There is a beautiful blend of academic mulling and creative playfulness that makes up each of these essays, and I found myself taking notes left and right.
I was constantly reminded why Lethem is a beloved writer in the literary world, both because of his deep understanding of the craft and because of his own skill in it. The essays are divided up into sections, but they’re all so approachable that I found myself flipping around and reading out of order. Some essays analyze Lethem’s favorite writers, and others ponder the form and style of certain genres.
He lives in Brooklyn.The ineffable and prolific Jonathan Lethem has struck again, this time with his delightfully engaging second collection of essays More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers. This collection is nearly twenty years of essays that explore Lethem’s relationship with and love of the written word. Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including Dissident Gardens, Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and Gun, with Occasional Music. Devoted fans of Lethem will recognize familiar themes and tropes-the anxiety of influence pushed to reduction ad absurdum in "The King of Sentences" a hapless outsider trying to summon up bravado in "The Porn Critic " characters from the comics stranded on a desert island the necessity and the impossibility of action against authority in "Procedure in Plain Air." As always, Lethem's work, humor, and poignancy work in harmony people strive desperately for connection through words and often misdirect deeds and the sentences are glorious.
The tension between these two approaches, and the way they inform each other, increase the reader's surprise and delight as one realizes how cleverly Lethem is playing with form. Some of these tales-such as "Pending Vegan," which wonderfully captures a parental ache and anguish during a family visit to an aquatic theme park-are, in Lethem's words, "obedient (at least outwardly) to realism." Others, like "The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear, " which deftly and hilariously captures the solipsism of blog culture, feature "the uncanny and surreal elements that still sometimes erupt in my short stories." Jonathan Lethem stretches new literary muscles in this scintillating new collection of stories. The incomparable Jonathan Lethem returns with nine brilliant stories that prove he is a master of the short form as well as the novel. Lucky Alan: And Other Stories (Doubleday Books)
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