Book review: Chronic City

Published on Sunday 27 December 2009 13:41

CHRONIC CITY

Jonathan Lethem

Egmont, 4.99

THERE are very few authors who can boast being shortlisted for the Nebula Science Fiction Award, winning the Macallan Gold Dagger for Crime and receiving the prestigious McArthur Fellowship for literature. Across his jaw-droppingly diverse career, Jonathan Lethem has also written an homage to John Ford's The Searchers set on an alien planet; told a unique love-story between a man, a woman and an artificial black hole; published an astonishing blend of Bildungsroman and superhero story and most recently released a rom-com set on the indie music scene. In an era when authors often trot out clones of their most successful work to date, the constants of Lethem's career have been a giddying versatility and commitment to experimentation.

With Chronic City, Lethem appears to be channelling the ghost of Charles Dickens in service of a retelling of Arthurian legend. It's not just the names, albeit that we meet characters called Laird Noteless, Georgine Hawkmanaji and Strabo Blandiana. It's Dickensian in its ravishing, complex evocation of a city (in this case New York's Manhattan), in its caricatures than are really incisive critiques and in its brilliant synthesis of wit and sentimentality.

The central character is a former child actor, Chase Insteadman, who is now most famous for the fact that his fiance is trapped on the International Space Station, with little hope of return. In a moment of serendipity he comes into the orbit of the enigmatic Perkus Tooth, a counter-culture semi-icon and critic-at-large, whose obsessions include Marlon Brando, getting high and the insufferable fakeness of reality. As part of Perkus's clique, Chase meets Richard Abneg, a former radical turned mayoral spin-doctor, Oona Laszlo, a ghost writer, and the mysterious tramp Biller.

Together, amid the jaded haze of drugs and gala dinner parties, grief and affluence they discover a chaldron, a rare, mind-altering kind of vase, for sale on eBay. It doesn't spoil the plot to say the chaldron might as well be the Grail for these knights with their various wounds, prides and lusts. There are various convolutions and adventures – what is the connection between the chaldron and a new on-line environment called "Yet Another World"? Or between the chaldron and the tiger which is terrorising Manhattan? Or between the chaldron, the tiger and the vaguely sinister mayor? – leading to an ending which is simply heartbreaking.

As I type this synopsis, I'm aware that some readers may well be thinking it sounds like a load of silly nonsense. It is not, and its resistance to synopsis is not only its charm, but its genius. Giving even a flavour is like explaining a joke. Every page of Chronic City shines with a striking image, a wry observation or a piece of stunning rhetoric. The reader is entranced by Perkus every bit as much as the professionally vapid Chase is. And there is a reason for the baroque names, the surreal goings-on and even the fact that Perkus is obsessed with "the Gnuppets" – which the reader infers are pretty much like the Muppets. Suffice to say I don't think it was the threat of legal action from Kermit that made Lethem decide to use the word.

At the heart of Chronic City is an anxiety about the nature of reality. He cleverly keeps the reader on linguistic hot-coals, uncertain where it is safe to stand. Alasdair Gray, in his most famous scene in Lanark, worried that Glasgow had "hasn't been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively".

Chronic City has an equal and opposite anxiety: that this City is too well known, too creatively loaded, too cool to be real. It is a masterpiece, and Lethem is one of the greatest living writers we have.

A version of this article first appeared in Scotland on Sunday on December 27