The author responsible for the following list of
genre-blending works:
The above works are all novels unless stated otherwise.
A few months ago, a good friend of mine had asked me if I had any new authors for him to look into. I had just finished Gun, With Occasional Music and told him it was weird enough for him to get into. He read the book in a couple of days and asked me if I had anything else by Mr.Lethem. The Fortress of Solitude had just been released and I told him he could borrow it after I was done.
Quite frankly, Fortress blew my mind. What I loved about it was its inability to be pigeonholed or put safely in a cubby hole for people to look at and admire as a specific genre of writing. Needless to say, I've picked nearly everything up Lethem has written since then and have not been disappointed one bit.
Lethem manages to blend elements of science fiction, romance, the detective story, the memoir and just some plain, old-fashioned solid story-telling all together and come out with something new and fresh and different and that, I guess, is really why he's worth spending the time and/or money to read.
To put a momentary hault to this masturbatory praise, I must admit that some of his work {namely the Kafka pieces and sections of As She Climbed Across the Table} I have found dry, but overall, reading Lethem is a veritable mind trip. His characters and their powers {sometimes even Superpowers} are both inventive and invigorating.
The bottom line is that there are worse things to do than read a good book and Lethem is a good author to start with.