| Title | : | You Don't Love Me Yet |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 038551218X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780385512183 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 224 |
| Publication | : | First published May 29, 2007 |
You Don't Love Me Yet Reviews
-
Audio book experiment II failed.
I am pretty sure this book would have blown even if I had read it on the page. I listened to it while driving back and forth to Santa Clara from my home office for a project I was working on. I was sick of my iPod so I thought I'd try audio books. (I have since learned from friend recommendations and personal experience that it is not the best idea to listen to fiction while driving.)
Anyway, as far as I could surmise, this book is about a young band trying to break into the music business. Some weird shit happened with a kangaroo in a bathroom, but I had totally lost track of what was going on by the time I realized there was a kangaroo in a bathroom. There was a sex scene which almost made me drive off the road, so that accounts for the second star.
Why I didn't like this book:
1. The writing is poor. It was read by the author himself so I thought it would at least sound the way he intended, but even that didn't help.
2. The title of the book is ripped off from a Roky Erickson song. It bums me out that this crappy book is named after such a beautiful song. Erickson wasn't even acknowledged anywhere in the book. So I am here to tell you (for what it's worth): No, Jonathan Lethem didn't think of the title on his own.
3. And this is my biggest pet peeve. The band eventually gets a gig and rocks the house with their single. The crowd chants for them to play their single a second time, so they do and they rock the house again. THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN! NO ONE likes it when a band plays a single twice in one show! It never, ever sounds as good as the first time and it's totally lame and it kills the moment. It's like telling the audience you have no additional material and you'll never be more than that one song. It is the lamest move a band can ever make. I can't believe Lethem actually put that in his book. -
"You Don't Love Me Yet" is at times a well written book, and even has moments where it is very well written. Unfortunately the story was just not all that interesting to me. I believe the main reason for this was because I was bored and irritated by the main character, a woman named Lucinda who is, to put it succinctly, a very lame person. She is wishy washy, selfish, and more than a little dumb. I get that this was the point, I just did not care for it, and thus the book fell very flat.
The story follows the brief rise and fall of a mediocre rock band, and it is in following that plotline that the book holds the most interest. There is some sharp satire on musicians and the music industry in those parts of the novel. Unfortunately when the text steers into the romances and miasma of the relationships of the band's members I was very bored. Mainly I think because I did not care for the characters. As a result I could not celebrate the tidy and reader friendly conclusion because I was not invested in the character's happiness.
The book received a two star rating from me because of the interesting ideas Mr. Lethem presented through the character of Carl the complainer. Carl is an enigma. I don't "get" him, nor did I really like him, but I appreciated what his character added to the text. Pages 152-155 in the book are where Lethem really hits his stride with Carl.
Mr. Lethem is obviously a talented writer, as evidenced by parts of this book. However, he has written much better than "You Don't Love Me Yet" and I would read those instead of this one. -
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
Longtime followers of my creative projects know that in general I don't like publishing bad reviews; that for the most part I see it as a waste of both my time and yours, in that I could be spending that time instead pointing out great artists you may have never heard of. However, since one of the things this website is dedicated to is honest artistic criticism, I also feel it's important to acknowledge books that I found just too bad to bother finishing, as well as give you an idea of why I found them that bad to begin with. Hence, this series of short essays.
The Accused: You Don't Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem
How far I got: 99 pages (about halfway through)
Crimes:
1) Asking us to give a rat's ass about the truly miserable indie-rock characters on display -- possibly the most untalented, pretentious, snotty, empty-headed, naval-gazing Los Angeles losers the world of contemporary literature has ever given us.
2) Reminding us of just how many of these circle-jerk losers end up internationally famous as part of the indie-rock scene, in many cases because of some postmodern media-celebrity-slash-performance-artist who is usually snottier and less tolerable than even them. Yeah, thanks, Lethem; like being an underground artist isn't f---ing depressing enough.
3) Positing a world where an attractive, empowered female bass player would become obsessed with one of the most obviously misogynistic woman-hating literary characters I've come across in years; so obsessed, in fact, that she starts creating lyrics for her band around the obliquely sexist things the man tells her during their anonymous phone-complaint sessions, which of course are part of a super-duper-pretentious conceptual-art installation piece that the bass player has been hired to be a part of (don't ask, seriously, SERIOUSLY, don't ask).
