Tag: Jonathan Lethem

Writer’s Desk: How Does It End?

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

Jonathan Lethem does not write simple plots. Try diagramming what happens in, say, Chronic City or his Philip K. Dick homage Gun, with Occasional Music. Good luck!

So it’s not surprising that he says he figures out the ending first:

I usually live with the idea of a book for years, before I actually know what I have. To use a chess word, I spend a lot of time visualizing endgames. It’s in my head, this elaborated sense of what I want to have happen. But I’m sort of allergic to notes, diagrams. I don’t really put anything on the page. So if I were to die in the middle of any of these operations, it’d be like The Mystery of Edwin Drood—you’d have no idea what was meant to come next…

If your endgame is solid, everything else will follow.

Reader’s Corner: ‘Shake it Up’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, OmniculturalLeave a comment

As part of the Library of America’s attempt to reach beyond their authoritative bind-ups of great American writers, here comes Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z, edited by Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar.

It’s in stores now and a necessary addition to your bookshelf. My review is at PopMatters:

…stuffed with everyone from Robert Christgau to Nick Tosches and Nelson George, this anthology is like some steam-powered hurdy-gurdy of sound and vision. In these gnarled curlicues of theoretical musings, cool-handed thematic unpackings, freakout rave-ups, and widescreen snapshots of postwar America’s sonic landscapes, this is a book that will remind you of just about everything you love about music.

Reader’s Corner: Literary Death Match

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Nota Bene, OmniculturalLeave a comment

literarydeathmatch2

Ever thought the following, “Hmmm, books are awesome, but I just wish it could be a little bit more like The X-Factor“? Too bad, sucker: Simon Cowell doesn’t read!

That being said, there might be hope for your televisual/literary mashup dreams to come true soon. Adrian Todd Zuniga is the founder and host of an amazing-sounding series of events called Literary Death Match, where authors are pitted against each other in a highly snarky competition featuring judges like Moby, Susan Orlean, and Jonathan Lethem.

literary death match1Now The Daily Beast‘s Melissa Goldstein reports that Literary Death Match has filmed a couple of pilot episodes for a potential TV show:

…Lethem may have been the L.L. Bean sweater–wearing Adam Levine to Zuniga’s Carson Daly, and there may have been a boxing ring, but the script was a long way from The Voice. Following a recitation by the evening’s first challenger, Silverlake-based comedy writer and novelist DC Pierson read a piece titled “To All the Aliens Who Got Stranded on Earth But Never Found a Kid to Take Care of Them.” Lethem pronounced it to be “like Allen Ginsberg in its velocity,” and suggested that “if there was an intergalactic Ellis Island, you would be its Emma Lazarus.”

Coming (please, maybe?) to a Bravo-ish channel near you in the (never) future.

(hat-tip: The Roundup)