You Don't Love Me Yet: A Novel (edit title)

• Rated 3 stars

“Ok. Lifestyles of the Aimless and Pretentious. I liked the idea of the Complainer, but wound up not caring. Everything seemed kinda pointless, but perhaps that was the point.”

• Rated 3 stars

“This is by far my least favorite Jonathan Lethem book. A friend of mine calls it "that disappointing hipster one." That's about right.”

• Rated 2 stars

“I was not crazy about this one. I was looking forward to reading a book about a struggling indie-rock band, but it wasn't that at all really. I don't think I got the point either.”

• Rated 3 stars

“A novella-length story from a fine writer. This one is more fun than you should have, as it's all about rock and roll, drinking, sex and kangaroos. Don't take Lethem lightly, he's going to write a lot of fascinating stuff, some of it will be silly and funny, and some of it will be powerful. He's already done so.”

• Rated 2 stars

“I liked this more than Fortress of Solitude, but only so much. It's shorter and therefore more streamlined (mostly) and Lethem's dialogue is more permeant. (Lethem really is one of the master's of modern day dialogue in my opinion.)

There's a lot of interesting stuff about copyrights, where art comes from, and who owns it. When the book is about this, it's pretty good.

That said, I still felt a bit ambivalent toward it, especially when it strayed from rock 'n roll about a 1/3 into the book. I'm guessing the affair between Lucinda and the complainer is symbolic of the conflict between artist and the industry. The complainer represents the industry and the desire to make it. He's literally obese and aging and somehow also sexy. Still, when the mutual attraction descends into misogany, it became a little to much for me and I felt my sympathy with the protagonist dwindle.

There's definitely some interesting stuff going on here, I just wonder if it could've been even more streamlined than it was.”

• Rated 1 stars

“(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

(Longtime followers of my creative projects know that in general I don't like publishing bad reviews; that for the most part I see it as a waste of both my time and yours, in that I could be spending that time instead pointing out great artists you may have never heard of. However, since one of the things this website is dedicated to is honest artistic criticism, I also feel it's important to acknowledge books that I found just too bad to bother finishing, as well as give you an idea of why I found them that bad to begin with. Hence, this series of short essays.)

The Accused: You Don't Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem

How far I got: 99 pages (about halfway through)

Crimes:
1) Asking us to give a rat's ass about the truly miserable indie-rock characters on display -- possibly the most untalented, pretentious, snotty, empty-headed, naval-gazing Los Angeles losers the world of contemporary literature has ever given us.

2) Reminding us of just how many of these circle-jerk losers end up internationally famous as part of the indie-rock scene, in many cases because of some postmodern media-celebrity-slash-performance-artist who is usually snottier and less tolerable than even them. Yeah, thanks, Lethem; like being an underground artist isn't f---ing depressing enough.

3) Positing a world where an attractive, empowered female bass player would become obsessed with one of the most obviously misogynistic woman-hating literary characters I've come across in years; so obsessed, in fact, that she starts creating lyrics for her band around the obliquely sexist things the man tells her during their anonymous phone-complaint sessions, which of course are part of a super-duper-pretentious conceptual-art installation piece that the bass player has been hired to be a part of (don't ask, seriously, SERIOUSLY, don't ask).

4) Living in Brooklyn. Yeah, you heard me.

Verdict: Oh, so guilty.

Sentence: A five-year exile from the traditional literary industry, writing snotty CD reviews instead for Pitchfork. Seriously, Doubleday -- you need to start peddling this crap to pretentious 19-year-old indie-rockers who don't know any better, and leave us intelligent people the f--k alone.”

• Rated 3 stars

“started out good and then got kinda stupid and pointless....or maybe I just missed the point....it suited its mindless purpose for reading on an airplane”

• Rated 2 stars

“After my fast and furious love affair with "Motherless Brooklyn," I was really looking forward to reading "You Don't Love Me Yet." But it left me cold. The characters are confusing and their motivations, what they want is unclear.

I'd give it a resounding, Eh.”