Men and Cartoons Stories

Description:

Jonathan Lethem's new collection of stories is a feast for his fans and the perfect introduction for new readers—a smorgasbord of fantastic, amusing, poignant tales written in a dizzying variety of styles. Lethem is a trailblazer of a new kind of literary fiction, sampling high and low culture to create fictional worlds that are utterly original. Longtime readers will recognize echoes of Lethem's novels in all these pieces—narrators who can't stop babbling, hapless detectives, people with unusual powers that do them no good, hot-blooded academics, the keenly felt loss of love, clever repartee masking desperation, stumbling romances, and the obligations of friendship.

Among them:
—"The Vision" is a story about drunken neighborhood parlor games, boys who dress up as superheroes, the perils of snide curiosity, and ultimately, loneliness.

— Harkening back to Lethem's earliest work, "Access Fantasy" imagines a world divided between people who have apartments and people trapped in an endless traffic jam behind the One-Way Permeable Barrier.

—"The Spray" is a simple story about how people in love deal with their past. A magical spray is involved.

—"Vivian Relf" is a tour de force about loss. A man meets a woman at a party; they're sure they've met before, but they haven't. As the years progress this strangely haunting encounter comes to define the narrator's life.

—"The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door" is a Borgesian tale that features suicidal sheep. (This story won the Pushcart Prize when first published in Conjunctions; it will appear in The Pushcart Prize Anthology.)

—"Super Goat Man" is a savagely funny satire on the failures of the sixties baby boomers.

Sparkling with off-beat humor and subtle insights that have made Lethem one of today’s most highly praised writers, the stories in MEN AND CARTOONS will delight Lethem’s legion of fans and appeal to a host of new readers.

Selected Reviews:

"Stylistically varied, inventive, accessible, Lethem's stories offer a fine appetizer for fans hungry for his next big thing."

--Publishers Weekly