its derision.
A story that had me giggling out loud, “The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door” tells of a writer of dystopian fiction encountering his best idea/worst enemy. It's a wonderful piss take on the flood of dystopian fiction saturating the market at the time. Lethem hilariously pulls the rug out from under the zeitgeist. (Sylvia Plath sheep!!) More piss-taking, “Super Goat Man” tells of a past-his-prime superhero—the titular cloven-hooved beast—who settles down in the narrator’s NY neighborhood, a boy named Everett. The boy comes to see a different side of the superhero when he goes to a New England liberal arts and discovers the goat teaching there close to retirement. When Everett's girlfriend admits to a brief liaison with the goat, emotions flare. More anthropomorphism, “Interview with the Crab” features a tv journalist interviewing a washed up crab actor—an anomaly among the humans it worked beside doing 90s sitcoms. Lethem contrasts the absurdity of the crab with entertainment weekly gossip in partially successful fashion.
An
off-kilter character study, “Lucky Alan” describes the lives of
two men whose relationship is both amiable and antagonistic. One an
ordinary middle-aged New Yorker and the other a minor film director,
the two occasionally meet up but are never fully open with one
another. It’s the evolution of these meetings, however, where
Lethem heightens the tension between the two to display the subtle
aspects of character that ultimately complete their mini-portraits.
One of Lethem's better stories. “The King of Sentences” is a
full-on display of precise, subtly humorous prose (with such a title,
the author had better be prepared to deliver). It highlights one
aspect of the reader-writer relationship from the perspective of two
bookshop employees who are head-over-heels in love with a certain
writer’s oeuvre and want to meet him. The meeting tells all. Less
story, more commentary “Proximity People is essentially a list of
social behaviors covering the spectrum of quirky to anti social, but
ultimately human. The last line (aka wink-wink
victim mongering) discredits the piece.
Funny metaphorical
commentary on blogging and the egoism that often goes hand in hand
with said form of social media, “The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating
Ear” is a day in the life of an internet blogger. Lethem presents
the man as a king ruling his castle, interacting with his subjects
(who are in fact commenters, viewers, fellow bloggers, etc.). The
self-righteousness is at moments laugh out loud. Though seeming to be
commentary on meat eating, “Finding Vegan” expands itself to be
wider commentary on the state of Western society. Akin to the film
Little Miss Sunshine
in aim, it remains more stop-and-think fiction than message fiction
in telling of a trip a man takes with his family to Sea World and the
animals—in all forms—they encounter there.
Almost Borgesian, “Procedure in Plain Air” Lethem opens on an absurd scene wherein an ordinary man, Stevick, is having coffee in a NYC cafĂ©. A group of men arrive, dig a hole in the sidewalk, deposit a live man inside, and hand the bewildered Stevick an umbrella to protect the man from the rain. The absurdity achieves new heights as the story progresses, and in the final few paragraphs things click together in a manner that would seem to highlight the dark undertones of being complicit with government “secret” operations—Stevick’s ultimate fate the telling blow.
Lethem is involved with all kinds of criticism, not just literary. It was therefore perhaps inevitable that he looked to apply film criticism to the pornography industry. “The Porn Critic” tells the tale of one such writer and his experience bringing a group of women back to his apartment—an apartment packed to the gills with material awaiting review. A comprehensive story, the women’s reaction is and isn’t what the reader could expect. “The Empty Room” is an abstract premise that slowly takes on a life of its own. A militant father decrees that one room of the family house is to be kept empty at all times. It can be used after a person has signed a form, but must be emptied of everything once the person is done using it. Told through the eyes of the son who grew up in this house, it’s only in coming into mature contact with the wider world that he realizes the complete implications of the room. “Elevator Pitches” is as the title suggests, an exercise in ideas for story rather than story, itself.
An intriguing piece, “The Afterlife” is about a sculptor who ends up in a bland afterlife which strips his art of context, boiling it down to meaninglessness. Lethem plays this cleverly off some superhero movie commentary, but the tone remains unredeemable, nihilistic almost. Thought provoking nevertheless. “Crooked House” is a cubist setting in a sterile, post-ap world. One man tries to escape his shifting environment for the (relevant) freedom of a desert. “Narrowing Valley” is a story and essay synergized into "writing". In it, a winnebago tours Americana of the wild west, struggling with the meaning of Native American culture in contemporary times. Successful meta-fiction. Closing the collection is “The Red Sun School of Thoughts”. A bildungsroman, it tells of a young man in the Bay area finding community while his is ill dying and father is unable to devote time for him. Such stories are Lethem's strong suit, and here he holds form.
Jonathan Lethem is a better novelist than short story writer. His ideas take on the robust form intended when a couple hundred pages of space are at his disposal. By contrast, the short stories tend to be abstract. They often lack handholds to reality, including character detail, resulting in puzzles or ciphers rather than typical, plotted tales. This can come off as pretentious, or self-catering, depending on the reader. A Different Kind of Tension is mostly as such, but not a whole.
In
the end, A
Different Kind of Tension
is what Lethem believes to be his best stories to date. Cynics may
say 'cash grab' given the writer likely has a couple decades of
productive stories remaining. I don't think that is realistic
considering Lethem is not in the upper echelon of bestselling sf&f
authors. Rather, it's likely more productive to look at the
collection as maintaining relevancy, keeping Lethem published and in
circulation, something like In
case you missed it, here is an interesting collection of a few dozen
of what Lethem's considers his best stories the past several decades.
I would take it as such, nothing more. If anything else, then
'career retrospective to date'?
The following are the thirty stories collected in A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories:
Walking the Moons
Program's Progress
The Speckless Cathedral
Forever, Said the Duck
How We Got in Town and Out Again
Five Fucks
Sleepy People
The Spray
Access Fantasy
Children with Hangovers
The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door
Super Goat Man
Vivian Relf
Interview with the Crab
Lucky Alan
The King of Sentences
Proximity People
The Dreaming Jaw, the Salivating Ear
Procedure in Plain Air
The Empty Room
The Porn Critic
Guy Bleeding All Over Skype
Pending Vegan
Elevator Pitches
The Afterlife
The Crooked House
Narrowing Valley
To Visit the City of the Dead
In Mugwump Four
The Red Sun School of Thoughts
No comments:
Post a Comment