Description

Larry McCaffery and Takayuki Tatsumi meet with Jonathan Lethem to discuss ideas on genre literature and Lethem’s work. Lethem begins with a discussion of his forthcoming book As She Climbed Across the Table and how it builds off both established science fiction tropes as well as the idea of the campus novel. Lethem describes the book as “John Barth’s version of Frankenstein.” Lethem mentions how he likes straddling between genre and other fiction: “I’m excited by [genre novels] but it’s precisely at their boundaries where they are at their most interesting.” Lethem discusses a variety of influences, noting how most of science fiction and specifically his first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, is indebted to Lewis Carroll: “You’re wandering through this bizarre reality and you’re not bothering to notice that it’s an animal talking to you; what you’re engaging with is what a bad personality the animal has.” Lethem also notes that reviewers captured the book’s genesis precisely: “It was incredibly appropriate that everyone said Philip K. Dick meets Raymond Chandler because that’s what I was trying to do.” Lethem notes that he tries to do something beyond the normal concept of the genre. Lethem goes on to discuss a considerable number of influences as well as current authors. Lethem also describes future works including (though not named) Girl in Landscape, Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude. At the conclusion of the interview, McCaffery says that he will read Lethem's new work (As She Climbed Across the Table) and send him further interview questions for a proposed publication. No second interview ever occurred and the interview was never published.