Artifacts Only: On Jonathan Lethem's "Fear of Music"
What to make of a diminished format? More
135
“Every room I've lived in since I was given my own room at eleven was lined with, and usually overfull of, books. My employment in bookstores was always continuous with my private hours: shelving and alphabetizing, building shelves, and browsing — in my collection and others — in order to understand a small amount about the widest possible number of books. Such numbers of books are constantly acquired that constant culling is necessary; if I slouch in this discipline, the books erupt. I've also bricked myself in with music — vinyl records, then compact discs. My homes have been improbably information-dense, like capsules for survival of a nuclear war, or models of the interior of my own skull. That comparison — room as brain — is one I've often reached for in describing the rooms of others, but it began with the suspicion that I'd externalized my own brain, for anyone who cared to look.”
— Jonathan Lethem, The Disappointment Artist

"All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated." — Comics Code, 1954... More


"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." — Frank Zappa... More

"Mere flim-flam stories, and nothing but shams and lies." — Miguel de Cervantes... More

"Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television." —Woody Allen... More

"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." — F... More