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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...
Molly Antopol teaches writing at Stanford University, where she was a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow. A recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 award, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives in ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Dissident Gardens
Try:
The UnAmericans
by Molly Antopol
Anne Applebaum was born in 1964, and was educated at Sidwell Friends School before earning a BA at Yale. Anne went on to earn a Masters Degree at the London School of Economics, before moving to Warsaw, Poland in 1988 as a ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Dissident Gardens
Try:
Iron Curtain
by Anne Applebaum
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