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RYO Review: Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
I’ve wanted to read Jonathan Lethem‘s Gun, With Occasional Music (1994) since I heard someone give a paper about it in a detective fiction panel at an academic conference several years ago. Soon after, the book was a Kindle daily deal, so it has been sitting on my virtual TBR shelf for a while now. The 35 challenge pushed me to dust it off (virtually, of course) and read it. Lucky for me, the book fulfills three other RYO challenges: Socialists, etc. (Lethem grew up in a commune in Brooklyn); The End of the World (future dystopia); and The Second Best (nominated for a Nebula).
Lethem creates a bizarre dystopian world, full of new species, who live among human society. First, there are talking animals. These so-called evolved animals seem to be creatures who grow to the size of a small human, move bipedally, and talk and think as humans. In the course of the story, we meet an evolved ape, kitten, ewe, kangaroo, and other secondary characters. These characters are interesting and fully-imagined; their difference doesn’t really provide an obstacle for the reader. This cannot be said about the second group, a new form of children in this world. Lethem does not completely explain if these new “children,” called Babyheads, are in addition to or instead of human children. Babyheads have mature minds but inhabit miniature and deformed bodies. They are born very smart but not emotionally stable. As they live among humans, they grow more and more resentful about being trapped in a small body “in a six foot world” (234). The sub-culture of the Babyheads is the weakest part of the book because Lethem never takes the time to explain about their appearance or function in this new society. The reader is left with many distracting questions.
