My girlfriend got me this book for our one and a half year anniversary, a date I unfortunately forgot. She knows I'm a big fan of previous Lethem novels, and, as you can see by the completion dates, I managed to read "Men and Cartoons" very quickly, which was a relief after the incredibly long "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell".
These short stories are good, though don't have the same depth as his novels. Though, frankly, not all his novels have the same depth as his novels. His two most recent publications (excluding a short illustrated novella and a book of book reviews), "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Fortress of Solitude", are really fantastic and I definitely recommend them.
Thoughts on Lethem:
1) Lethem is one of a few authors who made the transition from science fiction to critically acclaimed literary fiction, though even his science fiction was always strange and philosophical rather than mainstream.
2) He likes comic books, and there seems to be a trend with some 30-something authors and comic books (Chabon, Moody, and Lethem for a few examples). I suppose that the glory days of comic books were the 60s and the 70s and those authors are relying heavily on comic book themes in their writing. It's brought on somewhat of a renaissance of narrative fiction, mostly lead by Chabon. It seems like a bit of a rejection of the semi-comic-absurdist McSweeney's movement, which itself was a rejection of the super realistic unplotted New Yorker literary scene. Though, it's interesting, because Chabon launched his first "plot" offensive through an issue of McSweeney's he edited, because McSweeney's is apparently self-aware enough to host its own counter-movement. Anyway, Lethem is riding this wave (well, he's a part of the wave, not just a rider) as it is the perfect time for plotted, narrative fiction to critically excel, and critics who would not have previously given the time of day to anything even remotely sci-fi or fantasy are now willing to consider things like "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell", the "Lord of the Rings" movie, "McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales", and the like.
3) Some authors are just better at long fiction, some at short. While Lethem's short stories (as I said) don't have the same depth of character and meaning as his better novels, they are still well done and worth reading. Lethem has the interesting technique (in both his novels and short stories) of showing a character at three different points in his life. So you get a glimpse of childhood, and then college, and than post-college (which often involves working at a college - I wonder what sort of non-college life experience Lethem has). These three glimpses obviously are connected, usually because these are the three times the protagonist interacts with some other (metaphorical?) character. It doesn't quite give a whole portrait of the protagonist, but what it does do is paint three strokes across time as opposed to one. I kind of imagine that all the protagonists in these stories could be one person, just a combination of three moments pulled from the same person's life and leaving the rest blurry. It works and I like it.
