{"title":"Books by Jonathan Lethem","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781841594309","title":"Motherless Brooklyn; Fortress of Solitude","description":"\u003cp\u003eMotherless Brooklyn is a compulsively readable riff on the classic noir detective novel. Brooklyn's self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three other veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and he must untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Fortress of Solitude\u003c\/i\u003e is the vividly told story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in Brooklyn in the 1970s. In a neighbourhood where the entertainments include muggings and games of stoopball, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. Through the knitting and unravelling of the boys' friendship, Lethem creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race and class, superheroes, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging, loyalty, and memory.\u003cbr\u003eFrom the prize-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude is a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44581369053362,"sku":"9781841594309","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781841594309_fc850d7b-5a6e-4f87-b185-bf7ef532e2b5.jpg?v=1786027870"},{"product_id":"9781838952211","title":"Brooklyn Crime Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003e1978 and two 14-year-old white  boys are creating dubious art by using  a hacksaw to cut multiple quarters into  pieces. A child who's just bought ice cream  from a Mr. Softee truck witnesses a daylight  sidewalk shooting in 1979. At another time,  a couple of blocks over, a kid gets caught  trying to shoplift an adult magazine from  a Puerto Rican hole-in-the-wall. A Black  teenager and his white friends square up  to a rival Italian gang over the right to play  hockey in the street. In 1977 a white kid  craters a baseball right in the centre of a  Cuban guy's windscreen. And so it goes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the streets of Brooklyn, the faces of the  children change but the patterns remain  the same: sex; boredom; friendship;  violence; a million daily crimes committed,  some small, some unimaginably big.  But the real action is away from the  streets, played out behind closed doors  by parents; cops; renovators; landlords;  gentrifiers; those who write the headlines,  the histories, and the laws; those who  award this neighbourhood its name and  control its shifting demographics. Across  the decades, buildings are developed and  homes are razed; communities come in  and muscle other communities out; the  past haunts the present and perspectives  change, so that perpetrators sometimes  become victims, and victims sometimes  become the worst criminals of all... \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Written with kaleidoscopic verve and  delirious wit, Brooklyn Crime Novel is a  breathtaking tour de force of a quarter  of a city and the humanity it contains, and  an epic interrogation of how we fashion  stories to contain the uncontainable: our  remorse at the world we've made\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44581838422194,"sku":"9781838952211","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781838952211_1937209c-6e3d-4d1e-8b1c-d691aa088e81.jpg?v=1786028266"},{"product_id":"9780571225040","title":"Gun, with Occasional Music","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe first novel by Jonathan Lethem (author of the award-winning \u003cb\u003eMotherless Brooklyn\u003c\/b\u003e) is a science-fiction mystery, a dark and funny post-modern romp serving further evidence that Lethem is the distinctive voice of a new generation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Conrad Metcalf has problems. He has a monkey on his back, a rabbit in his waiting room, and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. (Maybe evolution therapy is not such a good idea). He's been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an Oakland urologist. Maybe falling in love with her a little at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, Metcalf finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of the Fickle Muse.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291268100469,"sku":"9780571225040","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571225040_5d5b320f-bdd2-48a7-a1f4-47582da270f3.jpg?v=1786013676"},{"product_id":"9780571219353","title":"The Fortress of Solitude","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the prize-winning author of \u003cb\u003eMotherless Brooklyn\u003c\/b\u003e, a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They live in Brooklyn and are friends and neighbours; but since Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is the story of 1970s America, a time when the simplest decisions - what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money - are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is also the story of 1990s America, when nobody cared anymore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: they would screw up their lives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292022944117,"sku":"9780571219353","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571219353_33984baa-fbc9-4815-85a5-92f2ddb6581e.jpg?v=1786013618"},{"product_id":"9780571226320","title":"Motherless Brooklyn","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, \u003ci\u003eMOTHERLESS BROOKLYN\u003c\/i\u003e IS RELEASED IN CINEMAS NOVEMBER 2019\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLionel Essrog, a.k.a. the Human Freakshow, is a victim of Tourette's syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, rearrange objects). Local tough guy Frank Minna hires the adolescent Lionel and three other orphans from St Vincent's Home for Boys and grooms them to become the Minna Men, a fly-by-night detective-agency-cum-limoservice. Then one terrible day Frank is murdered, and Lionel must become a real detective. With crackling dialogue, a dazzling evocation of place, and a plot which mimics Tourette's itself in its freshness and capacity to shock, \u003cb\u003eMotherless Brooklyn\u003c\/b\u003e is a bravura performance: funny, tense, touching, and extravagant.