Ready For Prime Time?

Maybe I'm going to start writing book reviews. That has materialized as an option. Not a paid option, no, but a chance to be in print (if only in cyberspace) and noticed by several readers could be exhilirating. The thing is, I'm not sure how to do it. Can it really be only slightly more complicated than it was in fourth grade? Just put down the title, the author, the publishing house, what the book was about, more or less, and whether you liked it? Does a review always need to shake hands with previous books by the same author, all the classical influences and the economic climate of the time in which the book was set?

I just finished reading "Motherless Brooklyn" which I thought was a very fine book. It made me laugh out loud, feel abashed about laughing, and laugh some more. I mean, please! What's funny about mob wannabes running a car service, with a sideline of cheating Japanese investors in a Zendo? What's funny about Tourette's syndrome? Really? Quite a lot, if it's Jonathan Lethem writing.

What luxury of language! What a joy to write! Words buzzing and humming and dive-bombing around the old laptop, loaded with virtual saliva. Unimaginable physical tics. I loved the straightening of the collars of authority figures.

If you saw Lionel Essrog on the street or sitting on the wobbly vinyl corner stool at the last diner in your neighborhood, tucking into a salami hero and ticcing with his head and neck, you'd maybe get up and move or at least redirect your eyes (unless you were a kid, of course, and then you'd stare, maybe giggle) Because you would choose to forget that a real person lived inside of all that physical paraphenalia not working the way you expect it to. Unless you had more than a nodding acquaintance with Tourette's, you could fail to discover what else goes on for the bearers of that particular burden.

I think J. Lethem jumped right over a big hurdle (or the elephant in the living room, whatever) and gave us the whole emotional grab bag and I say Thanks! You're my hero.

Not a book review though, right?