New Yorker Fiction Review #220: "The Starlet Apartments" by Jonathan Lethem

Review of a short story from the March 4, 2019 issue of The New Yorker...

Ever since I "released" myself from the burden of having to review every single short story in The New Yorker, my writing life has been much more expansive and relaxed. Now, I just review the short stories from the issues as they come in and as I have time. I find it's much more timely that way and, also, the project has some "meaning" to me again. It is no longer a self-imposed weight dragging me down. On to this highly-layered offering by Jonathan Lethem...

[Please refer to my other reviews of Jonathan Lethem stories for more detailed gushing about what an awesome writer JL is and how I actually met him once during grad school]

One measure of a piece of fiction, in my opinion, is how many levels the story "operates" on. By that measure, "The Starlet Apartments" is a pretty amazing piece of short fiction. There are other ways in which it could be said this story falls short; however, I firmly believe in judging these things by their individual merits -- what sticks out, what worked -- and not by some invisible, non-existent standard of what a short story should be.

In the story, two young men go to live in L.A. to try to make a name for themselves in the movie business. One man, Todbaum, is the smooth-talking, "idea-man" type with the charisma and requisite lack of self-awareness that will one day make him a successful Hollywood producer. The other (the main character) is Todbaum's friend, the writer, who, caught in Todbaum's wake, totters behind his more confident friend, doing the actual work of writing down the pair's ideas. One weekend, the main character's younger sister comes to visit and gets involved in a romantic tryst with Todbaum.

What is this story "about"? The genius of this story is that it touches on so many themes in such a short space, even sort of brushing alongside issues related to the sexual transgressions of the #metoo movement in Hollywood. Within the paragraphs of this story, Lethem touches on:

• The idea of "talent," what it takes to be successful, and how we each can thrive only be finding and being true to our sphere of talent and inspiration
• The trope of the charismatic, manipulative Hollywood producer, who has the ability to motive people simply through casting the world and his ideas in brighter, more fantastic, and yet believable, reachable terms
• The feeling of being "left-out" while others are involved in something you cannot and will not ever be a part of
• The relationships between siblings and how each one is different, and each one is somewhat the same
• The universal and bittersweet experience of growing up and the several different ways that process unfolds

A couple memorable lines from the story itself:

"This was before cell phones. The desolate spaciousness between humans, between human moments, not yet filled with chattering ghosts of reassurance. You could hear yourself not think."

**

"He transformed himself into one of the sacred monsters of that town, a packager known for wrangling talent and intellectual property into fertile conjunctions, for spooking money out of dim corners of the Pacific Rim and Eastern Europe....Todbaum made things happen. He made a few stars, too. He even made my own career."