Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Lethem
Jonathan Allen Lethemis 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth19 February 1964
CountryUnited States of America
emotional stories kind
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.
character way littles
I suppose in a way most of my characters are non-consumers, not terribly interested in all the little baubles and artifacts of contemporary life.
beautiful writing luxury
I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.
book drinking wine
I prefer old books and find them more relevant. I dislike new books. It's like drinking wine that's not ready.
order demand film
Good films demand to be looked at several times in order to be observed completely.
book four pages
With a book you can read the same paragraph four times. You can go back to page 21 when you're on page 300. You can't do that with film. It just charges ahead.
body language rhythm
There's something about the rhythms of language that correspond to the rhythms of our own bodies.
writing effort want
So much of the effort that goes into writing prose for me is about making sentences that capture the music that I'm hearing in my head. It takes a lot of work, writing, writing, and rewriting to get the music exactly the way you want it to be.
struggle writing pleasure
Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible struggle.
fall thinking artist
Once you fall into habits, I think, you're dead as an artist. You have to challenge yourself and never rest on your laurels, never think about what you've done in the past.
writing interesting world
The world's large enough and interesting enough to take a different approach each time you sit down to write about it.
artist limits impossible
Every artist has limits. No one can do everything. It's impossible.
beautiful art space
What's beautiful about art is that it circumscribes a space, a physical and mental space. If you try to put the entire world into every page, you turn out chaos.
believe thinking two
I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.