Men and Cartoons : Stories

Rating:
Summary: Odd, original, and tensely funny
Review: From the acclaimed author of FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE and MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN comes this collection of clever, odd, and intelligent stories. Jonathan Lethem's MEN AND CARTOONS may be a quick read (only nine stories and less than 200 pages total), but it is full of original and thought-provoking tales.

The book opens with "The Vision" and the reader is immediately plunged into Lethem's world of weird, sad, lonely and still funny characters. The Vision is a kid the narrator, Joel, knew from elementary school and who believed himself to be an android comic book character. Now, years later, the two are next-door neighbors. The Vision, real name Adam, invites Joel to a dinner party and a game called "Mafia." The game proves surprisingly interesting for Joel, and when it ends, he suggests another game called "I Never." Joel is frustrated by the mysterious adult Adam and wants to learn more about his life as the Vision, and by the end of the evening feels compelled to expose him. The game turns tense, almost cruel, and the party ends with Joel still frustrated and the Vision still a smug and fascinating mystery.

In this story, as in several others, there is an underlying sense of tension, obvious frustration and even a bit of danger, although it is written in a light-handed style. These strange stories are often funny as well, but the humor is quite dark.

Loss is another central motif in this collection. In "The Spray," the shortest in the book, a couple spritzes themselves with magical spray used by police to inventory stolen objects and finds it works to show emotional as well as physical loss.

The themes of loss and frustration are taken up in "Vivian Relf." Here, Doran meets Vivian for the first time, but they seem uncannily familiar to each other. This moment of familiarity is amusing to both but forgettable to Vivian. For Doran, however, it becomes a defining moment and Vivian a symbol of possibility. They meet several more times over the years, with Doran always feeling something special and important, but this is never reciprocated by Vivian.

Despite their quirkiness, these stories are serious. In "Access Fantasy," a dystopian tale of social inequality and urban traffic taken to the absurd extreme, a murder is caught on tape and a hapless would-be detective may lead another victim straight to the killer.

MEN AND CARTOONS is odd, original and tensely funny. Lethem's point is not always clear in each of the stories, yet they are all enjoyable to read. Though not as remarkable or memorable as his novels, these short stories are still well-written and recommendable.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic stories...
Review: I am a huge Jonathan Lethem fan, and happen to believe Fortress of Solitiude was the best novel of 2003 and deserved the type of attention that Franzen's "The Corrections" received in 2001. It's all about the prose people! LEthem has a fantastic way with prose and style and it is very memorable and fun to read. His dialogue is unique and realistic and the characters are unforgettable. I had only read Lethem's previous 4 novels and so this is my first encounter with Lethem's short stories, and I loved them all. Definitely highly recommended to anyone looking for great writing. After you read this, go to your local library and get Fortress of Solitude...it will change your life.

Rating:
Summary: Character sketches, a glimpse.
Review: If you already think Lethem is an incredibly talented artist, you will love this book and should not attempt to function meaningfully until you own a copy.
This is a look at the creative process that will not diminish your enjoyment of Lethem's other works. Read "Access Fantasy" then "The Dystopianist" and then re-read "Gun, with Occasional Music." I swear you will wander into traffic as you ponder the depth and breadth of the universe.
I suppose there is a caveat in there for anyone who is intrigued by but not familiar with Lethem's work. A more accessible place to begin might be "As She Climbed Across the Table" or "Girl in Landscape." We've all been forced into a too Literalist mode of reading fiction and Lethem's best works can seem puzzling at first. If you've already given some of Lethem's work a try and have been left cold, this collection might give you some insight and newfound enjoyment.




Rating:
Summary: DON'T BUY THIS
Review: If you are looking for cartoons, I'd skip this one. There's only a cartoon face on the cover. Men, on the other hand, are explored in depth.

Rating:
Summary: For years, I've been yearning to read a book like this.
Review: In the meantime, I read lots of books, year in and out, plenty of them good, some of them even great. But none were like this one, which gave me a whole new way of looking at the world and life's possibilities. Instead of a nod of recognition and a reflection of the world as it is, each story gave me a sense of "What if?" and a view of unseen parts of the human psyche.
Some of these stories (The Spray, Access Fantasy) are pure fantasy but within that fantasy is more than a grain of truth about how we see ourselves, yearning for meaning, communion or just to reach beyond common sense and "reality" and into the realm of true weirdness. Lehman has a way of taking the reader there while keeping his stories somehow believable, within the bounds of their unique worlds.
It is a pleasure to read a writer willing to take risks like this and to do so without pretension or pose. Loved this book!

