The Disappointment Artist and other essays - Softcover

Lethem, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571227740 ISBN 13: 9780571227747

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2005

Synopsis

A mixture of personal memory and cultural commentary, The Disappointment Artist offers a series of windows onto the collisions of art, landscape, and personal history that formed Jonathan Lethem's richly imaginative perspective on life at the end of the twentieth century.

Lethem illuminates the process by which a child invents himself as a writer, and as a human being, through a series of approaches to the culture around him. In the title piece, a letter from his aunt (a children's book author) spurs a meditation on the value of writing workshops, the role and influence of reviews, and the uncomfortable fraternity of writers. In 'Defending The Searchers', Lethem explains how a passion for the classic John Wayne Western became occasion for a series of minor humiliations. In 'Identifying with Your Parents', an excavation of childhood love for superhero comics expands to cover a whole range of nostalgia for a previous generation's cultural artefacts. And '13/1977/21', which begins by recounting the summer he saw Star Wars twenty-one times, 'slipping past ushers who'd begun to recognize me...', becomes a meditation on the sorrow and solace of the solitary moviegoer.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Lethem was born in New York and attended Bennington College.

He is the author of seven novels including Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which was named Novel of the Year by Esquire and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award, as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger.

He has also written two short story collections, a novella and a collection of essays, edited The Vintage Book of Amnesia, guest-edited The Year's Best Music Writing 2002, and was the founding fiction editor of Fence magazine.

His writings have appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeney's and many other periodicals.

He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571227740
• ISBN 13: 9780571227747
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160