Deep in the hearts of countless Americans under the age of 60 or so beats a desire more potent than any craving for wealth or power --- the dream of playing in a rock band. In his rollicking and tender new book, Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of highly praised novels like MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN and THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, shines a fresh light on the pains and pleasures endured by those who struggle to realize that dream.
Lucinda Hoekke, Matthew Plangent, Bedwin Greenish and Denise Urban are fellow Gen-Xers living in Los Angeles ( the largest inhabited abandoned city on earth ) who toil at unfulfilling day jobs like zookeeping (a kangaroo named Shelf the Flyer plays a key role in the story) or clerking in a masturbation boutique, merely to provide the sustenance that enables them to pursue their music in a band so tentative it lacks even a name.
Bedwin, the band's lyricist, suffers from writer's block. My problem, he complains, is I don't believe in the place where the sentences come from anymore. To his rescue rides Lucinda, the bass player, who's been working in an art gallery owned by her ex-boyfriend, Falmouth Strand.
Her job is to answer telephones on a complaint line Falmouth has created and publicized throughout the city to encourage callers to unburden themselves of their grievances.
Lucinda begins to field the persistent calls of a man she nicknames the complainer, whose words become so seductive she decides to transcribe and deliver them to Bedwin in the hope they'll shake him from his creative doldrums. Her plan succeeds, and soon Bedwin has produced a sheaf of new songs to join the band's standbys like Hell Is for Buildings and Canary in a Coke Machine.
Inevitably, Lucinda and the complainer, whose real name is Carl, meet and indulge in a sex-drenched romp spanning two days and several locales in the Los Angeles area. Carl is an older man who creates what he calls itchy slogans like Pour Love on the Broken Places and All Thinking is Wishful, which become ubiquitous on billboards and buses around the city. Still intoxicated by the afterglow of her new relationship, Lucinda joins the band in its first public performance at an event called the Aparty, where they're expected to play inaudibly as participants dance to music they listen to on headphones.
When the plans for the event go horribly awry, the band makes its debut --- aloud --- and electrifies the audience with its new song, Monster Eyes, drawn from one of Carl's telephone monologues. Music producers and disc jockeys descend on the group, and Carl, who realizes he's the source of its reinvigorated songwriting, insists on becoming the keyboard player. Soon the band, now named Monster Eyes, makes a live appearance on the radio show of Fancher Autumnbreast, a legendary local DJ, with results that are simultaneously hilarious and disastrous.
Younger readers will find themselves identifying with Lucinda and her bandmates, while older ones may have difficulty suppressing a tinge of frustration at their frequently juvenile behavior. It was often this way, Lethem writes, life consisted of a series of false beginnings, bluff declarations of arrival to destinations not even glimpsed. All should agree that the characters are groping their way toward a maturity that, with luck, will be in their grasp someday soon.
In the case of a writer as gifted as Jonathan Lethem, there's no question that YOU DON'T LOVE ME YET is far from his most substantial or compelling work, but his protagonist Lucinda and her supporting cast are artfully sketched and sympathetically portrayed. The novel's depiction of the Los Angeles alternative music scene and the young people struggling to carve out a niche there has the ring of authenticity that will keep readers turning the pages in this fresh and energetically plotted tale.
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