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Summary
Summary
Since the war and the bombs, Hatfork, Wyoming, is a broken-down, mutant-ridden town. Young Chaos lives in the projection booth of the abandoned multiplex, trying to blot out his present unable to remember his past. Then the local tyrant, Kellogg, reveals to him to over a can of dog food that the bombs never fell. The truth is a little more complicated. With a fur-covered girl and an automobile, Chaos sets out on journey, following the empty highway to the edge of the American nightmare, ins search of a missing identity and a stolen love. The truth he finds,is indeed a little more complicated. or a lot . .
Author Notes
Jonathan Lethem was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 19, 1964. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music was published in 1994. His other works include As She Climbed across the Table (1997), Amnesia Moon (1995), The Fortress of Solitude (2003), You Don't Love Me Yet (2007), Chronic City (2009), and Dissident Gardens (2013). He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Motherless Brooklyn (1999). He also writes short stories, comics and essays. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New York Times, The Paris Review, McSweeney's and other periodicals and anthologies.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lethem's post-apocalyptic vision reflects American culture as if in a funhouse mirror in this strong follow-up to Gun, with Occasional Music. Televangelists have become actual robots, dog food is the cuisine of choice and the soap operas star government figuresall making for a confusing world for Everett, aka Chaos, who lives in a movie-projection room in Wyoming, drinking a liquor ``that amounted to rubbing alcohol.'' Fleeing his projection booth with Melinda, who's ``covered with fine, silky hair from head to foot,'' Chaos discovers that he is a ``dreamer,'' one whose dreams can remake reality. As Chaos and Melinda travel through the U.S., they find that, while each town has been affected differently by the mysterious source of the apocalypse, none can fill in their incomplete memories or answer their questions. Alighting in Vacaville, where everything is determined by ``luck tests,'' Chaos and Melinda settle into family life with a woman and her two children. But figures from his past, including some who appear only under the influence of intravenously administered drugs, draw Chaos into discovering that pastand into making more active use of his dream powers. The author draws each stop on Chaos's journey with care, including a supremely decadent San Francisco and a Los Angeles overrun with aliens, bringing to life all the horror and confusion inherent in his future world. At its heart, this novel remains a simple storythe search for identity, the search for familybut Lethem uses it successfully as a springboard for both a commentary on American culture and a convincing portrait of his main character. Author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Oddball dreamtime/fractured-reality yarn from the author of Gun, With Occasional Music (1994). In a sometime future following an unspecified disaster, a man named Chaos lives in the projection booth of the abandoned Multiplex in the town of Hatfork, Wyoming. Chaos can't remember his past, and tries to blot out the present with homemade alcohol. At night, though, he dreams that he's named Everett and has a house, a computer, and a woman named Gwen. When the Hatfork food supply runs out, Chaos confronts the repulsive Kellogg, whose dreams apparently give Hatfork its reality. Rejecting Kellogg, Chaos heads for California accompanied by fur- covered adolescent Melinda, who complains of dreaming Chaos's dreams. In the mountains, they stumble into a green fog where Chaos remembers another name, Moon, but forgets everything else and must be rescued by Melinda. Reaching California, the two find that Vacaville's citizens are graded according to how lucky they are, while their bosses have dreamed themselves movie-star lifestyles. In San Francisco, a powerful dreamer transforms people into objects; Chaos, remembering he's Everett Moon, turns into a clock. Intriguing, to a point. But explanations are never forthcoming, and readers wanting substance rather than sheer weirdness, no matter how imaginative, won't be satisfied.
Booklist Review
Lethem follows his critically acclaimed crime novel pastiche, Gun with Occasional Music (1994), with a strikingly different vision of a postapocalyptic U.S. Chaos is an introverted occupant of a run-down movie theater in Hatfork, Wyoming, who is surrounded by mutant locals and living on canned food until he suspects that the local tyrant, Kellogg, has lied about the bombs that have supposedly destroyed the rest of the country. After stealing Kellogg's car and taking to the highway with a fur-covered runaway girl, Chaos discovers that each new town he comes to is afflicted with its own form of insanity, manifested by mass symptoms ranging from an imaginary, blinding green mist to an obsession with luck. Returning to his native San Francisco, Chaos suddenly remembers his previous identity as a man named Moon and discovers the power his own dreams can have to cure the madness around him. In a remarkable display of versatility, Lethem tempers a liberal dose of quirky surrealism with interesting, believable characterizations and a compelling, imaginative story line. --Carl Hays
Library Journal Review
A young man named Chaos sets out on a journey across a shattered America to search for the truth that lies behind his fragmented dreams. From Hatfork, Wyoming, a desert town populated by genetic mutants, to the Strip, where perpetual fast food establishments exist in a cultural vacuum, Chaos begins to piece together a history of the breakdown of reality. The author of Gun, with Occasional Music (LJ 2/15/94) embues his second novel with a breathtaking vision of a world in flux. Lethem's prose is as flexible and memorable as the evocative story he tells. Most libraries will want this foray into speculative fiction for their sf collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.