Rating:
Summary: Funny/weird *and* funny/ha-ha
Review: In the nine stories collected in MEN AND CARTOONS by Jonathan Lethem, one line that comes back to me with a smile is a man describing his old high school buddy: "He'd become some combination of an artist with the temperament, but no art, and Thor Heyerdahl without a raft." Lethem's creative effects are powerful, but he wears them lightly. There is no sense of showing off. And he has a great ear and comic sense. Most importantly, the stories will catch you at the end; they don't just fizzle out into smug nilhilism. I have deducted one star only because of the incongruously thudding coda.

Rating:
Summary: Another Mixed Bag From A Fabulous Talent
Review: Lethem's latest collects nine short stories, eight of which appeared in various publications, and five of which were previously anthologized. Like all of his work, they often display breathtaking originality and vivid style in the service of narratives that sometimes work and sometimes don't. "The Vision" is the first story and probably the best, and will appeal to fans of Lethem's latest novel, The Fortress of Solitude. It starts in Brooklyn in 1974, with two fifth-grade boys, one of whom believes he is robot-superhero The Vision from the Avengers comic book series. The two bump into each other as adults and are involved in a strange party game called "Mafia." This later turns into a nasty adult version of truth-or-dare which gets very dark and ends on an unsettling note. "Planet Big Zero" is another strong story, also about boyhood friends who meet again as adults. As high-schoolers they were two outsiders smirking at the world, as adults, one is a cartoonist, the other a drifter. At thirty pages, "Super Goat Man" is the longest story, and again mixes Brooklyn, superheroes, and becoming an adult. As such, it also shares a lot with Fortress of Solitude, and works very well. One of the few out-and-out sci-fi stories is "Access Fantasy", which proposes a city where an underclass people live out their lives in traffic jams. Those who actually live in buildings are the privileged, and videos of their dwellings are pornography for the traffic jammers--a very sharp satirical premise, with a murder mystery to boot.

Less successful are the other five stories. "The Spray" is built around a special elixir that reveals things that are missing, but trails off into a rather banal statement about loss. Deja vu is the premise behind "Vivian Relf" (the only story that not to appear elsewhere), in which a man and woman keep encountering each other over their lives, but aren't quite able to determine where they first met. It's one of those Lethem works that starts strongly, is well-written, and degenerates with a weak ending (again, about loss). "The Glasses" is an empty Brooklyn-set vignette about a possibly deranged man and two opticians. "The Dystopianist" is a slight work about writing that feels rather dashed off and ends of a cutesy note. One feels like Lethem could crank out works like it over and over and over. The collection ends with "The National Anthem", in the form of a letter. Once again, it is from an adult to a friend from high school he hasn't seen in a long time, and is built around a theme of loss. Sometimes the repetition of a theme can be a powerful framework for a collection, but here the continual revisiting of the connections between youth and adulthood, and loss and loneliness feel like Lethem is stuck in a rut. All in all, worthwhile if you already know and like his work, but otherwise not vital reading.

Rating:
Summary: The expected mix of quality from a story collection
Review: Men and Cartoons, like almost all story collections, has its hits and misses. The fact that it's a relatively slim book unfortunately means that the misses weigh it down a bit more than they would have in a more full collection. I also found it true that even the better stories weren't fully successful, lacking a sense of true depth or simply petering out in the end.
The first story and second to last stories (The Vision and Super-Goat Man) are probably the strongest in the collection and both, as will seem familiar to Lethem fans, draw upon comics as some source material. Both have a sense of underlying menace and tension as well as sorrow, part of the reason why they stand out amongst the others. In the Vision, the main character reunites at a dinner party with a fifth-grade classmate who used to dress up as and claim to be the Marvel superhero android of the title. The party games turn ugly and the narrator tries to use his knowledge against his former classmate. I would have preferred a stronger sense of motivation for the main character's actions; it seems to come off as rushed, more contrived for narrative purpose than growing out of a sense of the character, but despite that this remained one of my favorites. Super Goat Man has a somewhat similar tone and even narrative, but is longer and thus allows for more development. The other strong story, Access Fantasy, is also the most science-fiction like, set in a world where the lower class literally live in long-standing traffic jams-sleeping, cooking, and watching "apartment porn", videos of the dwellings inhabited by the upper class. There are lots of nice touches in this one and a good sense of satire and humor, though the ending paled a bit in comparison to the rest of the story.
Luckily those three make up a large part of the whole work, since the rest of the stories seemed to drop down several levels in quality and thought. Many of them seemed more skeletons of stories than stories themselves, and several of them too cute and/or too predictable.
All in all, it was a relatively disappointing work saved by the fact that its best stories were also its longest ones and the two best pretty much bookended the collection, so one started off well and ended well, leaving the weaker stories in the middle somewhat forgotten (another indictment of their quality I suppose). Recommended for the three good ones with the usual short story caveat that you'll find some of lesser quality.

