You may have encountered Perkus Tooth, the scruffy,
oh-so-New-York 1970s saurian “employee” of the
Criterion Collection before in THE BOOK OF OTHER PEOPLE, a
collection of character sketches edited by Zadie Smith. In that
sketch, we met Perkus through the wide eyes of a narrator
practically infatuated by his peculiarity. We see that he’s a
peculiar character, a relic of a bohemianism now more fetishized
than believed in, and that the narrator very much wants to be part
of his life, but that’s about it.

CHRONIC CITY gives a fuller introduction to Perkus and the
forces that draw our narrator, Chase Insteadman, to him. Chase is a
child actor, now wealthy, whose only current claim to fame is his
supposed romantic devotion to Janice Trumbull, an astronaut trapped
on a space station (presumably indefinitely due to some medical
condition). Chase seems to have more time and money than he knows
what to do with, and, having little actual devotion to his beloved,
he spends his time making sweeping (though often quite gorgeous)
pronouncements about himself and the world around him. Take, for
example, the following: “I have trouble believing anything
exists until I know it bodily.” For all the pretension in it,
there’s earnestness to Perkus’s speech that undercuts
the lazy bohemian fog around him, making his attraction to Perkus
all the more imperative to his life.

Chase discovers Perkus on a visit to the Criterion Collection
office regarding a film he worked on. Perkus only wears suits. He
looks 70, but is actually much younger. During the 1970s, he was a
major bohemian figure, an underground conceptualist artist who
ranted around town on construction sites, inspiring followings in
New York’s art and grad school alt-intelligentsia. Forty
years later, he has not left the ’70s and barely manages to
eek out a living, never leaving his apartment except to eat greasy
cheeseburgers. Chase is drawn to Perkus in something bordering on
obsession. Forgive me if I quote at length, but Lethem’s best
passages are golden soliloquies:

I wanted this selfishly, for, it dawned on me then, Perkus Tooth
--- his talk, his apartment, the space that had opened beginning
when I’d run into him at Criterion, then called him on the
telephone --- was my ellipsis. It might not be inborn in
me, but I’d discovered it nonetheless in him. Where Perkus
took me, in his ranting, his enthusiasms, in his abrupt, improbable
asides, was the world inside the world. I didn’t want him
smothered in the tomb-world of migraine. Perkus was the opposite of
my distant astronaut fiancée --- my caring for him could
matter on a daily basis.

Chase and Perkus suffer from a longing they can’t quite
identify. Much of the novel is devoted to Chase’s mostly
misguided attempts to fulfill those ineffable desires. But the plot
isn’t what shines here; Chase and Perkus, as engaging
characters as they may be, aren’t the most interesting
feature here. That honor is reserved for the setting itself as
Lethem’s narration is in many ways one giant poem to
Manhattan. The city is a fractal of endless original complexity,
spoken with a sense of awe and reverence usually reserved for the
ancient, catacomb-like city of London. Again, apologies for the
quote at length, but Lethem can turn quite a phrase:

To live in Manhattan is to be persistently amazed at the worlds
squirreled inside one another, the chaotic intricacy with which
realms interleave, like those lines of television cable and fresh
water and steam heat and outgoing sewage and telephone wire and
whatever else which cohabit the same intestinal holes that
pavement-demolishing workmen periodically wrench open to the
daylight and to our passing, disturbed glances. We only pretend to
live on something as orderly as a grid.

The city stars as a landscape, a prison, a playpen, a realm of
dashed dreams, and a psychedelic vision. It’s a microcosm of
human existence and a bizarre exception to all normal rules of
life. If all this sounds like excessive aggrandizing, note that
Lethem familiarizes readers well. Natives and never-beens alike
will gain an insight into Lethem’s passionate, peculiar
rendering of this ever-enigmatic city and the people who live in
it.