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Jonathan Lethem Biography

Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Allen Lethem (LEE-thum, born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels.

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Jonathan Lethem Quotes

Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another.

Nerd, Fans, Needy, Neurotic, Subject

Artists freeze themselves into these weird postures that are meant to be impressive and involving, then they fling them out into the world like Polaroids, and then they move on. And I'm stuck in this intense relationship to the Polaroid.

Artist, Artists, Freeze, Like, Moving, World

By removing the stories from the morass of things that surround us, I'm hoping to achieve some kind of purer approach to emotional life.

Emotional, Kind, Life, Purer, Stories

The less you offer, the more readers are forced to bring the world to life with their own visual imaginings. I personally hate an illustration of a character on a jacket of a book. I never want to have someone show me what the character really looks like - or what some artist has decided the character really looks like - because it always looks wrong to me. I realize that I prefer to kind of meet the text halfway and offer a lot of visual collaborations from my own imaginative response to the sentences.

Book, Bring, Character, Hate, Imaginings, Meet

I have no one to blame for the construction for myself, of course, but I'm always surprised and slightly sulky when I realizeВ people are buying the whole thing.

Blame, Buying, People, Slightly, Sulky

To the resentment that hides inside love, to the loneliness that hides among companions.

Companion, Companions, Hides, Loneliness, Love, Resentment

I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.

Areas, Authority, Certain, Deconstructor, Serials

I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.

Cafes, Human, Laptop, Laptops, Pretend, World

I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow I keep myself sane.

Arrow, Book, Keep, Moving, Write, Writing

One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.

Book, Books, Facts, People, Read, Things

I'm not too embarrassed to say I'm the definition of the target audience. This is my generation, the one of exalting music in album form.

Albums, Embarrassed, Generation, Generations, Music, Target Audience

What I'm constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language.

Communication, Forget, Ideally, Language, Medium, Writing

The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't changed. So memory is very available to me as I walk around.

Building, Changed, Memories, Past, Streets, Walk

I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.

Ipod, Ipods, Records, Song, Songs, Versions

There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.

Came, Halloween, Kids, Light, Looking, Pitched

Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

Everybody, Names, Shut, Shut Up, Someday

I’ve always been uninterested in boundaries or quarantines between tastes and types, between mediums and genres.

Boundaries, Genres, Quarantine, Taste, Tastes

When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed.

Artist, Hippie, People, Poor, Rights, White

There's never any percentage in being ahead of your time.

Ahead, Percentage, Percentages, Time

However appalling to consider, however tedious to enact, every novel requires furniture, whether it is to be named or unnamed, for the characters will be unable to remain in standing position for the duration of the story.

Character, Duration, Named, Position, Stories, Tedious

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