Journeyman used to be a screenwriter, though none of his films ever got made. His name back then was Alexander Duplessis. He spent a long time working with producer Peter Todbaum, a Harvey Weinstein-like friend from college, on a pet science fiction project, Yet Another World. Now he lives in Tinderwick, a small town on an isolated peninsula in what used to be New England, wiping up the blood left by the butcher and delivering the meat.
The reason he finds himself there is the Arrest, when things just stopped. The internet, guns and cars stopped working, planes fell from the sky, Miami drowned. A tick-borne virus closed up the throats of anyone who ate beef. Journeyman is stuck where he had been on holiday, visiting his sister Madeleine, and knows next to nothing about what is happening elsewhere.
As apocalypses go, it's among the cosiest, at least for the people in Tinderwick and the other small towns on its peninsula. It’s like a post-apocalyptic Gilmore Girls, a town full of kooky, self-reliant, community-spirited artisans. But access to and from the peninsula is controlled by the Cordon, flinty types on horseback who trade their protection for luxuries like chutney, mackerel and marijuana. No one who leaves has ever returned.
The novel is divided into five parts: a day (Tuesday), a month (October), a season (winter) and two eras (Yet Another Arrest and Aftermath). It is on Tuesday that Todbaum arrives, driving an armoured, nuclear-powered supercar, having apparently steamrolled and battered his way across the country. He'll speak only to Journeyman or Madeleine, and she wants nothing to do with him.
I've seen some very negative reactions to this book, even from people who have previously enjoyed Jonathan Lethem's work. (He is also the author of Motherless Brooklyn, which Ed Norton recently adapted for film, and The Feral Detective, which is in development.) Perhaps those readers who haven't read his previous work, who have fewer expectations and for whom his style will be novel, will enjoy it more. I certainly did.
The plot does get off to quite a slow start, as some have complained, but the very short chapters stop it from dragging. And while it is slightly frustrating for readers to learn so little about life outside the town, this isn't accidental, it plays an important role in the story: what we do hear is from Todbaum, who talks like the Hollywood movie producer he was, his clichéd, inconsistent stories nabbed from old science fiction films.
For much of the book, it feels like a prime example of least-interesting-character syndrome, in that Journeyman rarely knows what is going on, doesn't explore his world, and ambles through events without making any significant decisions. He's never in the room where it happens. But as the book goes on it becomes clear that this too is no accident. His capable, inventive sister didn’t need his help.
I read it as a #metoo story. The nuclear-powered supercar seems straightforwardly phallic, forcing its way across the country and into their town. Once there, it drills into the water table and begins to pollute it with effluent, while the radiation from its engine kills the grass and Todbaum's tall tales attract followers who don't care what he's done.
Madeleine, having had an unpleasant sexual experience with Todbaum thirty years before the Arrest, knows he can't be allowed to permanently poison the town, and prevents this not through a macho act of individual heroism, but by bringing the community together to neutralise, very cleverly, the danger that he poses. This leads to an ending that is extremely satisfying, both in a moral sense, and also in the pleasure of seeing Madeleine and the author's plots unfurl.
Another thing I liked was Journeyman's notion of "time averaging", which comes up frequently. The idea is that when you see someone again, after years have passed, it takes time for you to see them as they really are now, rather than trying to overlay how they looked before. This reflects the book's exploration of how long it can sometimes take to realise that the people who used to control you have lost that power.
I thought it was very good, to the extent that I'm rather baffled as to how, until now, I managed to completely miss the books of Jonathan Lethem, a literary author who loves Philip K. Dick, co-wrote six of the songs on one of my favourite albums and has frequently appeared in McSweeney's, my second favourite fiction magazine. To read a book and discover in it a new favourite author is always a wonderful feeling. Stephen Theaker ****
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