What This Book Badly Needed Was Sukhreet Gabel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                   The time of her reign is over, but she is still alive, so she could have made a cameo appearance.  While Jonathan Lethem's "Chronic City" is a modern Brat Pack variation--names and places like Brand's Piano Bar, which I actually recall, Marlon Brando, and Norman Mailer, are dropped all over the place.  But the real mystery of this novel is what is it, actually, because the way it starts out, and ends up are so different.

                                   It has a journeyman narrator, an ex-child star name Chase Insteadman.  How is that for prosaic archness?  The second most important character is a culture critic named Perkus Tooth, who is clearly standing in for someone--but who?  Truman Capote?  Andy Warhol?  It is anyone's guess.

                                   The characters surrounding this duo, including a fascinating Black Widow type named Oona Laszlo, a bitch in disguise named Claire Carter, and political sycophant for the mayor, named Richard Abneg.  It is anyone's guess whom they are standing in for, and Lethem offers no insights, allowing readers to make their discoveries, assuming they can.  I certainly could not.   I started out thinking Oona was Gloria Vanderbilt, but, if I am right, it is a nasty portrayal of Gloria.

                                   "Chronic City" starts out as a social criticism of the Bloomberg era, complete with a stand in for Mary Tyler Moore, and the bird issue.  It is wonderfully written, and reasonably entertaining.  But, once the virtual program, "Yet Another World," enters the picture, things turn on its head, and the reader is forced to question everything that has gone before.  Including Insteadman's true love, Janice Trumbull, an astronaut seemingly forever lost in space.  I kid you not.

                                    Here the writing get elegiac, with snow covered Manhattan landscapes, suggesting a return to Mark Helprin's world in "Winter's Tale."  Leaving me confused as to what Lethem is trying to do.  Combine two novels into one?  If so, it does not work?  Pay tribute to great male authors of the past.  Not enough specificity.

                                     "Chronic City" is readable, but unless you are vested in a project like mine, or a true devotee of Lethem, it may not add up to the general reader.

                                         As things stand, I am not sure what it adds up to.  But I enjoyed the ride.