4) Living in Brooklyn. Yeah, you heard me.
Verdict: Oh, so guilty.
Sentence: A five-year exile from the traditional literary industry, writing snotty CD reviews instead for Pitchfork. Seriously, Doubleday -- you need to start peddling this crap to pretentious 19-year-old indie-rockers who don't know any better, and leave us intelligent people the f--k alone. -
Riflessi in superficie.
Amo i colori acidi, mi piace indossarli, soprattutto il verde acido; ricordo ancora quando a trent'anni andavo a ballare all'Alien con la mia amica Donatella: avevo un collant verde ramarro - acido, ovviamente - che indossavo con un paio di short minigonna grigio ardesia, completamente in contrasto con me, con una parte di me, che invece è più convenzionale e neutra, dai capelli al trucco.
Al contrario ho un brutto rapporto con l'Arte concettuale e con l'Arte Contemporanea in genere (tranne luminose eccezioni, sia chiaro). Solo sentir parlare di installazioni mi innervosisce e mi provoca immediatamente l'orticaria, perché io, che amo visceralmente Leonardo da Vinci e Pierre August Renoir, difficilmente mi emoziono, sia pur apprezzandoli, davanti ad un'opera di Calder o di Duchamp.
Eppure questo romanzo è proprio un mischione delle tinte che amo e al tempo stesso un'allegorica installazione; ed è forse proprio per questo che ci ho girato intorno come una visitatrice al Macro, diffidente e prevenuta, ma pronta a farmi rapire dai suoi colori e a lasciarmi contaminare dalla sua stravaganza.
È la storia di quattro trentenni e della loro band, una band senza nome, in una Los Angeles che si vive solo nei locali e nelle case; è una storia 'underground' in cui ai colori acidi delle canzoni della band, al ruolo che Lucinda, una dei quattro, la più protagonista dei quattro, recita nell'installazione dell'artista e suo ex-fidanzato Falmouth, alla canguro depressa che Matthew il cantante della band rapisce dallo zoo dove lavora e ospita nella sua vasca da bagno, si contrappone il ritratto di una generazione in cerca di identità, ma soprattutto di amore, cercato, consumato e riciclato nelle sue forme più strane e inusuali.
È una storia in cui ciascuno dei protagonisti, a modo suo, 'reclama' qualcosa, proprio come il 'reclamante' Carl, lo strano personaggio che balza fuori in carne e ossa dall'installazione di Falmouth e che diventa elemento disturbante per Lucinda e, come un pezzo del domino che cadendo genera una reazione a catena, destabilizzante per gli altri membri della band e lo stesso artista.
Non c'è profondità senza superficie dice Lucinda sulla spiaggia di Malibu, scorgendo con gli occhi un mondo che non le era ancora mai apparso fino a quel momento, un mondo di coppie che passeggiano sulla spiaggia, di ristorantini sul mare, di focene che giocano nell'acqua; ed io ripenso all'ultima volta che sono stata da quelle parti, quando a portarmici era stato Romain Gary, nel bellissimo
La promessa dell'alba, e al modo completamente diverso in cui questi due autori mi hanno fatto sedere sulla spiaggia e, guardando l'oceano, pensare alla vita; ripenso al tempo che è passato da allora, alle cose che sono successe, e mi chiedo se invece, tante volte, la profondità non nasconda solo la superficie.
Non ti amo ancora, caro Lethem, ma posso provarci, in fondo all you need is love.
Qui il booktrailer del romanzo. -
CRITIQUE:
A Nameless Band in a Splayed City
I normally like to read an author's oeuvre chronologically, so that I can track their progress.
I've read this novel once before, and should have read it again before
"Chronic City", but I just felt in the mood for the later, more expansive novel first.
Whereas "Chronic City" is steeped in New York, this is Lethem's L.A. novel, though we don't learn much about the city itself ("The freeway was like a saddle on the splayed city, a means both of mastering it and of shrinking from intimate contact with its surfaces").
Rather than focusing on critics, it's a rock 'n' roll novel that centres on a rock band, which at this stage still doesn't have a name. (To be honest, I'd expect that a name would be one of their first accomplishments.) Band names can really make or break a band, and some of the suggestions here would break up any group of musicians.
