Jonathan Lethem facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Quick facts for kids Jonathan Lethem
Lethem at the 2023 Texas Book Festival
Born	Jonathan Allen Lethem (1964-02-19) February 19, 1964 (age 61) New York City, U.S.
Pen name	Harry Conklin
Occupation	Novelist essayist short story writer
Period	1989–present
Notable works	Motherless Brooklyn (1999) The Fortress of Solitude (2003)
Notable awards	National Book Critics Circle Award, World Fantasy Award
Spouse	Shelley Jackson (1987–1997) Julia Rosenberg (2000–2002) Amy Barrett
Children	2

Jonathan Allen Lethem (born February 19, 1964) is an American writer. He writes novels, essays, and short stories.

His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, came out in 1994. It was a mix of science fiction and detective fiction. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn. This book won an award and became very popular.

In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a best-seller. In 2005, he received a special award called a MacArthur Fellowship. Since 2011, he has taught creative writing at Pomona College.

Early life
Career
Personal life
Images for kids
See also

Early life

Jonathan Lethem was born in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, Judith Frank Lethem, was involved in social causes. His father, Richard Brown Lethem, was a painter who liked to try new and unusual art styles. Jonathan was the oldest of three children.

His family lived in a shared living space called a commune in Brooklyn. This was before the area became more expensive and developed. He grew up in the Gowanus neighborhood, which is now called Boerum Hill.

Lethem's fourth-grade teacher was Carmen Fariña, who later became a top official for New York City schools. He called her the "perfect" teacher and dedicated his first novel to her.

Even though there were some tough times, he described his childhood as exciting and full of culture. He learned a lot about Bob Dylan's music. He watched the movie Star Wars twenty-one times when it first came out. He also read all the books by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.

His parents divorced when he was young. When he was thirteen, his mother died. He has said this event deeply affected him and his writing. He explained that his books often have something important missing, like language, a person, or a memory.

Lethem first wanted to be an artist like his father. He went to the High School of Music & Art in New York. There, he painted and created his own magazine called The Literary Exchange. He also made animated films and wrote a 125-page novel that was never published.

In 1982, Lethem started college at Bennington College in Vermont to study art. He soon realized he was more interested in writing than art. He also became more aware of differences in wealth and privilege. He left college during his second year.

In 1984, he traveled across the country by hitchhiking from Denver, Colorado, to Berkeley, California. He described this trip as one of the most memorable things he ever did.

Lethem lived in California for twelve years. He worked in used bookstores and wrote in his free time. He published his first short story in 1989 and continued writing more in the early 1990s.

Career

First novels

Lethem in Brooklyn

Lethem's first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, came out in 1994. It combined science fiction with detective stories. It even featured talking kangaroos and prisons where people were frozen.

The book didn't get much attention at first. But a great review in Newsweek magazine made it very popular. Gun, with Occasional Music was nominated for the 1994 Nebula Award. It also won "Best First Novel" in a reader's poll by Locus Magazine. A film producer bought the movie rights, which allowed Lethem to stop working in bookstores and focus on writing.

His next book was Amnesia Moon (1995). This novel was partly inspired by his cross-country hitchhiking trip. It tells a story about a journey through a world after a big disaster, where things are not always what they seem.

After publishing many of his early short stories in a collection called The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye (1996), Lethem published his third novel, As She Climbed Across the Table (1997).

In 1996, Lethem moved back to Brooklyn from California. His next book, Girl in Landscape, was published after his return. In this novel, a young girl goes through puberty while dealing with a strange new world filled with aliens. Lethem said the book was inspired by the 1956 John Wayne movie The Searchers.

Mainstream success and "genre bending"

Lethem reading at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival

The first novel Lethem started after moving back to New York City was Motherless Brooklyn. This book returned to the detective story style. It explored how a character with a unique way of thinking sees the world.

When Motherless Brooklyn was published in 1999, it won several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. It was also named book of the year by Esquire magazine. In 1999, actor Edward Norton announced he planned to make a movie based on the novel. Norton's film was released in 2019.

