Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1068438 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
A funny post-apocalyptic road noir tale of Chaos, who lives in an abandoned projection booth at the Multiplex in Hatfork, Wyoming, and his journey to find the truth at the heart of his own American nightmare.

From Publishers Weekly
Lethem's post-apocalyptic vision reflects American culture as if in a funhouse mirror in this strong follow-up to Gun, with Occasional Music. Televangelists have become actual robots, dog food is the cuisine of choice and the soap operas star government figures?all making for a confusing world for Everett, aka Chaos, who lives in a movie-projection room in Wyoming, drinking a liquor "that amounted to rubbing alcohol." Fleeing his projection booth with Melinda, who's "covered with fine, silky hair from head to foot," Chaos discovers that he is a "dreamer," one whose dreams can remake reality. As Chaos and Melinda travel through the U.S., they find that, while each town has been affected differently by the mysterious source of the apocalypse, none can fill in their incomplete memories or answer their questions. Alighting in Vacaville, where everything is determined by "luck tests," Chaos and Melinda settle into family life with a woman and her two children. But figures from his past, including some who appear only under the influence of intravenously administered drugs, draw Chaos into discovering that past?and into making more active use of his dream powers. The author draws each stop on Chaos's journey with care, including a supremely decadent San Francisco and a Los Angeles overrun with aliens, bringing to life all the horror and confusion inherent in his future world. At its heart, this novel remains a simple story?the search for identity, the search for family?but Lethem uses it successfully as a springboard for both a commentary on American culture and a convincing portrait of his main character. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A young man named Chaos sets out on a journey across a shattered America to search for the truth that lies behind his fragmented dreams. From Hatfork, Wyoming, a desert town populated by genetic mutants, to the Strip, where perpetual fast food establishments exist in a cultural vacuum, Chaos begins to piece together a history of the breakdown of reality. The author of Gun, with Occasional Music (LJ 2/15/94) embues his second novel with a breathtaking vision of a world in flux. Lethem's prose is as flexible and memorable as the evocative story he tells. Most libraries will want this foray into speculative fiction for their sf collections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Perchance to ....
This book will convince you that insomnia isn't all that bad a thing.

Which is worse: a megalomaniac or someone pulling the strings who doesn't even know he's doing it? Lethem will have you scratching your head continuously as you try to figure out the meaning of this (pick a genre so long as "strange" is part of the description) book.

It seems the consensus of reviewers is that there is a weak ending. Add my vote to that tally. This is a weird book which is fine; but coupling it with a non-existent finish does a disservice to the reader.

Let your mind play with the ideas
This is a road story where the main character leaves his town in Wyoming to find his identity and answers to key questions that churn over & over in his mind. It all sounds straight ahead, simple, but there's been an apocalyptic event some indeterminate time ago that has changed the face of the USA; the town he's leaving is full of mutants; he leaves with one of them, a girl covered in fur; his dreams suggest that he's not who he thinks he is and others can see his dreams when they sleep nearby. The story hooked me early.

On their travels Chaos and the girl, Melinda, encounter widely different communities - aside from the mutant town, there's one encased in a green fog, another where government officials star in their own TV show and also police the community...all of which seem to be conjured by those in the community that have the ability to broadcast their dreams to the masses around them. Is Letham commenting on how people can be brainwashed and controlled by those with power? Some of the communities are cult-like, with inhabitants doing as they are told by their demi-god.

No-one seems clear on the nature of the "disaster" that led to this post-apocalyptic world or at what point in time it occurred. There is no shared reality on this point beyond acceptance that a disaster of some sort happened. This makes the book intriguing, especially in a time where we all accept that we're waging a "war on terror". Even if we can't define the scope of what that encompasses, we accept that it needs to be done. It is one shared reality in my world.

This book made me think about how we become communities, how we arrive at shared values, how we are governed/controlled, the power of "group-think" & how much we are prepared to accept at face-value without questioning. The story may seem slight, more novella than novel, but it's thought-provoking if you let your mind play with the ideas.

Lathe of Leaven
In 1971, Ursula Le Guin wrote the short novel, _Lathe of Heaven_ in which George Orr's "effective dreaming" tranforms reality in just the arational way you'd expect from the subconscious. Le Guin's novel ends with "the break," an event that changes reality in contradictory and chaotic ways. In both content and form, Lethem's novel feels like a sequel to that novel. Chaos, Everett, Moon--whatever name you go by--lives in a world permanently and madly altered by effective dreaming. The difference is that the talent was unique in _Lathe of Heaven_. In _Amnesia Moon_ dreaming transforms reality locally, producing overlapping and confusing realities. In this case, the aftermath proves less interesting than an inciting incident deep in the background of the Lethem's novel. Though ably written, _Amnesia Moon_ is ultimately less satisfying than Le Guin's work, a less exciting and less interesting continuation. By itself, the novel is compelling enough, but juxtaposed with Le Guin, it seems mere fluff.