FEB/ MAR 08 - AudioFile
If the listener can grasp the goofy physics of this story (and author Lethem does a good job of helping out), it’s a lot of fun to be immersed in the cosmos of Phillip, his girlfriend, Alice, and the alternative universe known as Lack. Narrator David Aaron Baker vividly captures a myriad of strange characters, from international scientists to blind men obsessed with spatial relativity. Although Baker’s female voices are a touch too whispery, he sets them apart in a way that doesn’t detract from the narrative. The production is spare, but this works for listeners, as Baker’s voice allows them to be immersed in the space of the story and the odd world that revolves around Lack. B.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
Elizabeth Judd
Is the ideal lover a
blank slate, a cipher
upon whom we can
inscribe our own
idiosyncratic desires
and whims? That's
what Jonathan
Lethem suggests in his
latest novel, a sly
send-up of academia
and a funny tale of
passion gone awry. Philip Engstrand, a
professor who's nicknamed the Dean of
Interdiscipline for studying his fellow
professors, is in love and living with Alice
Coombs, a particle physicist specializing in
"the pursuit of tiny nothingness." When Alice
and her colleagues create a void that's a portal
to a new universe, Alice projects her private
desires onto her creation, dubbed "Lack."
Soon, Alice is romantically obsessed with
Lack and Philip is history.
Invisible and silent, Lack resides in the eye of
the beholder, "his" chief appeal a sublime
indifference to his audience. Lack keeps his
admirers guessing, demonstrating marked and
unfathomable preferences for specific objects;
he accepts a salad spinner, a pomegranate and
a lab cat, while rejecting calamine lotion, a
photo of the Rosetta stone and, ultimately,
Alice herself. To his credit, Lethem views
Lack as an actual character, not a literary
trope. Although his explanation of how Lack
works is pseudo-scientific double-talk worthy
of Cliffy the mailman on Cheers, Lethem
doesn't retreat from his own silliness, devoting
the final chapters to Philip's confrontation with
the void.
Unlike those who milk a clever idea like they'll
never have another, Lethem is a profligate
writer, tossing off hundreds of pointed
observations quickly and casually. Lethem's
nonchalance conveys sentimentality
succinctly, allowing him to be mushy and
philosophical without losing comic
momentum. Philip feels "the first pangs of my
coming loss. My heart, to put it more simply,
got nostalgic for the present. Always a bad
sign." At the same time, Lethem balances the
romantic longings of Philip for Alice and Alice
for Lack against the bathos of his comic minor
characters, all of whose lives are consumed or
contorted by alter egos. There are two blind
men who talk compulsively, mapping their
environments for each other; a physicist
whose emotions are recorded "in proxy" on
his grad student's face; and a psychotherapist
who studies obsessive coupling and tries to
pair off with Philip.
As She Climbed Across the Table
boisterously mixes styles and genres -- it's
sci-fi, it's slapstick, it's a comedy of academic
manners -- without hitting a false note. My
prediction? Lethem, who has published two
novels and a book of short stories to
thunderous silence, has now made his own
presence known and will escape the literary
void forever. -- Salon
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
A poser of warped, philosophical conundrums whose witty, genre-bending novels are set in dysfunctional worlds of the present and near-future, Lethem (Gun, with Occasional Music) situates his fourth novel on the fictional campus of a Northern California university where a physicist, known as Professor Soft, has accidentally opened a hole in space, a portal to an alternate universe. Lethem's narrator is Philip Engstrand, a professor of anthropology studying "academic environments," who is the jealous boyfriend of Alice Coombs, a professor in Soft's lab at work on the physics of "tiny nothingness." Soft's vacuum, nicknamed Lack, is a gaping void that swallows some items into its universe-from an argyle sock to a grizzled lab cat-but ignores others. It soon becomes a campus sensation and Alice its most ardent enthusiast, but as Alice becomes increasingly obsessed with Lack, she retreats from Philip, who struggles mightily to reclaim her. Lethem's characters aren't emotionally complex: they aren't so much people as mobile talking units tumbling down a rabbit hole of sense and meaning while trying to sort out their personal lives. Yet it's hard not to get caught up in Philip's efforts to rescue Alice from Lack, or be unsettled by what happens in the novel's closing chapter, when he ventures too close to the brink. Lethem's reflections on being and nothingness are tempered throughout with a genuine silliness that helps make this one of the most engaging academic spoofs to emerge in the wake of Don DeLillo and David Lodge. (Mar.)
