(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

Too Awful to Finish: An ongoing essay series

The Accused: You Don't Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem

How far I got: 99 pages (about halfway through)

Crimes:
1) Asking us to give a rat's ass about the truly miserable indie-rock characters on display -- possibly the most untalented, pretentious, snotty, empty-headed, navel-gazing Los Angeles losers the world of contemporary literature has ever given us.

2) Reminding us of just how many of these circle-jerk losers end up internationally famous as part of the indie-rock scene, in many cases because of some postmodern media-celebrity-slash-performance-artist who is usually snottier and less tolerable than even them. Yeah, thanks, Lethem; like being an underground artist isn't f---ing depressing enough.

3) Positing a world where an attractive, empowered female bass player would become obsessed with one of the most obviously misogynistic woman-hating literary characters I've come across in years; so obsessed, in fact, that she starts creating lyrics for her band around the obliquely sexist things the man tells her during their anonymous phone-complaint sessions, which of course are part of a super-duper-pretentious conceptual-art installation piece that the bass player has been hired to be a part of (don't ask, seriously, SERIOUSLY, don't ask).

4) Living in Brooklyn. Yeah, you heard me.

Verdict: Oh, so guilty.

Sentence: A five-year exile from the traditional literary industry, writing snotty CD reviews instead for Pitchfork. Seriously, Doubleday -- you need to start peddling this crap to pretentious 19-year-old indie-rockers who don't know any better, and leave us intelligent people the f--k alone. ( )

Ah, Jonathan Lethem. Even when you give us lightweight confection you delight us with your clever comparisons, your wonderful dialog, and your uncanny ability to give voice to those sensations and feelings we thought could never be put into words.

Case in point: You Don't Love Me Yet.

On the surface it's a story about a girl in a rock band who during the day mans a "complain line" as part of an art experiment (this is Los Angeles, after all). One of her regular complainers has such a way with words that she co-opts his complaints as lyrics, which kick start the band to new levels. The catch? At their first gig the Complainer (as he's called) hears the new stuff and wants in. Wackiness ensues.

The admittedly brief synopsis above doesn't begin, however, to describe the experience of reading You Don't Love Me Yet, and doesn't hint at the many explorations of love and relationships, and the nature of music and how it affects not only the people listening to it, but the people making it as well. Lethem is a writer I'm proud to say I've been turned onto ever since his first novel Gun, With Occasional Music and although he's moved away from the science fiction to mainstream (if you can call it that) literative fiction and all the accolades that accompany, his biggest strength of conveying ideas and emotions directly to the reader has only gotten better with time. If you're a musician and you've ever played in front of a crowd you'll love this book - his description of what happens to a crowd during a show is spot-on, and the characterizations of the various band members are uncanny in how they at once embrace everything that's both romantic and realistic about the "struggling musician" type.

Very quick, very enjoyable. Now please get to work on something epic along the lines of your last novel The Fortress of Solitude. ( )

The whole thing reads like a bad version of Singles for people who are even more pretentious. Singles was pretty pretentious to start off with and wasn’t that great a movie either.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

Ratings for this book seem to be all over the charts and I can understand why. The characters are not drawn to be particularly likable and their motivations are scarcely known. But for young rock star wanna be's this little novel portrays the desires and challenges of playing in a band. ( )

A more fun read than his "Fortress of Solitude," but it feels much more slight. The characters aren't as interesting, their relationships not as complex ... enough for a tv dramedy, but not for a novel. But Lethem's got an agreeable style and he makes the story of the band, its brush with near greatness, feel like that time you saw that really cool local band you were sure were going to go places and you'd be able to say, "I saw them when they were playing 'Volcanic Action of My Soul' in grotty co-ops back in Madison" to folks when they were huge. But Trenchmouth never took off and I don't think ths novel really will either. ( )