In her latest review of the New York Times Book Review, Intern Alexis realizes that editor Sam Tanenhaus has hit puberty and, as such, the Review has morphed into an intolerably loquacious circle jerk starring Jonathan Lethem. When the normally manic Alexis requires prescription amphetamines just to read for another time that Nicole Krauss is Jonathan Safran Foer's wife, you know there's a problem. After the jump, she rides the snake.

Like an adolescent boy, The NYTBR is going through a bit of an awkward phase right now. Yes, since the October redesign it s started growing some hair down there, and yes, its voice has dropped a few octaves, and with all that comes the requisite voice cracking, the unsightly acne and the inevitable boner in a bathing suit.

This week s Review was one big boner in a bathing suit.

The NYTBR didn t know who it was and read a bit more like the London Review of Books than the semi-elite bookrag of the down and dirty Gotham City. We like our things highbrow, but you practically needed two PhDs to get through this fucking mess.

Por ejemplo:

K.
 By Roberto Calasso
Reviewed by Jonathan Lethem

Whenever a review opens with the words The first time I read Kafka we usually know we re headed for a real corker. Lethem strays from Brooklyn to talk about Kafka, Kafka-critic Robert Calasso, and Kafka-critic Jonathan Lethem. It turns out, that while Lethem is a brilliant novelist, he may be toooo brilliant of a critic. Toooo brilliant, it turns out, to have his name listed on the NYTBR cover; Lethem is noticeably uninvited to the fancy tea party that is Fareed Zakaria, Kathryn Harrison, Ted Conover, John Grisham and Budd Schulberg Oops! Your invitation totally must have got lost in the mail — maybe it fell into the water on its way over the Brooklyn Bridge?

Here s an example of two sentences that were so convoluted and filled to the brim with four-dollar-words that our poor little heads were hurting something awful. Try to get through this without vomiting. We dare ya!

The history of Kafka studies is one of proprietary sniping among claimants for existentialism, Judaism, antifascism and anti-Communism, between Freudians and anti-Freudians, deconstructionists and anti-deconstructionists, all taking place on ground struck by Brod and by Kafka's early translators into English, the Scots Willa and Edwin Muir. Brod and the Muirs, against whom every subsequent commentator has been obliged to react, preferred to see the writer's teasing nightmares of futility and paradox as a vast allegory of Man's attempted negotiation with an absconded and yet somehow menacing spiritual authority — call it God, if you like, though taking my college professor's hint, it often enough resembles Dad.

OMG, get this guy a copyeditor. Stat! But lest you forget that he came from the mean streetz of Boerum Hill, Lethem brings things down to the level of the people with this straight-from-the-hood line: But it also takes the top of your head off, like a line of cocaine. Is there more where that came from, Lethem? Less ontology and more smack, please!

Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt G del
 By Rebecca Goldstein
Reviewed by Polly Shulman

We re a big fan of the Big Questions. Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? Why do we always use the first person plural when we are just one person? Which is why we actually very much enjoyed Polly Shulman s review of Rebecca Goldstein s new book on the life of Kurt Godel. However, we usually read the NYTBR on Sundays. When we are hung over, sleepy and generally stupid. Thus, we were in no real state to handle this doozy:

"If he could prove that that was true, he figured, he would have found a statement that was true but not provable within the system, thus proving his theorem. His trick was to consider the statement's exact opposite, which says, ''That first statement — the one that boasted about not being provable within the system — is lying; it really is provable.'' Well, is that true? Here's where the Liar's Paradox shows its paces. If the second statement is true, then the first one is provable — and anything provable must be true. But remember what that statement said in the first place: that it can't be proved. It's true, and it's also false — impossible! That's a contradiction, which means G del's initial assumption — that the proposition was provable — is wrong. Therefore, he found a true statement that can't be proved within the formal system."

Oh boy. Hey, Lethem, pass the mirror, you ain't got nothing on this woman.

The History of Love
 By Nicole Krauss
Reviewed by Laura Miller

Our Lady Miller wastes no time and mentions Nicole Krauss s better-known husband, Jonathan Safran Foer, in the opening sentence of her review of Krauss s new novel. This is not so weird, given that everyone and their mother has been mentioning Jonathan Safran Foer in the opening sentences of their reviews of The History of Love. What is weird is this: Miller refers to Krauss as one of fiction s dutiful daughters. Okay, that s not that weird - kind of condescending, but not particularly odd. Here s where it gets wacky:

"She has written almost entirely under the influence of powerful literary fathers, an assemblage of canonical figures including (to list only those explicitly cited in The History of Love), Isaac Babel, Franz Kafka and Bruno Schulz. That the relatively young and untried Foer has joined them in her pantheon represents only a slight deviation from form."

After reading about Godel, we re feeling all mathy and shit and we used the transitive property to conclude that Laura Miller is suggesting that Jonathan Safran Foer is one of Krauss s powerful literary fathers. Okay, we know Miller s into the freaky stuff (remember when she compared book recommendations to sexual positions?), but this comparison is even too freaky for us.

Essay: We ll Map Manhattan
 by Randy Cohen

As we sat in our bedroom, which looks Northward onto East 3rd St., we reflected on how lucky we were to be living in a building with an even address and that our apartment is on the second to highest floor. The sound of the Avenue B bus echoed in our ears as we thought about Randy Cohen's idea to create a literary map of New York with the help of the NYTBR's readers, and how important it is to make a right and then another right when you exit the Duane Reade on B and 2nd. And then we fell asleep.