Episode 618: Jonathan Lethem

On today's 14th Anniversary episode, I talk to MacArthur Genius Grant-winning author Jonathan Lethem. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Jonathan at first thought he was going to be a visual artist until some existential realizations about class and art in college in the early 1980s left him disillusioned. He dropped out, hitchhiked to California and started writing while he worked as a clerk in used bookstores. In 1994, Harcourt Brace published his first novel Gun, with Occasional Music, and since then he's written a dozen more - just a sampling: Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, Chronic City, The Feral Detective - as well as a number of short story collections, and this is just scratching the surface. Currently Jonathan is the Roy Edward Disney Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Pomona College, and his most recent book, Brooklyn Crime Novel, was published last October by HarperCollins, and like everything else Jonathan writes, it is great! This is the website for Beginnings, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, follow me on Twitter. Check out my free philosophy Substack where I write essays every couple months here and my old casiopop band's lost album here! And the comedy podcast I do with my wife Naomi Couples Therapy can be found here!