Lethem's mostly playing here, and that's fine by me. I'm not sure this adds up to all that much, but it was a perfectly diverting audiobook. The surgery scenes, the backgammon scenes, the flipping sliders scenes--they all work. But in the end we're left with not so much. Alexander Bruno--the "psychic" and busted backgammon gambling protagonist--is the blot, the exposed checker in a gammon game awaiting the hammer, and it comes from most directions. He imagines control over his life (like he largely imagines his psychic powers), but the truth is that he floats about, blown by the spitty wind of wealthy men whose motives range from financial exploitation to petty revenge and oneupmanship.

By novel's end, he's had his face ripped off and incited a riot in Berkeley, but he doesn't seem to have learned much on the journey. He snags a clutch of Dude "Abide" shirts on the way and, again, imagines himself as a mysterious zen-like figure, but the truth is he's still a blot, less abiding than bidden.

The novel ends on an up note--Bruno in control at the poker table, wielding his psychic powers to bilk a dim-witted American who unironically dubs himself "The Titanic"--but the reader sees through the "win". That's just Bruno being Bruno, getting swatted about by the wealthy exploiters who have been moving him about the board at whim, covering him or leaving him exposed as the dice dictate, unperturbed by any of the very real dangers he might face.

And here we perhaps are at a common Lethem theme. The rich eat; the rest get eaten. The theme seems to take the novel over, discarding several other potential avenues. I'm not certain that this is the best arrangement to explore the theme, but it's a theme Lethem can rarely ignore.

I really wanted to like this book. It had so much going for it, from my perspective: the author, much of the setting (Berkeley, CA), and the subject matter (backgammon, of all things, my favorite game). Unfortunately, it just didn't work for me. After what I thought was a stellar beginning, the book just dragged. There were characters I didn't care about, local Berkeley politics that might have seemed relevant and daring in the 1970s, and just an overall malaise that I couldn't get past. I finished it, but didn't get much out of it.

Trying to explain what happens in this book would be nearly impossible, so I'll just say this: it's James Bond meets Kafka meets Kurt Vonnegut. Like all of Lethem's others it's often clever, occasionally impenetrable, and always utterly weird. Anybody who likes their fiction with a dark sense of humor and an absurdist philosophical twist will likely get great enjoyment out of this one; I certainly did.

Why does Lethem love burgers so much?

I love his books. This one just doesn't work for me.

This book showed some signs of being intriguing at the beginning, and never followed through. Lethem still sets scenes well and puts words together in a satisfying way. But I just never felt like this one ended up going much of anywhere.

This book didn't really manage to hold my attention, and at times I found it downright irritating (e.g. is his treatment of every female character meant to be ironic? If so I don't think he carries it off, and if not... yikes). Although I loved Motherless Brooklyn, I couldn't really get through Fortress of Solitude either... it's possible I'm just not much of a Lethem fan after all.

full review and puppy love here: http://www.shelfstalker.net/blog/a-gamblers-anatomy-jonathan-lethem

While backgammoning abroad in Singapore, Alexander Bruno meets an old childhood friend, Stolarsky, who has mysteriously become a real estate mogul in their hometown of Berkeley.

After their encounter, things go awry for Alexander in Berlin, when he passes out during a game with a client. He wakes up in the hospital and his situation is serious. The “blot” that has been growing to occlude his vision is actually a tumor behind his nose and eyes and it is inoperable, at least for the German doctors.

Blot is used as an interesting double entendre, as this is also a backgammon term for a checker left alone on a point and therefore vulnerable to being hit.

But there is a guy, a crazy hippy doctor in California (of all places), who specializes in such tumor removal. Perhaps Alexander could return stateside? Penniless, he has no one to call except Stolarsky, who promptly books him a ticket home.

From the beginning, an anti-hero like Alexander is, of course, destined to return to his hometown to confront the reason why he left there, his old friend (however indirectly), his general issues with social life, himself, and of course, his tumor. He should probably get that looked at.

In true Lethem fashion, all that is not really what this book is about, though. Which is not to say that it isn’t important, or that it doesn’t play in metaphorically, thematically, or otherwise.

In backgammon, the board always starts out with the same placement, but the checkers can end up in wildly different positions all depending on the roll of the dice. It’s random chance, but it’s also how you decide to use your chance. What moves are available to you on the board and what strategy you are using. And one single roll can alter the luck of the entire board!

Really, it’s all a big metaphor for life and in this book, Alexander’s life has just turned into one losing game of backgammon after another.

overall unsure of what this book was about

What a weird book. It took me a long time to finish, and I really did not enjoy it.