Writing about subcultures in a mainstream form is difficult. If you’re writing non-fiction, the difficulty comes from striking a balance between authoritative and accessible. Err too much on the side of the former, and your piece will sound too “inside.” Err on the latter and you’re likely to dumb down a subject so much that you fail to capture what makes it interesting in the first place. Either way, the end result is the same: the reader is left uninformed.

Setting a novel inside a subculture carries the same risks. I’ve been as bored as anybody when reading Tom Clancy’s interminable descriptions of the insides of naval warships in between Jack Ryan’s derring-do. On the other hand, when I reached the end of Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet, I wondered why he bothered to make the L.A. arts and music scene the backdrop of his novel, if he had so little to say about it.

Love Me is the story of an L.A. band whose inter-romantic difficulties are matched only by its inert career, until its bassist Lucinda, holding down a side job answering phones on a complaint line, brings the group’s troubled genius songwriter some lyrics culled from the calls she receives from an anonymous loser she dubs The Complainer. His turns of phrase become the basis for both the band’s new direction, and Lucinda’s erotic obsession with her caller, whom she eventually meets and shares a torrid days-long, booze-soaked love affair in advance of the band’s first gig.

Lethem is aiming for a modern satire here, but it’s a jab that feels dated by about 20 years, as he neither understands the world he’s describing nor his characters. The band’s first show is initially to be a silent one, where the group will only mime a performance at a party that doubles as an art installation. The party guests rebel and the band gives a bravura performance, which leads to encounters with a legendary ex-hippie DJ, an would-be Svengali manager and Lucinda’s slothful, romantic partner, who’s expectedly talentless but still insists on joining the band, due to his lyrical contributions. Just what the world needs: Yoko jokes mixed with riffs on Andy Warhol’s Factory.

The story isn’t without interesting details, like the armpit-sniffing culture reporter, the zookeeper guitarist who kidnaps a kangaroo who’s in the midst of a depressive episode, or the drummer’s employment at a place called No Shame, which is described as a “masturbation boutique.” But Lethem never really explores the flair of these side stories. We never find out what differentiates No Shame from the average porn shop, for instance, thereby missing an opportunity for some genuine satire on the smarter set’s tendency to dress up low culture in high fashion before reveling in its enjoyment.

While understanding that art subcultures – particularly music – are both fluid and transient, Lethem doesn’t realize that the people within them are not. Rather than craft arcs for the band members, Lethem’s characterizations double back on themselves, contradicting everything we’ve been told about them. Too consumed with the questions of how art is created within a flurry of influences, the novel fails to give us a sense of the character’s own motivations, making them nothing more than sketch pads for Lethem’s ideas, full of scratch-outs and scribbled side notes. It’s also a bit disconcerting that even the best-written female characters in the book – particularly the hard-nosed zoo administrator Dr. Marian – are shown to be mere putty in hands of The Complainer, due to his seductive, but slovenly, gaze.

Lethem is a writer of impressive ideas and skill; my experience with Love Me won’t deter my desire to read his celebrated novels Motherless Brooklyn or Fortress of Solitude. But it’s worth nothing that his plan to give away the movie rights to Love Me says far more about the issues of copyright and ownership and art than the book does.

I’ve seen and heard about the “52 Books in 52 Weeks” meme, and marveled that anyone could read that many books in a year, even though I’m a huge fan of reading literature and non-fiction. Between reading blogs, devouring new issues of The Economist, and listening to podcasts, the amount of free time I have for reading books often falls by the wayside so 52 in a year would be impossible. If I added in comic books, though…

I’ve decided to make more of an effort this year to hear that delicious sound of a newly cracked book spine, and will be blogging about it to keep myself on track. But my goal is modest, hence “25 in 12.”

The first book I read was one I’ve been meaning to pick up for a while, and it was this month’s Gaper’s Block Book Club selection. I was unable to make the actual discussion, but I’m not sure that it interfered with my appreciation of the book. Because I think for any Chicagoan, Alex Kotlowitz’s Never A City So Real feels like a very personal look at his or her city, whether they see themselves in it or not.

Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, and by extension a city of persons (not people, but persons). It’s (we’re?) a city that’s often derided – even shamed – for corruption that silences the voices of individuals in favor of the groups that wield power in both the city and county. Despite their efforts, a walk around the city still reveals the power of the individual in shaping the city as a whole, and Never A City So Real is part of a series of books that explores just that.

Kotlowitz references the great Chicago chroniclers like Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren and Carl Sandburg – both directly, and in the stories he tells. The most direct line can be drawn from Terkel’s Division Street: America. Like Division Street, the story of the city is told here by those affected by the actions of the larger forces at work in the city. But unlike Division Street‘s arms-length storytelling, Never A City So Real shows us Chicago through Kotlowitz’s friends and acquaintances, whether it’s the owner of a diner that begrudgingly serves as a way station for migrant workers, a lawyer who describes her job at 26th and California in terms usually reserved for those that speak of their work as “a calling,” or the former union steelworker who takes his students on field trips through the forgotten parts of a once vibrant industry.

The one quibble I have with Never A City So Real is that it doesn’t stop to tell the story of the Chicago transplant, which is as much a legitimate part of the city’s history as the stories of its natives. Kotlowitz himself says at the beginning of the book that when he arrived here, he planned to stay for only two years, which turned into 20-plus. Chicago hosts plenty of temporary residents who see the city as a way station to somewhere else or as a place to carve out an identity before moving onto another life. But there are also many who move here and find it to be home. Why does that happen? What is it about this city that allows people to thrive? Why is it a city that’s often the right mix of comfort and challenge? I have my own theories, but it’s a story that ought to be told from more than one viewpoint, just like the story Kotlowitz tells here.

Kotlowitz plays to his strengths here, as he’s a storyteller who’s been on the front lines of the toughest parts of the city; his earlier, indispensable book There Are No Children Here offers a similar, sadder tour of the city’s forgotten areas. Throughout his works, we find a central theme, and that is this:

This is a city of fighters. Some of us fight silent battles, while others of us use whatever means at our disposal – our voices, our connections, our jobs, our keyboards – to rise above the din and carve out a niche that feels like home as we offer a counterargument to the conventional wisdom. It’s expected that you will meet people who challenge your point of view, while embracing your challenge all the same. The Chicago motto is “Urbs in horto” or “City In A Garden”, but I think we’d be better served with “In Varietas, Civitas”: “In Differences, Community.” *

* I never took Latin, so if that’s an inelegant translation, blame the Internet.