Jonathan Lethem tackles his familiar turf in Brooklyn and Manhattan once
again in Dissident Gardens, however rather than focus on an
individual, not matter how quirky, in this novel, Lethem looks at Rose
Angrush Zimmer, a Communist living in Brooklyn and follows her extended
family through the decades as they try, in their own ways and with varying
success, to make the world a better place for everyone.
The novel opens in the years after Rose's husband, Albert, has left her
for his first love, the Communist Party, which has sent him to work as a spy
in Nazi Germany. While Albert has been increasing his importance in
making the world safe for Communism, Rose has been rising in the Brooklyn
Communist Party, raising he daughter, Miriam, and having affairs, including
a brief one with Community Party leader Sol Eaglin and a more
permanent one with married, black, Republican New York City police officer
Douglas Lookins. Possibly as a result of the end of their affair, Sol drums
Rose out of the Community Party, but Rose's self image is so tied up with
Communism, that she maintains her allegiance to the cause, even as the
forties turn into the fifties and McCarthyism.
Lethem branches out, exploring how other characters, all tied to Rose,
try to improve the world, often by joining movements. Rose's daughter,
Miriam, uses her left wing credentials as a Communists daughter to get in
with the folk singing crowd of Greenwich Village, most notably Tommy Gogan,
whom she marries. Rather than trying to build a better world through
overtly political activity, the two work through music, created and
promoting a song cycle based on the homeless of New York's Bowery.
Miriam and Tommy's son, Sergius, who is friend's with Rose's lover's son,
Cicero Lookins, tries to make sense of the world, listening to Cicero's
lectures at a small college in Maine and getting involved with the Occupy
Movement, as ineffectual as the great movements which occupied his mother
and grandmother.
Lethem also delves into Rose's nephew, Lenin Angrush's activities
which are more self-aggrandizing, and Miriam's estranged father, who has
created a new family and life for himself in post-war East Germany.
Dissident Gardens is a novel of characters and themes rather than
of plot. While it is more obvious for some of the characters, like
Sergius or Lenny, none of the characters are really moving towards any goal
or denouement. Instead, Lethem builds their lives, characters, and
relationships through a series of vignettes, shining a light on episodes of
their lives, whether it is Tommy Gogan's decision to leave his brothers'
folk act and tie his fate to Miriam or Albert Zimmer trying to regain
admittance into a life he left decades earlier, these vignettes shine show
the striving, and often futility, of the lives of those associated with Rose
even as they try to build a better tomorrow. Through all their failed
political and social activity, Rose's clan maintains hope that somewhere
down the line there is a utopia that they are helping to build.
Just as Lethem has demonstrated his ability to bring to life the New York
of the 70s and 80s when he was growing up, he now shows that he has an equal
grasp on the recent history of Manhattan and Brooklyn (as well as Queens).
The metropolis forms another character, just as aimless as any who know Rose
Zimmer, but allowing itself to be touched and changed by them, even if only
in miniscule and temporary ways.
