Men and Cartoons

Jonathan Lethem

Buy it here

Pretty much everything written by Jonathan Lethem is worth reading, and this book certainly is too, but like a lot of short-story collections it feels like something to tide me over in between novels. Nevertheless, this has a lot of good stuff. Hilites include “Super Goat Man” and “The Vision,” perhaps the best-developed explorations of the titular theme; “The Vision” gets points for painstakingly and accurately navigating all the little humiliations associated with being a single twentysomething and going to parties, while “Super Goat Man” sports one of the most vicious punchlines I’ve ever read — it took me a couple minutes to do anything else after reading it when it appeared in the New Yorker. “Vivian Relf” has a wonderful ending in which the minor disturbances that form the story’s light-as-air plot get wiped clean: “The dinner part rose up and swallowed them, as it was meant to.” “The Dystopianist, Thinking of his Rival, Is Interrupted By a Knock At the Door” is a pretty intoxicating slice of semi-sci-fi surrealism. But maybe the best thing about this book is its (back) cover, which features comic book-style advertisements for each story! Now that’s badass. I’d tell you to buy the paperback except that I don’t know if it will have the same packaging.

The Book I Just Read Home

The Rest of Our Culture Home

Spam-O-Matic Home