Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He currently teaches creative writing at Pomona College in California.
Jonathan Lethem's website
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You're going on an extensive
reading tour for FORTRESS. What's it like talking about Brooklyn outside of New
York?
As a regional writer, which is what I am lately, I'm incredibly lucky: my
region is an archetype that the rest of the country, and indeed the world, cares
about. Brooklyn's been etched into the cultural consciousness of most readers
(and moviegoers), so I don't feel like I meet a lot of resistance in putting the
material across elsewhere. And just about everyone I meet claims to have a
distant uncle or cousin living in Brooklyn, not that they ever call or visit.
The book is packed with such rich detail: on the prison system, comic
books, the music industry. How much research was necessary on these subjects?
I did a lot of research, more than I'd ever done for any other book by far.
More than I'd ever done in school, in fact, I learned the pleasure of study for
the first time these last five year, which is to say, quite late. Of course,
much of what I was studying was my own life, the life of my city as I'd known
it, the culture which surrounded me like an ocean surrounds a fish and about
which I felt so much already, even if I understood very little. I had to go back...
You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think.
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