Library Journal
In this witty but telling new work from the author of The Wall of Sky, the Wall of Eye (LJ 8/96), our hapless narrator has completed his dissertation on "Theory as Neurosis in the Professional Scientist" and landed a job at the University of North California at Beauchamp (pronouced beach 'em), where he studies academic envirorments, producing "strong but irrelevant work" and falling for physics professor Alice. But Alice is too caught up in Professor Soft's notorious experiment with a vacuum intelligence called Lack to pay her lover much heed, and soon Lack is the real love of her life. This is not your typically insular campus comedy; Lethem has something bigger in mind, and he succeeds admirably in skewering our pretensions, technological or not, in language that gently mocks the way we hide behind jargon. An ironical book that is, ironically, quite poignant; for public and academic libraries.-Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Kirkus Reviews
Lethem, a witty spinner of bizarre tales (The Wall of the Sky, 1996, etc.), moves into somewhat more accessible territory with this story of a would-be Alice in Wonderland and the man who would prefer to keep her on this side of the looking glass.
Philip Engstrand, an anthropologist who studies academia, is happily involved with particle-physicist Alice Coombs. When an experiment by Alice's Nobel-winning colleague, Professor Soft, goes awry, a void that may be a portal to an alternate world is created. Before this, Alice has befriended two blind men who maintain an intense, codependent relationship with each other—their names are Ethan and Garth—becoming their friend in part because she believes that Garth's special perceptual abilities may aid in her work. Meantime, Professor Soft's void refuses to disappear and acquires a name, Lack, as well as intelligence and a personality with distinct preferences: It accepts some items offered it (pistachio ice cream, a peach-colored lab cat), while rejecting others. Alice grows emotionally remote and begins spending all of her time in Lack's chamber, and Philip begins to suspect that Alice has fallen out of love with him and in love with Lack. As Philip attempts to comprehend Lack and reconnect with Alice, he becomes entangled with many other characters: The blind men, at Alice's suggestion, move into the apartment she and Philip once shared; Cynthia Jalter, Evan and Garth's therapist, develops a serious crush on Philip; and two professors, a preening Italian physicist and a fussy deconstructionist, offer various absurd explanations (scientific, philosophical, semiotic) for Lack's existence. Eventually, Philip, desperate to win back Alice's love, is forced to confront Lack on his own.
The intriguing, if gimmicky, premise sometimes feels a bit thin, like a Donald Barthelme story stretched to novel length. But Lethem's clear-eyed prose and believably strange people ultimately make for a moving tale of narcissism and need.
From the Publisher
"Exceptionally clever. . . . A book of compelling ideas, of intellectual conflict, of human frailty and desire. And it's funny."—Dallas Morning News
"Jonathan Lethem has succeeded in delivering a wonderland on the side of the looking glass," —San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Lethem is opening blue sky for American fiction. . . . He is rapidly evolving into his own previously uncataloged species." —Village Voice Literary Supplement
"Wickedly funny." —Columbus DIspatch
"An oddball tour de force." —Entertainment Weekly
FEB/MAR 08 - AudioFile
If the listener can grasp the goofy physics of this story (and author Lethem does a good job of helping out), it’s a lot of fun to be immersed in the cosmos of Phillip, his girlfriend, Alice, and the alternative universe known as Lack. Narrator David Aaron Baker vividly captures a myriad of strange characters, from international scientists to blind men obsessed with spatial relativity. Although Baker’s female voices are a touch too whispery, he sets them apart in a way that doesn’t detract from the narrative. The production is spare, but this works for listeners, as Baker’s voice allows them to be immersed in the space of the story and the odd world that revolves around Lack. B.H. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
