In Lethem's Latest Ideas Comes from Everywhere, but Love Rules Supreme
Over the past two decades Jonathan Lethem has built a catalogue of contemporary literature that makes other emerging authors jealous. He began with science fiction stories before Motherless Brooklyn propelled him onto the scene in 1999. Lethem's work is known for its acerbic wit and its sometimes flawed, but still compelling conceptualism. As She Climbed Across The Table, for instance, tried to relate the basics of desire to the workings of quantum mechanics. Lethem's ascent into a mature literary form has been a rocky road; his novels at times still contain pock marks of theory, an attribute he shares with his idol Phillip K. Dick. What has separated Lethem from his peers though is characterization. You Don't Love Me Yet is full of characters instantly recognizable, but written in such finely tuned braces that their personalities pop off the page. More remarkably, he has borrowed a page from Hal Hartley's films and turned the relations of his characters into commentary. You Don't Love Me Yet contains as many experiments as previous novels, but this time around it is the character's longings and hang ups that make up the vocabulary of Lethem's argument.
