In this week’s show, John speaks with Jonathan Lethem about the pull of Brooklyn and obsession, the craft of guiding the reader through unusual storytelling, and bold balancing acts as storytellers.

Perhaps best known for his novels Motherless Brooklyn (1999), The Fortress of Solitude (2003), and Chronic City (2009)—or, more recently, Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023)—the author, essayist, and cultural critic Jonathan Lethem could be considered the ultimate modern-day Brooklyn bard, even if today he lives in California,

Jonathan Lethem is one of the smartest, riskiest, and most experimental writers working in crime fiction today. He writes about crime not only like a fiction writer with all that propulsive page turning thrill, but also like a sociologist, a psychologist, a historian and a philosopher. That might never have been truer

Jonathan Lethem is a writer from New York who is currently living in Southern California. His newest book, Cellophane Bricks, is out now. We spoke with him from his house in Maine about three shower days, tomato sandwiches, he just drove from Los Angeles to Maine, the best molé in Utah, early tech media, dropping out o

Jonathan Lethem made his name with his 1999 novel Motherless Brooklyn, but it was his next book, a semi-autobiographical re-telling of his childhood in Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, that solidified his reputation as one of America's most celebrated authors. In Brooklyn Crime Novel, Jonathan returns to the Brookly

Bestselling American author Jonathan Lethem explains why he returned to Brooklyn in his fiction after 20 years.