Flaws in the Rock Novel
Rock novels tend to have one of at least two flaws: either they concentrate too much on the mechanics of being in a band (e.g., "The sequence of songs began to feel inevitable in the manner of language or music itself, as though Bedwin were revealing to them a hidden grammar embedded in the band's motley offerings" or "Lucinda penitently lugged her own amp as the three band members filtered through the horde of the Aparty's invitees"), or they sound like reviews of an album or a performance (e.g., "This band's got something, and some of the something they've got is the allure of an enclave at odds within itself and yet impenetrable to others, its members exchanging small gestures of disaffection within their troupe that makes others crave to be included in the fond dissension"). David Mitchell's
"Utopia Avenue" somehow seemed to avoid both flaws.
Hotel Rooms and Aparty
It was fortuitous to read this novel after "Chronic City", because it foreshadows aspects of "Chronic City".
There's no Perkus Tooth here, but there are teeth or at least a singular tooth. One of the suggested band names is "Idiot Tooth", although it might have been more appropriate to call them "Itchy Tooth" (so they could have a song called "Itchy Tooth Park").
The character Richard Abneg appears in both novels. Here, he's the drummer in a related band called the Rain Injuries (possibly based on the Paisley Underground band, the Rain Parade).
The band's first live gig is at a conceptual art performance ("the Aparty") produced by a famous conceptual artist, Falmouth Strand, analogous to Andy Warhol (apart from his shaven head), whose Exploding Plastic Inevitable featured the Velvet Underground and Nico. The original plan is that they are to play silently, so that the audience can't hear how good/bad they are.
The band's "tall, malnourished, obliviously handsome vegetarian" lead-singer is Matthew Plangent, who, unlike Lou Reed (as far as I know), has liberated a kangaroo from the Los Angeles Zoo (where he used to work). (1.)
Cover of "The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators"
Ingloriously Deranged Bedfriends
The bass player is the beautiful Scandinavian-sounding Lucinda Hoekke, who has previously had relationships with both Falmouth and Matthew. There are several references to "two ex-boyfriends", although both of them are replaced by "her discovery, her strange new love", Carl "the complainer", whose appeal is inexplicable.
Indeed, some of the writing about their sex deserves a bad sex in fiction award ("She needed to do something to him that would make him at least once more as gloriously deranged as he'd made her again and again in the hotel bed").
When Lucinda gets her hair cut short, Lethem draws attention to "the hoisted cleft of her breasts...not that there was any privilege he [Carl] hadn't already claimed, or she hadn't offered gladly."
The historical consent obtained by Carl seems to make any lecherous gaze acceptable. I wondered whether he was about to lick the hair clippings between her breasts. He's obviously so perspicacious and attentive to her needs:
"It seems you're after a hairstyle that complements the band's sound, something wild and natural, like a flock of hedgehogs."
Some things should be kept secret or restricted to the privacy of your own bedroom. Which happens anyway:
"Swimming in her desultory bed sheets Sunday morning she'd masturbated three times, the last humping the ridge of a throw pillow...like tableaux glimpsed on a television playing in the background somewhere, one no one had thought to switch off."
I was often tempted to search for the off switch myself.
Mid-Career Misstep
Because of the non-chronological manner in which I read these novels, I can't say I didn't love him (Lethem) yet, but rather that I used to love him, but it's [almost] all over now. This is a misstep that was more than remedied or corrected by the far superior "Chronic City". I still look forward to reading
"Dissident Gardens".
FOOTNOTES:
(1.) A gangster kangaroo featured in
"Gun, with Occasional Music", which makes me wonder about Lethem's affinity with things Antipodean (he mentions a compilation album, which sounds like a Flying Nun record, except that it features both New Zealand and Australian bands).
SOUNDTRACK ("HAPPY TO BE PART OF THE INDUSTRY OF HUMAN HAPPINESS"):
-
After days of marinating in the text of Women and Men, reading this short Lethem book (which is basically a L.A. based romcom) felt like hitting golf balls on the moon. I had forgotten what it was like to turn pages often enough to numb my index finger. Sweet, sweet dialogue and pages with less than 600 words.
I keed, I keed because I really like Lethem. Whatever the subject matter he can make his characters real, relatable and even fun(ny). Conversations aren't forced, discussions end properly and people don't constantly say one another's name when speaking to each other (huge personal pet peeve). And Lethem can throw-down some bon mots, just to make sure we are paying attention:
"I guess the best secrets from yourself are the ones that even if someone else tells them to you, you still don't know them."
or
"You can't be deep without a surface."
how about
"All thinking is wishful."