The New York Times said that the success of Motherless Brooklyn made Lethem a well-known writer. People often called him a "genre bender." This meant he was good at mixing different types of stories, like detective fiction, science fiction, and stories about his own life. Lethem said he learned to mix genres from his father's art, which often combined real and imagined things.

In 2003, Lethem talked about "genre bending." He said that talking about different categories of books, like "high" (serious literature) and "low" (popular fiction), often stops people from discussing what they truly like about books. He prefers to focus on the stories, characters, and sentences inside the books themselves.

In the early 2000s, Lethem published a collection of stories, edited two other book collections, and wrote articles for magazines. He also published a short novel called This Shape We're In (2000).

In November 2000, Lethem mentioned he was working on a "big, sprawling" novel about a child who grows up to be a rock music journalist. This novel, The Fortress of Solitude, was published in 2003. It's a semi-autobiographical story about growing up in Brooklyn in the late 1970s. It features two friends from different backgrounds who live on the same block. The New York Times named it one of the best books of the year.

Lethem's second collection of short stories, Men and Cartoons, came out in 2004. In 2005, his first collection of essays, The Disappointment Artist, was released. On September 20, 2005, Lethem received a MacArthur Fellowship, a special award given to talented individuals.

In 2009, Lethem said he loves writing short stories between his novels. He believes both novels and short stories are important to him.

2005–present

Lethem reading at Occupy Wall Street; his shirt refers to the New York Mets' home field changing from Shea Stadium, named after William Shea, to Citi Field, the naming rights for which were bought by Citibank

In September 2006, Lethem wrote a long article about Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone magazine. It included an interview with Dylan and Lethem's thoughts on his music.

After writing Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, Lethem decided to write about different places. In 2007, he set his novel You Don't Love Me Yet in California, where some of his earlier stories took place. This novel is about a new rock band. The main character, Lucinda, works for a complaint line and uses things callers say as song lyrics. Lethem said the book was inspired by his own time as a singer in a band.

In 2005, Lethem announced he would write a ten-issue comic book series for Marvel Comics about the character Omega the Unknown. The series was published from October 2007 to July 2008.

In early 2007, Lethem started working on Chronic City, which was published in 2009. He described it as a long and strange story set in Manhattan. It's about a group of friends, including a former child actor and a cultural critic.

His essay, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism" (2007), talks about how artists often borrow ideas from others. He argued that sharing ideas is a good thing. He wrote that the main part of all human expression is "plagiarism" in a positive sense. He encouraged people to use his stories, saying they were never truly his to begin with. This essay was included in his 2011 collection, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.

In 2011, Lethem helped edit The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a book about the science fiction writer. He also wrote short books about John Carpenter's film They Live and the Talking Heads album Fear of Music. Starting in 2011, he became a professor of creative writing at Pomona College.

Lethem's ninth novel, Dissident Gardens, was released in 2013. He said it's about "American leftists" and their children trying to understand their family's history of American Communism. The novel is set in Queens and Greenwich Village in New York City.

His fifth short story collection, Lucky Alan and Other Stories, followed in 2015.

Lethem's tenth novel, A Gambler's Anatomy (also known as The Blot in the UK), came out in 2016. It's about a professional backgammon player who thinks he can see the future. In 2018, he published The Feral Detective, which was his first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn.

His twelfth novel, The Arrest, was published in 2020. It's a unique story about two siblings, a man who came between them, and a special car that runs on nuclear power.

Lethem also helped write six songs on the 2017 album Electric Trim by Lee Ranaldo. He wrote the introduction for David Bowman's 2019 novel, Big Bang.

Personal life

In 1987, Lethem married writer and artist Shelley Jackson. They later divorced. In 2000, he married Julia Rosenberg, a Canadian film executive, but they divorced two years later. As of 2007, Lethem lives in Brooklyn and Berwick, Maine, with his third wife, filmmaker Amy Barrett. He has two sons.