This Shape We're In
By Jonathan Lethem
McSweeney's Books/$9
Jonathan Lethem's This Shape We're In barely qualifies in length as a novella, but it's worth all nine of the dollars it costs. The third release from McSweeney's Books, a tentacle of the media octopus ridden by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, could be the funniest, weirdest thing you'll read this year — unless Eggers' book "involving water" due out this spring is funnier and weirder.
This Shape We're In has less of the cerebral noodling (don't call it irony) Eggers memorably indulged in his memoir, just out in paperback from Vintage, but shares a healthy respect for the playful possibilities of language and storytelling. This is an absurd tale that moves. Characters clobber one another with words as Lethem skillfully shoves them through a tightly written adventure with a startling ending. Protagonist Henry Farbur is to being drunk what Hugh Hefner is to bathrobes: very comfortable. His shaky mellow harshes big-time when young Balkan shows up at a cookout claiming he's spotted Farbur's prodigal son, Dennis, chanting incantations up around the eye.
Yes, the eye. As plot things thicken, it becomes eminently clear the story is taking place within some sort of body, presumably living. Hence the book's title. Balkan accompanies Farbur back to the eye, and along the way they journey through the spine, the shoulder, nose, cheeks and eventually, since trepanning isn't really an option, the brain: the whereabouts of the mythological third eye — the true eye — and the crux of the story.
To give away more would be criminal. The world these characters inhabit is a microcosm of our silly world, replete with phone sex talk, doggedly obedient military types and religious hoodwinkers — all of whom arouse Farbur's drunken dudgeon. But that ending. My gosh. Maybe not so absurd a tale after all.
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—David Jasper
This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2001.