For those new to Lethem I wouldn't recommend this as the first book to sample (that distinction goes to The Fortress of Solitude, hands down). Maybe not even the second or third. Rating it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars, but I'm rounding down because this is my Women and Men rebound book. My written word sorbet to help me clear my literary palate. -
no, i most certainly do not, and if you keep writing like this, i never will. reads like an overreaching first attempt at fiction. the only thing worse than whiny hipsters is an entire novel about them. the only thing worse than that, is a poorly written one.
-
Oh my god. I’m actually shocked that a book by a respected author like Lethem could be this bad. Because it is so bad. It’s full of whiny, painfully hipstery characters with names like Fancher Autumnbreast tooling around a fake L.A. that makes no geographical sense (even less than the real L.A., I mean) and having lots of deeply unpleasant-sounding sex that made me lock my legs at the knee as I read. Fine. That’s just bad. But what launches this book into the stratosphere of shockingly, appallingly bad (or perhaps drilling it down into the hot, cramped hell thereof) is the fact that Lethem’s plot involves taking a cool, independent female bassist and making her completely subservient to an obnoxious, controlling, and—Lethem seems to take great joy in telling us—physically repellent man. Meanwhile, female friendships exist in this book apparently just so they can be tossed aside like a crumpled tissue when the right man walks into the room. I just… This is really the best you can do for me, 2008?
Despite all the things I’ve read about how wonderful Lethem’s
The Fortress of Solitude and
Motherless Brooklyn are, this book makes me never want to read a single word of his again. -
Video-review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYcGX...
Featured in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X6OQ...
If this book were a record, it would be a 40-minute New Wave album from the late seventies. A good one, not an excellent one (not Fear of Music, not Drums & Wires). Upbeat, imaginative, hilarious, odd in a way that makes it hard to read behind its cool. Always fun to listen, hardly anyone's favorite record.
It's not especially ambitious and it will hardly change your life, but then again, it talks masterfully about music and sex, which are both things it's pretty fucking hard to write about. -
If this were a serious book, its characters (especially the protagonist, Lucinda) would be repulsive, their aimlessness rankling. The cornucopia of Lucinda's masturbation scenes, the oodles of intercourse (no limb, angle, noise, or fluid gone undescribed), the gallons of alcohol consumed and the resultant puke spilled out onto Los Angeles, are things that could perturb a gentle reader. But this is not a serious novel. It's a quirky novel and its superficially hideous premise of a gaggle of 20-something hipsters in a Los Angeles indie rock band is rescued from abhorrence by Lethem's skillful turns of phrase.
She slid her pants off too, catching her socks with her thumbs so they cocooned within her pants legs, another soft sculpture she deposited at bedside.
The silliness starts with the Vonnegutian names: Matthew Plangent, Falmouth Strand, Bedwin Greenish, Rhodes Bramlett, Dr. Marian Rorschach, Fancher Autumnbreast. It continues with Lucinda's ex and fellow bandmember Matthew, who works at a zoo and brings home a kangaroo because it seems to be "dying of ennui and nobody will admit it." The kangaroo lives in his bathroom, eats salad strewn on the floor, and shits four catcher's mitt-sized blobs daily.
Lucinda falls in love with Carl, who calls into the complaint line where she answers phones (an art gallery installation piece). Carl speaks in slogans which Lucinda feeds to Bedwin, their songwriter, who is undergoing writer's block, and new songs are born. When she finally meets Carl he is fat, hairy ("pubic all the way to his neck"), his head resembles a penis, and she finds him irresistibly charismatic. "He smiled and scratched his jaw and she was struck again by the slightly penisy glamour of his cleft chin and nose, his sculpted lips, his baggy eyes." Carl talks his way into the band. He has no talent, but lets them practice in his enormous loft.
In a scene which actually made me laugh, Lucinda goes to the zoo, which Matthew thinks has fired him, to pick up his paychecks. She meets Dr. Marian Rorschach, the zoo director with gallon-size breasts, and pretends to be a reporter for the "Echo Park Annoyance" writing a story on the zoo's missing marsupial."For all you know this rookie reporter might have stumbled into a very close encounter with the alleged aforementioned."
