Men And Cartoons

Seemingly out of nowhere, I've been on a big Jonathan Lethem kick the past week or two. I started with his novel Motherless Brooklyn, a overall good read with a few moments of excellence. Next I found an incredible essay he wrote on the subject of plagiarism entitled, "The ecstasy of influence: a plagiarism." This I highly recommend. And so finally, my Lethem kick comes to a close with his collection of short stories: Men and Cartoons. I'm not normally a big fan of short stories; I believe the g [...]

Super Goat Man was the standout story here.

This is my first read of Jonathan Lethem. I heard his story "The Spray" on the NPR show Selected Shorts, and I was rather impressed, so I tracked down this collection. I am not familiar with any of his novels. What impressed me about "The Spray" when I heard it, and also when I read it, was its easy style--a couple find that their apartment has been robbed, but when the police come, the couple find that they are not sure about what has been taken, so the police spray the apartment with a substan [...]

This is the second book of Lethem's that I've read. I'm finding that he has an odd sensibility that I like. This is a collection of short stories that hover on the edge of science fiction and Twilight Zone.From "Access Fantasy", where the have nots are stuck in a world of the perpetual traffic jam and one of the only ways to get out is to be advertising for the "haves", to "The Glasses", a customer comes to a standoff with his optician over his new glasses, to "Interview with the Crab", a send u [...]

I struggled in deciding whether to give this two or three stars. On one hand, Lethem is a brilliant writer and there is much to learn from his technique. This book definitely deserves a much higher rating if based objectively. However, I decided to go for the subject rating. Yes, his writing is excellent. Yes, his stories are very well constructed. However, I just didn't enjoy them at all. That's a strictly preference-based review and probably of no help whatsoever if you're trying to decide whe [...]

A series of experimental short stories featuring a variety of writing styles, unreliable narrators, quirky characters, a mish-mash of bizarre sci-fi elements and an underlying theme regarding comic-book superheros. Some of these stories are better than others, but none is a masterpiece. A quick read and worthwhile for the experimentation alone; odds are there's something in there that'll give you an idea for your own writing.

A great compilation of short stories, all imaginative, whimsical, & creative. Each story has the reader thinking, "What If?", transporting one to childhood fantasies. All are tied loosely and/or directly to superpowers, cartoons, and/or comic book heroes. A brief, but fun read!

SIX WORD REVIEW: Extra! Super Goat Man botches rescue

his style/sensibility doesn't quite sit right with me for some reason, but i did like a few stories more than the rest. and imagine my shock to open it and the first story takes place on the very block where i now live (and sat reading it)!

Meh, Lethem has better books and better short stories.

Two or three of these stories haunt me, all are memorable.

Shortly after I started reading Jonathan Lethem's 2004 collection Men and Cartoons, I discovered that a previous owner of the particular second-hand copy I'd acquired had mutilated it, annotating page after page in bilious green highlighter and indelible black ink (rather than a more respectful pencil). They were uniformly obvious and banal marginalia to boot, where they were legible at all, and I did as well as I could to ignore them in favor of the stories themselves.Fortunately, Jonathan Leth [...]

In Jonathan Lethem’s home of Brooklyn, New York, on 5th Avenue, there lives a reassuringly odd, tough-looking store called Brooklyn Superhero Supply. Set, when I first saw it, along a row of graying or graffitied businesses, Superhero Supply (”Ever vigilant, ever true”) features “fully serviced capery, workspace for research and development, and industrial-grade services for superpowers,” whatever those might be.Superhero Supply (actually a storefront for social work by the publisher/l [...]

Some of the weirdest writing I've read, but also some of the most entertaining. Lethem's stories are always strange, surreal, and unexpected. Each of the tales feels like it's own dream, twisting about unexpectedly. And like a dream I sometimes had trouble following or understanding which only furthered my fascination with this book. I already picked up one of his novels 'Fortress of Solitude' and I plan on devouring all I can get my hands on. Stories that most stood out;Access FantasySuper Goat [...]

