The acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies.
Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.
Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.
Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.
Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.
Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.
Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.
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Used availability for Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City
See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
Hardback Editions
October 2009 : Hardback
| Title: Chronic City: A Novel Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0385518633 / 9780385518635 (USA edition) Publisher: Doubleday Availability: Amazon Amazon CA Amazon UK |
Paperback Editions
January 2011 : Paperback
| Title: Chronic City Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0571235689 / 9780571235681 (UK edition) Publisher: Faber and Faber Availability: Amazon CA Amazon UK Amazon |
August 2010 : Paperback
| Title: Chronic City Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0571235670 / 9780571235674 (UK edition) Publisher: Faber and Faber Availability: Amazon UK Amazon CA Amazon |
August 2010 : Paperback
| Title: Chronic City (Vintage Contemporaries) Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0307277526 / 9780307277527 (USA edition) Publisher: Vintage Availability: Amazon Amazon CA Amazon UK |
January 2010 : Paperback
| Title: Chronic City Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0571268536 / 9780571268535 (UK edition) Publisher: Faber and Faber Availability: Amazon CA Amazon UK |
December 2009 : Paperback
| Title: Chronic City Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: 0571235662 / 9780571235667 (UK edition) Publisher: Faber and Faber Availability: Amazon CA Amazon UK |
Kindle Editions
March 2010 : Kindle edition
| Title: Chronic City Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: B003FW3IKO Publisher: Faber and Faber Fiction Availability: Amazon UK |
October 2009 : Kindle edition
| Title: Chronic City: A Novel Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: B002SDRT42 Publisher: Doubleday Availability: Amazon |
October 2009 : Kindle edition
| Title: Chronic City: A Novel Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem ISBN: B002PMVY42 Publisher: Vintage Availability: Amazon |
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