"I'm glad you say rookie," said Dr. Marian. "It saves me saying it."
"I meant eager and tireless, not gullible."
"Gullible is another excellent word I thank you for supplying."
Lucinda opted for bluntness. "Your establishment is missing a kangaroo, sir."
"Don't call me sir. We're missing nothing."
At the end of the interview "Dr. Marian gestured at the door. Lucinda found herself moving toward it." She is so impressed by Dr. Marian's raw power she invites her to be the manager of the band. Dr. Marian accepts and finds occasion to belittle Carl, who falls in love with her (it turns out he needs to be dominated).
I'd never read anything by Lethem before and my expectations, based on the premise, the awful title, and the unappealing cover, were very low. This novel is absurd, disgusting and ridiculous and I can't figure out why it has only a 2.82 overall rating. -
Man, I heard this was not great, but I didn't really expect it to suck THAT much. I figured I'd give him the benefit of the doubt since he's written some things I loved, especially the . Oh well. At least it was short.
Overwrought prose, boring and/or unlikeable characters, not to mention the ever-dangerous task of writing about music and not sounding like a total douche.
Upon reading some of the other reviews I felt I should add that I don't have any problem reading about hipsters or sympathizing with them. They're not evil, they're just people. Living in LA or Brooklyn and playing in an indie rock band and cutting your own hair does not make you a bad or vapid person. This, however, is a bad novel. That stands if it's supposed to be taken as written or if the entire thing is supposed to be a great big satire on how stupid hipsters are. -
good. possibly boring. The characters are aimless and listless, and while the sentences/language isn't difficult its one of those books where the listlessness carries over and it becomes a very slow read - had the same experience with William Gibson's Blue Ant trilogy
-
I would hate if my boss always compared my successes to my failures. Luckily my boss doesn't. If he did, I would quit. What he usually says when I make a mistake is 'Ryan, you screwed up, don't do it again'. Unfortunately most of Jonathan Lethem's readers don't give him that much respect. As an author of tremendous talent, he constantly gets compared to his greatest works. A comparison that is a waste to both the author and to any critical reader.
That said, at its best YOU DON'T LOVE ME YET is like a really bad Scholastic Reader novella version of REALITY BITES that was written after the popularity of the movie to capture any risidual fondness. Y'know, it is kind of like when you were a kid and you bought Karate Kid at the book fair after already seeing the movie. Realizing that this analogy is confusing even for me, it seems that Lethem wrote the book with, even if only tongue-in-cheek, nostalgia for the art/music/art music/art music slacker scene of early 90s Los Angeles -- a nostalgia I am not sure that exists.
The characters have no depth and the story was boring, unfunny, and uninteresting. So to Lethem I wouldn't say 'This book is no FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE' because I don't want him to rewrite that book -- if I wanted to read an author that rewrites the same book, I would read Clancy or Grisham. What I would say to him is 'Lethem, you screwed up, and don't please don't do it again'. -
I actually dont see what Lethem could have done to make people happy with this book. All the reviews here pretty much slate it but I think it was written as a conscious detachment from Motherless Brooklyn/Fortress of Solitude and offers a nice relief. A bit more of a disposable pop riff than a layered, carefully constructed piece of art like his other two most famous books. Yes the characters are hateable, and yes the plot meanders a bit but if anyone out there has actually moved in band circles such as the ones described in the book, they will recognise some pretty horrible truths in there.
For me there is nothing worse than a big serious novel trying to describe music culture and youthful energy. I dont think it can be done. I would have given it 4/5 but I'll give it 5 just to be contrary to the other mediocre reviews here. -
I can say I have now tried this author. Parts of the book were amusing and even strangely interesting, but I don't want to enter his world of disassociated people again.
-
I always feel like I should connect with Jonathan Lethem more than I do. His books often tick so many of the right boxes: music, movies, graphic novels, detectives, humor, tastefully sexy sexiness. And while I've certainly liked the stuff I've read – including You Don't Love Me Yet – it just hasn't resonated. And I really couldn't tell you why.
