E

ssay

by Ted Gioia





Gun, with Occasional Music

is the book Raymond

Chandler might have written if he had spent time

on

Dr. Moreau’s Island

along with Ken Kesey and



Philip K. Dick

. Okay, he didn’t. So it was left for

Jonathan Lethem to step into the gap and delivery

this hard-boiled, drugged-

out, future-tripping tale of

crime and karma on the

streets of Oakland.





As fans of Lethem’s work have

come to learn, the borderlines

between genres are undefended

in his stories—no ID checks, no

customs agents, no big fence.

What starts as a

noir

mystery or

superhero adventure can morph

into something quite different in

the very next chapter. Already in

this debut novel, published in 1994 shortly after the

author’s 30th birthday, he delivers a text that refuses to

fit easily into any section of the bookstore.



Our story takes place at an undetermined date in the

future, when police functions have been taken over by

public inquisitors, but a few P.I.s—private inquisitors—

are still allowed to represent clients and do their

gumshoe trade. Our hero Conrad Metcalf learns in the

opening pages that his latest client, a prominent doctor,

has been murdered in a sleazy motel. But here’s some

consolation: he soon finds a new person seeking his

services—the man who is being set up by the Inquisition

as the fall guy in the crime.





Related Reviews



The Fortress of Solitude

by Jonathan Lethem



You Don't Love Me Yet

by Jonathan Lethem



Chronic City

by Jonathan Lethem



M

otherless Brookly

n

by Jonathan Lethem





As is often the case with Lethem, the fantasy and sci-fi

elements in this story are woven into the background.

The basic plot is…well, perhaps calling it realistic would

be going too far. But no leaps into the imaginative void

are necessary to comprehend the familiar detective-tries-

to-solve-murder puzzle that sits at the center of

Gun,

with Occasional Music

. What makes Lethem so intriguing

as an author of speculative fiction is how much zany

creativity he expends on the smaller details of his stories.

Woody Allen once contemplated making a comedy movie

in which all of the gags take place in the background,

while a serious drama occupies the foreground of the

story. Lethem’s approach to storytelling is somewhat

akin to this topsy-turvy formula—his tales get stranger

and stranger the more you move into the periphery of the

plot.



Readers of his

The Fortress of Solitude

(still almost a decade

in the future at the time of this early effort) encountered

this when, deep into this gritty account of life on the streets

of Brooklyn, an unconventional superhero character—a

homeless man who can fly through the air—is introduced

to disrupt a narrative that otherwise seems so true-to-life.

The same kind of background disturbances impart a

curious flavor to Lethem’s more recent novel

Chronic City

,

in which the central story of buddies in New York is

juxtaposed with a host of sci-fi sub-plots, involving

everything from war in outer space to a raging mechanical

tiger. Unlike, say, H.G. Wells, who built his plots squarely

on impossibilities—time machines, invisible men—

Lethem keeps the main plot real-as-rain, but hides his

wildest ideas in the backdrop.



This is definitely the case with

Gun, with Occasional Music

.

As we follow P.I. Metcalf in his attempt to determine

who killed his client, a host of bizarre elements begin

to intrude into our view. Evolved animals, who can talk

and work 9-to-5 jobs, show up as minor characters.

Everyone seems to carry a karma card, and if the balance

falls to zero, bad things tend to happen to them. Music

has replaced much of the news. And strange drugs are

everywhere, with side effects that would even

discourage Timothy Leary from getting his prescriptions

filled.



Metcalf’s personal blend of narcotic is mostly Acceptol,

with enough Regrettol mixed in to provide a

“bittersweet edge,” and a little bit of Addictol to

keep him coming back for more. He tends to leave

out the Forgettol completely—a private inquisitioner

can’t afford to enjoy the joys of sweet oblivion. Even

stronger mixtures are available—although sometimes

you need to get them from the black market—and at

an extreme, youf personal recipe can do to your brain

what Rotorooter does to a blockage in your plumbing.



The blend at work in the construction of this book is





almost as strange as that employed by our detective in his

leisure hours. Much of the fun in reading Lethem is how





well his stories work at different levels.

Gun, with Occasional

Music

is not his best work—not until

Motherless

Brooklyn





and

The Fortress of

Solitude

would he really show his skill





at developing compelling characters with raw and plausible

emotional lives. And the pacing of this novel is





occasionally sluggish, with the many interrogations





of suspects and witnesses lacking the kind of ingenuity





that, say, an Agatha Christie brings to those kinds of





scenes. Even so there is much to admire here—





especially in the dialogue, the scene-setting, and the





various phantasmagorical elements.



And for a literary debut by an author just moving out





of his twenties, this book showed some serious bravado.





In retrospect, we can see how it signaled the arrival of





a provocative talent, one who would help redefine the

boundaries between serious and genre fiction. And that





would turn out to be not just a perfect role for Jonathan





Lethem, but also an appealing turnabout for the often





sluggish world of literary fiction as its parameters were





redefined in the years following the publication of this





book. No, Lethem didn’t do that on his own—give





credit to

David Mitchell

,

Michael

Chabon

,

David Foster





Wallace

,

Audrey

Niffenegger

,

Mark Z.

Danielewski

and





others for the parts they have played in this matter—but





he, as much as anyone, raised the stakes and raked in the





chips in a game that is still very much underway.







Ted Gioia's latest book is

L

ove Songs: The Hidden History