For the most part this is just a random grab bag of stuff that Lethem published in magazine previously, book prefaces, stuff dashed off for McSweeny's etc. Lethem's ideas and influences are dizzying, erudite, all over the place . . . while there are quite a few highlights (including interviews w...
Creado en 1975 por Steve Gerber y Mary Skrenes, Omega El Desconocido se convirtió en un personaje de culto de aquella década aunque sin el apoyo masivo para sostener la colección en el tiempo. Uno de sus lectores fue un joven llamado Jonathan Lethem, quien crecería para convertirse en uno de los ...
This Deep Focus series seems like it wants to be a movie counterpart to the ubiquitous 33&1/3 series of expert treatises on albums from the hipster canon, although maybe, hopefully, in a less Pitchfork-y Serious Person type critical register. Jonathan Lethem’s monograph (and it is a monograph) on...
I feel that it would be wise to make a distinction here. The first half of the book gets five stars. The second half, including the American Psycho-esque “Liner Notes,” gets three, tops.I found myself in disbelief as I progressed through the second half of the book. When I started, I was in love....
Is Jonathan Lethem a genius? A virtuoso? (to use the terms used ad naus. in The Loser) I think not. Is Motherless Brooklyn a work of genius? Also no. But that doesn't mean it isn't still awesome.Lethem's deconstruction of the detective novel is painfully obvious. He fashions his protagonis...
‘Humanity crushed once again’. ‘50 dead, 120 injured’. ‘Grave face of terror strikes again’. Familiar headlines scream through the pages of the newspapers each time a bomb goes off annihilating blameless lives. Through teeth gritting resilience, public outcry resonates through the deafened ears o...
In Jonathan Lethem’s home of Brooklyn, New York, on 5th Avenue, there lives a reassuringly odd, tough-looking store called Brooklyn Superhero Supply. Set, when I first saw it, along a row of graying or graffitied businesses, Superhero Supply (”Ever vigilant, ever true”) features “fully serviced c...
I'd give this two and a half stars if Goodreads would let me.I chose this in a far more hurried manner than usual. I was in the airport, knew I was likely to finish my book in flight, and knew I'd need something to get me through the rest of the trip. I dashed into the mini-Powell's at the airpor...
Virtual Reality with a Philosophical BentThis is a re-read of one of my favourite novels. I’ve rated it five stars both times, but the rating assumes that you have a philosophical bent. If you don’t, it might come across as hopelessly abstract and removed from any reality that you know.If you do ...
Jonathon Lethem’s second novel, Amnesia Moon, centres around a man named Chaos living in the post-apocalyptic town of Hatfork, Wyoming. The bombs have fallen, society has crumbled, the sky is tinted with radioactivity and the mutated townsfolk are reliant on a tyrant named Kellogg for their food....
"I envy your first encounter, if that is what it is, with "Meeting Evil, " one of Berger's most relentless and ingenious 'contraptions.'" --Jonathan Lethem, from the Introduction"Meeting Evil" tells an adrenaline-pumped, genuinely frightening tale of malevolence that swerves swiftly and irrevocab...
“The opening chapter defies description. Imagine one of those 1930s screwball comedies with the crazy situations, but substitute malevolence for humor.”—Karl Edward Wagner “Doctor, I’m losing my mind.” So begins John Franklin Bardin’s unconventional crime thriller in which a psychiatrist's attemp...
By the winner of the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Awards, this latest volume finds Theodore Sturgeon in fine form as he gains recognition for the first time as a literary short story writer. Written between 1957 and 1960, when Sturgeon and his family lived in both Amer...
To be quite honest, I'd never heard of this book before I went looking for NYRB titles to read. Another NYRB title I'd read earlier, Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter, also dealt with life in prison, but it examines the causes of why the main characters went to prison, what happened to them wh...
The boys slithered under their hands, delighted, impatient, eyes darting sideways. They nearly groaned with momentary pleasure. The four were going to the beach, so their bodies had to be sealed against the sun. The boys had never been there. The girl had, just once. She could barely remember. Th...
He discovered the outfit in a shop called, incredibly enough, the Marquis de Suede, where it hung inside a small annex of traditional costumes nearly overwhelmed by disco jumpsuits formed of parachute cloth and tiny leather shorts dripping with brass and aluminum hardware. His tie-dyed T-shirt, j...
Biller kept close tabs on all the vacancies there and said it was the best way. The intended result being that the dog would take him for granted, detect his traces on the floors and walls and in the bed and then unquestioningly settle in as a roommate. So Perkus spent the first night on the surp...
Neverbody vs. Edward DahlbergMy aunt Billie—Wilma Yeo (1918–1994) to her readers, to the world, to you—was among the first human beings I remember. Her Kansas City apartment is the site of one of my earliest, murkiest memories: seated on a carpet, I wept at seeing, on television, a depiction of a...