I mean, this one should have. It explores the ineffable nature of songcraft, the need for human connection but the danger of losing yourself in someone else, and, erm, the art of kidnapping kangaroos. The characters are finely drawn, especially protagonist Lucinda, a rudderless musician in her late 20s who finds herself working at an art installation whose purpose is to simply to sit in a cubicle and listen to the complaints of anonymous callers. She becomes inexplicably obsessed with one of her callers, Carl, a lothario whose complaints revolve around his inability to connect romantically with women despite his sexual prowess.
This obsession butts up against her relationship with her band – a four-piece that includes her ex-boyfriend Michael. The band is painted as one of those that probably exists throughout Los Angeles – an undeniably talented combo that still hasn't found its voice. Led by the antisocial (and possibly agoraphobic) savant guitarist Bedwin, they still haven't captured lyrics that lead to lift-off.
Until, that is, Lucinda starts bringing Carl's quasi-philosophical bromides to Bedwin to craft songs around. Something transcendent happens. The songs come together. The band finds its musical feet. And then Carl decides he wants in.
I've probably given the impression that You Don't Love Me Yet has more narrative momentum than it actually possesses. There's certainly an arc to the story, but it's a very subtle arc, and even at just over 200 pages I still don't know that we end up anywhere that justifies its length. But still: 3 stars. It's intermittently fun, I never actively disliked it. But I wanted it to do more than it did. -
Allright, allright, Okay.
What is truly ironic is that the panting, hysterically negative reviews of this book almost half prove its premise. I guess the subjects of this book's gentle and loopy satire are truly as thin skinned as they seem. Because that is what this book is, a satire. It is no more a realistic portrayal of Los Angeles than LA Story the movie. That is, I think, its ultimate charm.
I'm not calling it a masterpiece by any means, because it isn't. But it has a genuinely understated humor and shambling whimsy that is maybe escaping more earnest readers. The story is a light fable, set among self indulgent twenty somethings. Every character is not so much one dimensional as they are skewed stereotype, a specialty of Lethems. The heroine is a sort of mewling, needy indie ingenue-her on again off again boyfriend the archetypal handsome model of disheveled indie ambivalence, the lead guitarist is an art school autistic savant, trying to plumb the depths of 'Human Desire' by Fritz Lang while forgetting to eat. Even the love interest, a mercurial fat ass Prospero, making a mysterious living through his ability to write poetic bumper stickers, works for me. He resembles those older and slightly jaded shills of semiotics, media and contemporary art that seem to magically gather livings in the Valley. Its all quite funny. Then there are the minor characters, which I found well drawn and faintly recognizable: the persnickety South Asian Britophile and art gallery owner, with his clean shaved head and tailored suits, his creepy armpit sniffing impressario/associate. They are parodies, but in case you haven't noticed, this entire novel is a parody.
Lethem also shows an uncanny ability to get into the skewed, shoe-gazery head space of indie lyricism, with songs like "Monster Eyes", "Shitty Citizen" and "Canary In a Coke Machine." And yes, Fancher Autumnbreast is a satrical name, a la Thomas Pynchon, as are most of the names in this book. Lethem's styling, as always, is undeniably elegant and suited to its purpose. And those of you who are 'grossed out' by the sex scenes? I'll leave you to sort that out with a professional.
So I'll respectfully disagree with the people who say that there is nothing to like about this book, or who attack it on the grounds of accuracy. Huh?! This is the fractured fairytale/soap-opera/daydream about how bands form. Slight, not momentous, sure as hell no Motherless Brooklyn. But it's a sweet, salty parody, slightly askew, that hits its targets squarely in the lint gathering navel. In other words, this book is much smarter than it looks. Apparently its also a quicker study than many of its critics. -
I adore
Jonathan Lethem. Ever since
Gun, with Occasional Music, he's remained one of my favorite authors. His science fiction was fascinating and stylish and, though I was tepid about it, his shift to traditional fiction kept much of the flair and panache of previous work. To me, Lethem is what happens when you take
Chuck Palahniuk and add literary talent.
You Don't Love Me Yet is a clever book. Though the book's main character is the bassist for a band, the true star of the novel is the Complainer, a character who pens witty quips. Because of this, the book is filled with witty quips. The first time I ran across one, I smirked and got excited, but soon I found myself rolling my eyes as each pithy saying jumped from the page.
Unlike
Motherless Brooklyn or
The Fortress of Solitude, You Don't Love Me Yet lacks depth. It's a page turner filled with self-absorbed New Yorkers playing with themselves among the art-house elite. Under normal circumstances, that might be the touch of death, but the cynical and humane way in which Lethem treats the characters turns them into unwitting tragic comics.