Rating:
Summary: Edgy Short Pieces from the Genre Blending Master
Review: These stories are quirky and whipsmart and they read like a shot. I read the entire book on a flight from Chicago to New York...best flight I've taken in a while. As ever, Lethem entertains while sinuously implanting serious and intriguing ideas in your head. Those who enjoyed the comic-book themes of "The Fortress of Solitude" will be pleased with "The Vision" and "Super Goat Man," more superhero themed stories that could easily be narrated by Dylan Ebdus. "Access Fantasy" and "The Spray" are a return to the old and fertile SF territory familiar to fans of Lethem's early work. In Vivian Relf a comedy of manners serves as a framework in which to display with acuity the ways in which people change over a period of years.

"Men and Cartoons" is funny but usually edgy and unsettling. Lethem's writing is witty and clear but always uniquely identifiable as his own. I would suggest to those who have not yet entered Lethem's world to first start with one of his novels: "Gun With Occasional Music" or "Fortress of Solitude" might best prepare you for the smorgasboard of stories and ideas to be found in "Men and Cartoons."

Rating:
Summary: A Heroic Introduction
Review: This collection of short stories is one of those rare works whose contents actually do fall under the umbrella of the title. Usually, the title is simply the stand-out story of the collection (which would have delegated this book to "Super Goat Man") and doesn't actually indicate an overall theme. Men and cartoons are, however, very much the theme of the stories here, with a few arguable exceptions: the first being "Access Fantasy", in which only the central character's yearnings toward heroics links it to the comic book fantasies of the other stories. What we really have tying all these stories together is an overwhelming anger at the frivolities of youth. Lethem unconsciously recreates the narrator of Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" as the sole primary character floating through these stories, albeit with name and history changes for each one. Two of the stories are virtually identical thematically; though lead the reader via different plotting devices. These plotting devices are good though, and spread amongst a collection of more dissimilar stories, could have given themselves more individuality; but as is, the overlying theme of self-destructive hero hating ties them to closely together to see the trees within the forest.

"The Vision" and "Super Goat Boy" both deal with a grown man faced with a `not' hero from his childhood. In "The Vision", a young boy pretends he is `the Vision' (from the Avengers), while in "Super Goat Man", a man-goat creature actually is a mediocre super hero: super goat man. Both stories narrators brush up against paltry existential philosophies as they retell their encounters with these pseudo heroes right up until they unconsciously lash out with malevolently barbed statements intended to bring the hero down a few notches. In both stories the opposite effect occurs, and the narrator is left in total isolation wondering at his own animosity.

"The Spray" and "Vivian Relf", both told from that same angry self-absorbed narrator, deal with relationship disconnects. In "The Spray", the fantasy element is a product that police use to determine what is missing in people's homes. The main character is burgled and the police show up with the spray to find out what was taken. When the police leave the spray behind, the disconnected couple sprays each other, revealing the ghostly images of relationships passed. In "Vivian Relf", a man and a woman meet and swear they've met before. They go through all the motions of banal party talk before giving up and deciding that indeed they have not met before. When this same type of chance encounter happens between the same two people over the course of many years, the narrator begins to create for himself a sense of loss, as if all along this Vivan Relf was the woman meant for him. Both stories intentionally stay well above the surface of these characters leaving them overwhelmingly alienated and isolated.

"The Glasses" stands out as the most unique of thsee stories, not because of its tricks (and these stories are packed with tricks: talking sheep, the aforementioned spray, a society forced to exist in a traffic jam) but because of its terrifically realized (through great dialogue) characters. In this one, a surly, reverse-discriminating black man returns to an optometry store where he feels he was taken advantage of because of his race. He purchased some new glasses which, the following day, were revealed to be scratched. The two optometrists in the store insist the glasses are fine, that the man is simply smudging them with his fingers. The entire story is the argument the three have about how this is happening. Three people literally stop everything, indefinitely, just to get to the bottom of this small mystery.

The other stories in the collection melt away. Some are good: "Access Fantasy" and "The Dystopianist", others are just bad: "Planet Big Zero"; but ultimately they are all punishingly alike. Lethem is good with words though, and these stories slip by with little to no effort in the reading. Despite its flaws, "Men and Cartoons" has introduced me to an author I will continue to read.