Interview

Jonathan Lethem talks about his book, The Fortress of Solitude, Brooklyn and how much the book mirrors his own experiences.

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...