You Don't Love Me Yet reads quickly and can be devoured over a weekend or on a long plane ride. And while it shouldn't be remembered as one of Lethem's greatest works, it's certainly worth picking up and reading if you're a fan of his. -
This novel is Mr. Lethem at his most lighthearted, bawdy and sexy. Told through the point of view of Lucinda, a bass player entangled with the dramatic antics of her bandmates, Bedwin, Denise and Matthew, this is the one novel of Jonathan Lethem's that does not tackle or pay any homage to the dystopic, or the noirish works he is most known for. Rather, this is a romp involving bandmates in a punk rock band that is centered around bass player Lucinda, and her dalliance with Carl, a mysterious fan turned lover who asks to be a part of the band itself.
I’ve read reviews of this book that criticized it to be too pretentious and annoying- yet isn’t that how it is for young hipster musicians, working odd jobs, yet completely privileged behave? It’s all part of a performative satire that is funny, but read today in 2021 lens, there were admittedly moments in the book that were written through the hot white male glaze- yes, glaze, that might be squirm inducing now.
It's an ode to music, youth and modern screwball comedies that is perfect to read in these dark times. I read this novel back in 2009, and admittedly, had no idea what it had been about and had quite forgotten it. In 2021, giving this a second read just shows that Mr. Lethem's a master of dabbling in different genres, types of writing and like always, loves to show the reader his love of music and art. -
This short work seemed more like two novels to me - the first half was this charming, quirky story of a band and this woman who works for a Complaint Line that is really more of an art installation than a public service, and the second half is the story of the still unnamed band in Los Angeles as they go through the far-reaching effects of Lucinda meeting one of her callers, as well as the often unsuccessful merging of high concept art with a band.
During the first half, I was constantly reflecting on all the reasons I love Lethem, but he kind of lost me on the second half. I do love the interesting turns the conversations would take, and his analogies are always thought-provoking. The astronaut food people one will probably stick with me for a while. Part of me is still waiting to hear the band. -
He llegado a este tras la lectura de Cuando Alice se subió a la mesa, que me encantó.
Tiene momentos brillantes, como la descripción de la sinergia que alcanza el grupo cuando toca o ciertos exabruptos del hombre de las quejas. Este hombre tiene una narrativa curiosa. Pero la historia no tiene pies ni cabeza y hace hincapié en aspectos, situaciones y cosas que no me provocan sino extrañeza. Es difícil conectar con los personajes (con algunos casi ni se puede intentar) y se dan por normales comportamientos que no lo son... No encuentro ni crítica ni tema subyacente. A lo mejor lo escribió como simple divertimento: en ese caso no era el libro que me apetecía leer. -
Pretentious and ultimately extremely annoying. The names of the characters alone was enough to make me dislike this book. But ultimately I didn't like this book because other than Bedwin, who was a fairly minor character (see, what did I tell you about the names) there was not one believable character in this book. It's not just that most of the characters were unlikable - that is neither here nor there, it was just they were such empty stereotypes of music and art hipsters. Maybe this book was supposed to be a huge parody and I just didn't get it. Could be.
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Read on train. I liked the beginning better than the end.
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I mean, technically well-written, because I like Lethem's writing, but I think I prefer him at his weirdest/most speculative. This was like, just, why? Left it in the back of the airplane seat.
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For most of the last 15 years or so, I have been one of Jonathan Lethem’s biggest fans. I think Chronic City has a claim on being the best novel of its decade, and I think Motherless Brooklyn is an almost perfect ironic tribute to the noir tradition. Add in the flawed but gorgeous Fortress of Solitude, the quietly beautiful Dissident Gardens, and the sci-fi comedy of Gun with Occasional Music, and he has as varied, funny, and brilliant a bibliography as anybody going.
My assessment of him as arguably the best writer of his generation has taken a couple hits in the last year, though. For one, his A Gambler’s Anatomy struck me as the first work I’d read of his that wasn’t deeply inspired. Part of the joy of reading him is that anything seems possible, that he’s always restraining one flight of fancy or another to give us the choicest pieces of his imagination. A Gambler’s Anatomy felt heavy, even contrived at times. It left me sad.
