“The Crooked House”
by Jonathan Lethem
from the March 8, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
This week we get another sci-fi story from Jonathan Lethem. Last year he published The Arrest, a novel that explores society in a post-technology. I started it but didn’t get too far. I always want to really fall into a Lethem story, but something keeps me from fully getting on its wave length, though it isn’t anything I particularly dislike. I actually think the opening sentence to “The Crooked House,” this week’s story, is an example:
The week he met the man who claimed to have exited the house by falling downward into a desert valley, Mull decided to give up coffee.
I can’t quite put a finger on it, but this just doesn’t appeal to me. The tone is not one that appeals to me, even though I don’t find it unappealing. I feel like I’m supposed to be intrigued — because of the house, sure — but mostly because I’m supposed to wonder what any of that has to do with coffee. Because I really don’t care about the coffee on its own, and have no reason other than this introductory sentence that puts more focus on it than on this strange building that, we learn in the next paragraph, has “periodic shifts” that bring to mind Hogwarts, I feel this is setting me up for a revelation that will be more clever than insightful, and, therefore, a revelation that probably only has meaning because it was initially hidden. I could be wrong, of course, but it’s still a tone and style that doesn’t vibe with me.
Since I’m behind on my New Yorker reading — I still have Groff and Lahiri that are on my must read stack — I’m not sure when I’ll get to this one. Please comment below with your thoughts. I am likely guilty of not giving Lethem’s recent work enough time to work on me, and if so I’m very happy to hear it and to look inward.
You know, I should just jump in and read this one rather than speculate. I’m off to print the story and put it aside for some lunchtime reading. I’ll report as soon as I can in the comments below.
So I did jump into this over lunch and I’m glad I did. For one thing, about two-thirds into the story I was engaged and curious as to what was going on, and I liked the enigmatic ending (something I don’t entirely understand with just this fresh look under my belt).
What is going on with this building and what is going on with the people who seem to know what’s going on? I think I need to stop thinking of the house as an elaborate building destroyed by earthquakes and look deeper at the idea of it being a tesseract, something that is not hidden in the story.
Furthermore, in his interview with Cressida Leyshon, Lethem brings up Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story ” — And He Built a Crooked House — ” where there is a tesseract as a building. I have not read that story, and it seems like I might understand this story better by looking up the former.
Disorienting, not in its specs but in its mathy-ness. A concordance of imagery and oddballism. Murals of cruise ships, desert windows, people walking up deserted freeways, a car parked in Echo Park, sci-fi villain houses, academic lectures on urban removal, even the protagonist’s name of Mull (which in German means mold, mildew, or rot). “Have the trains quit running?” followed by “Maybe” seems to distill this story’s essence. Precarity as theme is an interesting realm for Lethem. It’s also seemingly an allegorical one, for the fall/collapse of the dominance of the straight white male and set in the US city perhaps most hostile to him. And it’s unclear if this is because his own status has lessened or the status of others has been elevated — “Did the building fall into the jail?” he asked them. “Or did the prisoners . . . escape?” The US as a whole and its fall from status also plays in here.
It’s a great way for art to comment on the issue of homelessness in the present of 2021 as well. Oblique and undidactic. A pomo sci-fi bit of immersive weirdness that eschews a lot of the self-serious of the speculative fiction and the dystopias of the moment.
Long time reader, first time commenter on mookseandgripes.com…I really enjoy this site and the New Yorker fiction discussions! Thank you!
I was completely with you Trevor regarding the opening sentence: “The week he met the man who claimed to have exited the house by falling downward into a desert valley, Mull decided to give up coffee.”
If this wasn’t Lethem, that weirdly convoluted opening sentence would certainly be met with repulsion by most any potential publisher. Personally, I would have preferred a more straightforward, “As it happened, it was the same week that he gave up coffee that he also met the man who claimed…” In any event, I read this one all the way through. Not to belabor the opening sentence, but perhaps this odd construction somehow mirrors the upside down nature of the story subject itself: Mull and this tesseract house!
I agree as well with Trevor that it seems perhaps Heinlein’s story (which I have not read) could lend greater appreciation to what Lethem was attempting here, and I found Lethem’s insights (in the NY’er Q&A) into the story and his motivations very intriguing; for example: “…I sometimes find it easiest to let certain realities express themselves in my thinking when I give them a surreal or allegorical expression.” The concept of creating an architectural “rabbit hole” in which to place the homeless as a “solution” to homelessness is certainly consistent with our society’s propensity to sweep things under the rug. This was exemplified when Mull visits James Gutiérrez in prison and that character states, “Human garbage disposal, I call it. Urban removal.” The ultimate merging of the prison and the homeless shelter speaks to this as well.
After a slow and somewhat confusing start, I enjoyed the story, and it certainly picked up suspense towards the end.
Hi Brian — so good to hear from you! Thanks for commenting, and here’s to more when you feel the urge :-)
I did look into the Heinlein story enough to get a copy, though I have not read it yet. I’m looking forward to it, though, and if I get to it soon will return and report here!
Thank you Trevor! Yes, looking now, I see it is even available for free online. I may read it now as well. I found Lethem’s recollections of the 1973 “Other Dimensions” anthology interesting as well, how he is still inspired by these sci-fi stories, that they in fact changed his life.
Please read Heinekens story. It will give you a better appreciation of Lethem’s. Lethem builds on Heinlein’s story and deepens it.
I feel like this would work best as an animation or some kind of film. The abstract geometry of the house was too hard to imagine (brings to mind Lovecraft’s haunted houses with uncanny ‘non-Euclidean angles’)