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292530782581,"sku":"9780571226320","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571226320_adc64155-517c-48cb-94e9-213d4e521ace.jpg?v=1786013707"},{"product_id":"9781441121004","title":"Talking Heads' Fear of Music","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt's the summer of 1979. A 15-year-old boy listens to WNEW on the radio in his bedroom in Brooklyn. A monotone voice (it's the singer's) announces into dead air in between songs \"The Talking Heads have a new album, it's called Fear of Music\" - and everything spins outward from that one moment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJonathan Lethem treats\u003ci\u003e Fear of Music\u003c\/i\u003e (the third album by the Talking Heads, and the first produced by Brian Eno) as a masterpiece - edgy, paranoid, funky, addictive, rhythmic, repetitive, spooky and fun. He scratches obsessively at the album's songs, guitars, rhythms, lyrics, packaging, downtown origins, and legacy, showing how Fear of Music hints at the directions (positive and negative) the band would take in the future. Lethem transports us again to the New York City of another time - tackling one of his great adolescent obsessions and illuminating the ways in which we fall in and out of love with works of art.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56299695505781,"sku":"9781441121004","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781441121004_ee41160b-5d66-4d7c-9765-2ef493e8b6cf.jpg?v=1786020751"},{"product_id":"9781629634883","title":"The Collapsing Frontier","description":"This collection compiles his intensely personal takes on the most interesting and deplorable topics in post-postmodern America. It moves from original new fiction to insights on popular culture, cult and canonical authors, and problematic people. 'David Bowman and the Furry-Girl School of American Fiction' is a personal true adventure, as Lethem tries (with the help of a seeming expert) to elbow his way into literary respectability. 'The Collapsing Frontier' is a brand-new fictional journey into an ominous new unmapped realm. 'Calvino's 'Lightness' and the Feral Child of History' is an intimate encounter with a literary legend, where Calvino's Italy and Lethem's Brooklyn meet cute. In 'My Year of Reading Lemmishly' and 'Snowden in the Labyrinth' he explores courage, art, and the search for truth, with wildly different results. A bibliography is also provided as well as our usual Outspoken Interview.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302256095605,"sku":"9781629634883","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781629634883_550271d8-e883-4e94-a135-b3d76d35d999.jpg?v=1786023683"},{"product_id":"9781784701635","title":"Lucky Alan","description":"A father’s nervous breakdown during a visit to a theme park; a political prisoner confined to a hole in a busy New York street; a haunted 'blog' … Welcome to Lethem-land, which can be discovered only by visiting – a place where the uncanny can be found lurking in the mundane, where humour and poignancy work in harmony, and a modern master of American letters entertains and dazzles us once again, as only he can.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305227628917,"sku":"9781784701635","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784701635_c8f11b53-9abc-4f02-b522-d1861237f579.jpg?v=1786025897"},{"product_id":"9781786497512","title":"The Feral Detective","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A nimble and uncanny performance, brimming with Lethem's trademark verve and wit' \u003c\/b\u003eColson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Underground Railroad\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePhoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She's looking for her friend's missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist - a laconic loner who keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer - to help. The unlikely pair navigate the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and find that Arabella is in serious trouble - caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end. Phoebe's trip to the desert was always going to be strange, but it was never supposed to be dangerous...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJonathan Lethem's first detective novel since \u003ci\u003eMotherless Brooklyn, The Feral Detective\u003c\/i\u003e is a singular achievement by one of our greatest writers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305648763253,"sku":"9781786497512","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781786497512_86ab934a-4da3-4953-b020-fcba766e1970.jpg?v=1786034508"},{"product_id":"9781838952174","title":"The Arrest","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Arrest\u003c\/i\u003e isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted - cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters - stops working... \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A.  An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn't hurt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings' life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear.  Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza? Whatever he's up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten with unrepentant joy and shot through with just the right amount of contemporary dread, \u003ci\u003eThe Arrest\u003c\/i\u003e is speculative fiction at its absolute finest.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56307602522485,"sku":"9781838952174","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"ecstasy-of-influence","title":"The Ecstasy of Influence","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis volume sheds light on an array of topics from \u003cb\u003esex in cinema\u003c\/b\u003e to \u003cb\u003edrugs, graffiti, Bob Dylan, cyberculture, 9\/11, book touring\u003c\/b\u003e and \u003cb\u003eMarlon Brando\u003c\/b\u003e. Then there are investigations of a shelf's worth of Jonathan Letham's literary models and contemporaries: \u003cb\u003eNorman Mailer, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis, James Wood,\u003c\/b\u003e and others. And, writing about \u003cb\u003eBrooklyn\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cb\u003ehis father\u003c\/b\u003e, and his sojourn through two decades of writing, one of the greats of contemporary American literature sheds an equally strong light on himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Ecstasy of Influence\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e, Jonathan Lethem, tangling with what he calls the 'white elephant' role of the \u003cb\u003ewriter as public intellectual\u003c\/b\u003e, arrives at an astonishing range of answers. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFunny and unfettered, \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Ecstasy of Influence\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e simmers with direct challenges to conventional wisdom and deep insights into the kaleidoscopic nature of artistic vision, the primacy of the writer in the cultural marketplace, and the way the author's own experiences have fuelled his creative passions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481478472053,"sku":"9780099563433","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099563433.jpg?v=1786089741"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-jonathan-lethem.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}