In addition, as I reflected on the disappointment of that novel and thought more about my students’ reactions to Chronic City a couple years ago, I started to understand what some of the Lethem-haters have been saying for a while: that the major chink in his armor is that he focuses too much on hipsters, on characters who live in the surface of things rather than in any substantial way. I understood – mind you, I did not agree with – that claim and began to glimpse how it might annoy some readers to hear so much about such self-satisfied characters. There was, maybe, a little bit of the supermodel complaining about how hard it is for to feel thin in the way these often-wealthy taste-making young people grasped after some meaning to their lives.
All that said, I am happy to report that I loved this novel. It doesn’t crack my top four all-time Lethems, maybe not even the top five, but that still leaves plenty of room for this to be really good. Yes, it concerns hipsters and beautiful artist types. Yes, it assumes a familiarity with pop culture that can make you feel a little like an aging Midwesterner. And, yes, it’s simply less ambitious than Chronic City or even Dissident Gardens in the way it tries to make sense of the way art defines and then confines us.
Instead, this is a novel that works from the premise that, as a number of characters repeatedly say, you can’t be deep without a surface. Lucinda seems to have it all. She’s the bass player for a band about to break. She’s got that heroin chic look. She goes from dating the band’s lead singer to falling for a strangely compelling “complainer,” and she has a network of interesting (though odd) and talented people willing to give her light employment or free housing.
But the complainer sets something off inside her with his capacity for articulating his own – and the zeitgeist’s – dissatisfaction. When she recycles his complaints into lyrics for the band, there’s real power. The premise is sound, but it would fall flat without Lethem’s deep skill. You really need someone with the power to manipulate language and to see others with “monster eyes” – someone like Lethem himself – to make it all work.
Part of the joy of the novel is that the music seems really to come through. I can hear these songs, and I like them. They do what the best rock does, which is a privileged and white version of what the blues do: take frustration (or, as Jagger and Richards said it so memorably, “no satisfaction”) and make it something you can dance to.
That would be enough, but Lethem takes it even farther. The complainer, Carl(ton), is not a real rocker. When he joins the band, he’s both a lousy musician and a lousy exemplar of what it means to rock. He simply can’t let go of his complaints, as witnessed in the band’s big break live radio performance where he wants to recast their most popular song as a dirge. If hipsters define themselves against convention, then he defines himself against hipsterdom, never accepting his good fortune, never allowing himself to dance. It’s great that [SPOILER] he winds up in love with the all-business middle-aged zoo administrator who has also foiled Matthew in his wonderfully demented effort to rescue, and perhaps fall in love with, a kangaroo. He deserves an ending where he’s held in check, where someone directs him toward what he has to do.
In the middle of all that, Lethem retains his skill at sketching characters quickly and effectively. It still seems to me that he can make a character come alive more fully in 270 pages than Jonathan Franzen can in 600 and that, as he does so, he brings into play the same “postmodern” reflections of how we can understand ourselves outside a contemporary culture that consistently tries to shape us in its own image.
I can see this feels a little dated – I’m sorry I didn’t get to it when it first came out – but it serves for me as evidence that Lethem remains one of the most distinctive and entertaining voices we have. I’ve just learned that he has another one due out in the fall, and I’m already excited for it. -
From the wikipedia page: "You Don't Love Me Yet (2007) is a comic novel about alternative music from Jonathan Lethem, set in modern Los Angeles"
& now for my review: this book is a comic novel about alternative music in LA and that sucks. The music parts were so cringey bad to the point where one guy opens the door to his loft wearing a big star t-shirt and there is "drama" at a KEXP Seattle type interview and it is so uncomfortable. There are some endearing and charming qualities about this book and some interesting developments, but for the most part it was just kinda awkward and clumsy? This seems like it might make a cute and kinda quirky long-form portlandia sketch, but as a book? It's pretty soft. -
It's only a short book, 242 pages, but it was such a looooooooong read. I didn't get on with the writing style at all. It was written in a sort of arty way, so sentence structure was not standard and it made it difficult to read. It didn't flow, I had to keep rereading bits. There was a lot of description of people or places which seemed to be included solely to
up the word countenable the author to show off his pretentiousness and extensive vocabulary. As for the plot... Well, the relationships and struggles of a hipster rock band in LA sums it up quite nicely.