Jonathan Lethem's Men and Cartoons is at once a really comic and wry read, full of witticisms and self-depricating humor that borders on Chekovian sadness. "The Vision" begins with all fun and games until a woman named Doe confesses to having killed a cat, an admission of animal cruelty; The Spray is an erotic and sexy tale of a couple who finds a mysterious spray after their house has been robbed. After literally spraying the air, the images of their respective former lovers appear in a salmon- [...]

> I'd give it a 9/10Really great selection, or cross-section, of Lethem's style in short fiction, utilizing comics, comic book heroes, comix and 50s Sci-Fi "PKD" esthetics. Mostly just fun. Exploding cabbages, Super Goat Man, The Vision and (suicidal) Plath Sheep

There really isn't enough written about masculinity studies for a general audience. This does a good job of easing people into gender studies in general.

The Vision I liked, also Vivian Reif, the rest of the stories, I am ashamed to say, I just did not understand.

The characters and situations are so compelling, even when absurd, that there were times I felt like I was living the stories not reading them.

Some nice stories, but skipped the obvious sf.

Lisergico, zappiano, ossessivo&compulsivo, chicca clamorosa: myspiace/a-ovest-dellin

A couple of the stories were good, but I was neutral about the rest.

Harlan Ellison-lite. Entertaining enough stories, but no real bite.

I appreciate the craft he used to create all these various characters and worlds but I am the wrong kind of faux-literary to appreciate any of the things he did with them (I still believe stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end)

This is a great collection of short stories that are entertaining, evocative, and humorous. This collection actually ties-in the cartoon theme in each story to some degree. All of the stories are not great, but there was no bad story in the collection, and two or three stories were great. I believe that I've read at least two of the stories in the New Yorker magazine. Jonathan Lethem is one of my favorite New Yorker Fiction contributors. I'd considered reading other Lethem works including Mother [...]

This is really good. The writing is light and easy, and his ideas are fun to chew on. The book really is about men and cartoons: our ideas and the silly-looking but deadly-serious shapes they take, and what we do because of them. The dystopianist story boils it down: our utopias make the real world look dim. From here spins off the resentful power of Everett's awful line ending "Super Goat Man" or the bitter games in "The Vision." The power of cartoony ideas rules the characters in other stories [...]

Lethem's second short story collection isn't a bad effort at all, but funnily enough (considering how good an essayist he is), I'm not sure the format suits him. Several of the pieces here feel like outtakes from a longer story, that sacrifice the character and thematic developments of a novel but don't quite pack the punch of a great short story. If you've read Fortress of Solitude (and you should) there's really not much new in stories like The Vision or Planet Big Zero, and sci-fi stories lik [...]

So, there's a story about a retired superhero named Super Goat Man. Super Goat Man has round table, wine-and-pot-soaked communals with students at a small New England liberal arts college. Everyone digs the goat man. Our narrator knew him as a kid and then meets him again at the college. SGM is part creepy uncle, part cool older brother, but, mostly as someone up here mentioned, an icon for the failures of the boomer generation to (a) properly inspire their children, and (b) fulfill the promise [...]

Let me tell you about some of these crazy stories: “Access Fantasy” is a hardboiled sci-fi story about a future in which the multitudinous poor live in perpetual traffic jams and pass their time watching quasi-pornographic videos of spacious apartments. ”Vivian Relf” revolves around a man and woman who keep running into one another and are hard pressed to extract meaning from this series of coincidences. “The Spray” is a surprisingly haunting story that’s equal parts Philip K. Dick [...]

Just finished this collection of short stories, which is the first thing I've read by Jonathan Lethem (other than his excellent essay for the Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Singers of All Time issue (Rolling Stone's editorial approach is blatantly whorish, but even within that context they hit on something now and then).Speaking of which, this collection was hit and miss. I thoroughly enjoyed and may reread stories such as The Vision, Planet Big Zero and Super Goat Man. The only reason I would rerea [...]