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I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.

Jonathan Lethem

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Jonathan Lethem
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: February 19
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Jonathan Allen Lethem
Harry Conklin
Grew
Example
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Connects
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Mainly
Father
Artistic
Artist
Artists
Also
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My heart and the elevator, a plummet inside a plummet.
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The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism.
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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.
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Teenage life - possibly adult life too is all about what you want and can’t have. And then about what you receive and misuse.
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Artists freeze themselves into these weird postures that are meant to be impressive and involving, then they fling them out into the world like Polaroids, and then they move on. And I'm stuck in this intense relationship to the Polaroid.
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I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.
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Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.
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All paths lead nowhere choose one with heart...
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The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.
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However appalling to consider, however tedious to enact, every novel requires furniture, whether it is to be named or unnamed, for the characters will be unable to remain in standing position for the duration of the story.
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It wasn't for children, seventh grade. You could read the stress of even entering the building in the postures of the teachers, the security guards. Nobody could relax in such a racial and hormonal disaster area.
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I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.
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Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.
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Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold.
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It was often this way, life consisted of a series of false beginnings, bluff declarations of arrival to destinations not even glimpsed.
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I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.
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I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.
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I listen to music all the time. I write while listening to music. And I tell myself that the music nourishes the art forms that I do master and domesticate, and have authority over.
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The computer is the way I'm making books, but I still think about the physical properties. I visualize the length of a book, the proportions of a book, in material terms.
Jonathan Lethem
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I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world.
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