This article proceeds from the observation that all of Lethem's novels subvert traditional genres in some way, and argues that the way genres mutate or evolve reflects one of his central ethical concerns – evolution itself. Many of the characters in Gun, with Occasional Music (1994) are “evolved animals” that have undergone “evolution therapy” and can now talk, walk upright, and carry weapons. As the narrator Metcalf observes, these animals are characteristically reluctant to acknowledge their animal lineage. Here one sees evolution's contradiction: it purports to be progress, but is also a melancholic forgetting of origins. In a world where a drug called Forgettol abstracts people from their own memories, it is the detective's job, though he is despised for it, to continue asking questions and remind people of shared culpability and connected narratives. Metcalf, this paper suggests, is engaged in a struggle to maintain the novel as detective fiction, to resist the encroaching sci-fi elements which symbolize the death of community through increasing dependence on an unethical science of forgetting. Amnesia Moon (1995) depicts a postapocalyptic America in which the typical “evolutionary” reaction to the unspecified catastrophe is a retreat into a blinkered regionalism which, like Forgettol or evolution therapy, encourages the individual to forget any sense of wider responsibility. The article concludes with reflections on literary influence and the evolution of Lethem's own work in subsequent novels.
Jam Sessions
