Gun, with Occasional Music (Harvest Book) | 
|  | | | Title: | Gun, with Occasional Music (Harvest Book) | | Author: | Jonathan Lethem | | Publisher: | Harvest Books | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 01 September, 2003 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0156028972 / 9780156028974 | | List Price: | $14.00 | | You Save: | $2.80 | | Amazon Price: | $11.20 | |
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Product Description
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.
Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.
Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.
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Customer Reviews:
• Lots Of Bang For The Bucks! 10 March, 2008
What a blast! My first exposure to Lethem has me hooked.
I am sure this is the first time I ever thought there could be some connections between drugs, guns, karma, kangaroos, and a few others you have to read to believe (probably the last time, too, unless he has written a sequel).
This is a very funny mix of science fiction, fantasy, detective, dystopia, noir and a few more genres, I'm sure. Lethem told his story tightly, with an unbelievable group of Characters ("C" not "c").
Toward the end, I had to make myself slow down so it would last just a little longer. I highly recommend this book to all who enjoy off-beat, hard to label reads.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1GCZ07XRJX858
• Chandler Meets Philip K. Dick In The Age Of Self-medication 03 September, 2008
I have never read Jonathan Lethem before (although I've often considered it). I got this book, because I read a lot of genre fiction and I particularly enjoy idiosyncratic genre fiction.
This novel's pacing, language and crime fiction conventions will remind readers of Chandler, Hammett and MacDonald. If you are tired of the old conventions, you might not enjoy the wise-cracking, jaded but somehow idealistic and determined P.I., Metcalf. If you love the old-school mannerisms, I think you'll love the novel.
What makes the novel compelling, though, is the surreal, near-future aspect. "Evolved" animals participate in human society, albeit as second-class citizens, and children are genetic mutations known as "babyheads." One of the goons who gives our hero a hard time is a kangaroo, and it's both humorous and disturbing -- reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's work.
Like Dick's novels, this one is set in the near future. It's not a dystopia, as some reviewers have noted, but a setting analogous to our contemporary one. People have little privacy, they are required to present ID to security personnel/police who are called "inquisitors." People don't take prozac, paxil, smoke dope or self-medicate in the hundred different ways so many of our citizens do now. They snort "make," an addictive substance that helps people erase their memories (who needs TV, when you've got "forgettol"?).
The novel has some grisly violence, but because of the surreal setting and fidelity to old-school crime novel mannerisms, it seems almost comical or cartoonish. That is, until the final section, where Lethem elevates the novel to art. It is so dark, the implications so profound, that I found myself emotionally haunted.
It might take a little work to get through some of the chapters (thus my 4 out of 5 rating instead of 5 out of 5), but I felt Lethem's denouement made it worthwhile. A notable first novel and a good read for genre fans looking for something different.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A21GSA23JXEPWE
• First Time's The Charm 08 March, 2007
Lethem's first book doesn't crackle and sparkle with the literary virtuosity of his later works ("Motherless Brooklyn" and "Fortress of Solitude"), but it is a fine example of the nimbleness of his creative spirit.
"Gun" follows private inquisitor, Conrad Metcalf, around a futuristic California, where animals and babies are forcibly evolved, societal compliance is enforced with measurable karma, and it is no longer acceptable to ask questions. Metcalf's latest client has been killed, and the case is being pasted to a patsy by the big dogs in the government pound. Metcalf makes things uncomfortable (for himself as well as everyone else) in his pursuit to uncover the truth.
It's not an easy task. Metcalf is dogged by a trigger-happy kangaroo, the loss of his masculine nerve endings (literally), and people who take legally-sanctioned drugs designed to induce amnesia. He skims off the dross with typical flat-footed panache, employing the standard P.I. lingo (and glum stubborness) made famous by Chandler and Bogey (although not with quite as much skill).
Although, at heart, this is a tribute to the world of literary noir, Lethem gives us a glimpse of his future import by sewing hefty totems into his weird (but fully realized) world. Orwell it ain't, but it sure comes close; Lethem has more to say about how we enslave ourselves, rather than how others do the enslaving for us.
By turns funny and fast-paced, clever and creepy, slick and sharp, "Gun" is a great diversion. It's certainly not an example of an artist at the top of his game, but it IS an example of an artist learning quite deftly how to break all of the rules. More than anything else, this is Lethem showing us just why he's a writer to begin with -- because he loves it. In the hands of someone as talented as he, it's hard for a reader not to share his enthusiasm.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A139ZF7CJVVTJU
• Curious What Neal Stephenson Sounds Like Covering Raymond Chandler? 19 July, 2008
In Gun, With Occasional Music, Jonathan Lethem gives us science fiction's worthy successor to Raymond Chandler. Though this is the easy take-home message from nearly every quoted newspaper columnist, book jacket blurb, and miscellaneous reviewer -- they also all happen to be right. Even a cursory familiarity with Chandler's pulp noir will ring through with startling clarity to readers of this novel. The cadence of the narrative, the hard-boiled dialogue, the archetypal characters... Lethem's Conrad Metcalf is a well-executed Philip Marlowe cover song with just a little bit of record scratching thrown into the background for texture.
On the other hand, those same columnist quotes, blurbs, and reviewers all seem to liken Lethem to Philip K. Dick. Personally: not seeing it. It's a bit of a stretch, some optimistic name-dropping to match up Lethem's mystery/noir heritage with some similarly classic science fiction antecedent. The ubiquitous drug use? Sure, okay -- that's a bit Dickian. A Möbius fold of reality unraveling around the narrator in some palpable and thoroughly eldritch fashion? Not so much. More than PKD, the scenes in this novel played out in my imagination as fearfully symmetrical to Cronenberg's take on Burroughs` Naked Lunch -- substitute Jim Henson-esque "evolved" animals for Mugwumps but otherwise that's it, right down to Peter Weller as Conrad Metcalf.
Or maybe this certain GoodReads.com reviewer has got it down: "It's Blade Runner meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
Where was I? Oh right...
A part of me desires to do a chapter-by-chapter deconstruction of the text, to get all scholarly about it and run the blockade of Chandler's lineage here. I want to look for the hidden significance of the doctors as urologists, to get semiotic on names like "Catherine Teleprompter" and "Danny Phoneblum". But instead I'll just give a positive nod. It's a fun, noirish scifi romp with all the right moves and delivers slightly better than expectations.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1L94WV25FV2QT
• Brave New Utopia 18 June, 2008
This is a Brave New World influenced book that was very original in the fantasy department. I loved it, but then to know what that means, I also like Murakami's Wild Sheep Chase and Hard Boiled novels. Alegorical, symbolic and left open to the mind of the reader to follow or imagine the story. Drugs, detective, women, animals, and cops with a plot and Mickey Spilane type scenario on mescaline. Its a fast read.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2RAMY013T87PU
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