Présentation de l'éditeur
From the incomparable Jonathan Lethem, a raucous romantic farce that explores the paradoxes of love and art Lucinda Hoekke spends eight hours a day at the Complaint Line, listening to anonymous callers air their random grievances. Most of the time, the work is excruciatingly tedious. But one frequent caller, who insists on speaking only to Lucinda, captivates her with his off-color ruminations and opaque self-reflections. In blatant defiance of the rules, Lucinda and the Complainer arrange a face-to-face meeting—and fall desperately in love.Consumed by passion, Lucinda manages only to tear herself away from the Complainer to practice with the alternative band in which she plays bass. The lead singer of the band is Matthew, a confused young man who works at the zoo and has kidnapped a kangaroo to save it from ennui. Denise, the drummer, works at No Shame, a masturbation boutique. The band’s talented lyricist, Bedwin, conflicted about the group’s as-yet-nonexistent fame, is suffering from writer’s block. Hoping to recharge the band’s creative energy, Lucinda “suggests” some of the Complainer’s philosophical musings to Bedwin. When Bedwin transforms them into brilliant songs, the band gets its big break, including an invitation to appear on L.A.’s premiere alternative radio show. The only problem is the Complainer. He insists on joining the band, with disastrous consequences for all.Brimming with satire and sex, You Don’t Love Me Yet is a funny and affectionate send-up of the alternative band scene, the city of Los Angeles, and the entire genre of romantic comedy, but remains unmistakably the work of the inimitable Jonathan Lethem.
Extrait
one
They met at the museum to end it. There, wandering through high barren rooms full of conceptual art, alone on a Thursday afternoon, Lucinda Hoekke and Matthew Plangent felt certain they wouldn’t be tempted to do more than talk. Too, driving into the canyon of vacated plazas of downtown Los Angeles felt suitably solemn and irrevocable. The plan was not to sever as friends, or as bandmates, only as lovers.
Lucinda saw him first. A tall, malnourished vegetarian, Matthew was obliviously handsome, lead–singer handsome. He was dressed as for his work at the zoo and for the band’s practices, in black turtleneck, jeans, and speckless suede work boots, which Lucinda knew he kept in his locker when he entered the animals’ habitats. Matthew had presumably been excused from his veterinary nursing duties for the afternoon, or possibly it was his day off. For the past four years Lucinda had been assembling espresso drinks and clearing dishes at the Coffee Chairs, but she’d quit her job the day before, part of the same program of change that included this final rupture with Matthew. Instead, to pay her rent Lucinda had agreed to work for her friend, Falmouth Strand, in his storefront gallery.
On her way into the museum Lucinda had paused at two heroic pillars of neon, mounted on either side of a doorway, and seen only versions of herself and Matthew: discrete, sealed, radiant. Now, sighting Matthew, she felt her senses quicken, her balance shifting to her toes. He squinted warily at a television monitor on a white pediment, some sort of video art. Perhaps it was the case that for him, as for her, everything in the museum had been reduced to an allegory of their dilemma.Exhausted by the old tug of his beauty, his scruffy intensity and lean limbs, Lucinda was ready to send Matthew and his allure out voyaging elsewhere.
She joined silently to his side, the tiny hairs of their arms bristling together electrically. The two wandered like zombies through the exhibition, hesitating for a long while at a pair of basketballs floating perfectly suspended at midpoint in a glass water tank.
“The thing is we’ve done this so much before we’re too good at it.”
Matthew’s gaze remained fixed on the tank. “You mean there’s nothing to say.”
“Yes, but also we don't believe it’s real bec
