Wall Of The Sky The Wall Of The Eye (Paperback)

"The Happy Man" features a dead man who is raised from the dead so he can financially support his family, the catch is that his consciousness must reside in hell part of the time. There he has bizarre nightmares that lead to an unfortunately predictable denouement. In "Vanilla Dunk," professional basketball players are issued suits giving them skills of former greats. From this interesting idea, Lethem fabricates one of the best sports stories I've ever read, as an obnoxious white kid wins the "draft lottery" and gets to be the next Michael Jordan and racial tensions ensue. "Light and the Sufferer" follows a crack addict, his brother, and the mysterious alien who follows them around New York. The humans' story ends rather obviously, but the significance of the aliens is left somewhat obscure. "Forever, Said the Duck" is about a cocktail party inhabited by clones of everyone who's had sex with the two hosts. It's promising enough at first, but degenerates into a psychedelic nonsense. The nifty notion of "The Hardened Criminals" is that convicts are physically hardened and used as bricks for a massive prison tower. Lethem seemed totally unable to make anything out of the premise, however, and when a young criminal meets his father in the wall, the result is rather forced. "Five ..." presents the mystery of a woman who has sex with a man and "loses" two weeks of her life. Unfortunately, the story implodes rather than leading anywhere interesting. The final story, "Sleepy People" is simply odd and makes you wonder why it was included.

Lethem is certainly a creative genius, however, he's still pretty hit or miss in harnessing his creativity. Sometimes he doesn't seem to know what to do with it and ends up writing himself into a bizarre corner. Still, I'll continue to read him to catch the sparkling stuff.

Some worked better than others, and from reading the other reviews here it seems the selection varies from reader to reader. Yet the range and boldness of his ideas nearly staggers the imagination, and to have pulled this off -- not once, but seven times -- is astonishing.