Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem is the author of eight novels, the most recent of which is Chronic City, and a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc., from which the above essay is taken, is published by Doubleday.

Anthony Burgess Answers Two Questions

THIS WAS 1985 — not the Anthony Burgess novel, the year (Anthony Burgess wrote so many books you might have to make that specification about a number of words or phrases — “On going to bed, I read ninety-nine novels &...

JONATHAN LETHEM

My Disappointment Critic

I hadn’t realized until Wood was off my pedestal that I’d built one. That I’d sunk stock in the myth of a great critic....

JONATHAN LETHEM

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Mailer's false accents — Texas, Patrician, boxer-tough — are like Orson Welles's false noses....

JONATHAN LETHEM