VIII. Fan mail -- Books are sandwiches. Footnote on Sylvie Selig -- Engulf and devour -- The figure in the castle -- The greatest animal novelist of all time -- The counter-Roth -- II. It can still take me there -- The only human superhero -- Forget this introduction -- What's old is new (Ricks on Dylan) -- To catch a beat -- Footnote -- III. Objects in furious motion -- Fierce attachments -- Attention drifting beautifully (Donald Barthelme) -- Rock of ages -- My hero: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- A new life (Malamud) -- A mug's game -- Steven Millhauser's ghost stories -- IV. Lost worlds -- The mechanics of fear, revisited -- On the Yard -- Walter Tevis's Mockingbird -- Everything said and exhausted (Daniel Fuchs) -- How did I get here and what could it possibly mean? (Bernard Wolfe) -- 'Twas ever thus (Tanguy Viel's Beyond Suspicion) -- Russell Greenan's Geniuses -- V. Ecstatic depictions of consciousness -- Consumed -- Dog soldiers -- Bizarro world -- On two wentences from Charles D'Ambrosio's "Screenwriter" -- Remarks perhaps of some assistance to the reader of Joseph McElroy's Ancient history: a paraphase -- VI. Thomas Berger and I have never met (Ishiguro, Berger and PKD) -- Kazuo Ishiguro -- The butler did it -- Footnote on Ishiguro -- High priest of the paranoids -- The man whose teeth were all exactly alike -- To Ubik -- Life after wartime -- Thomas Berger -- Letters from the invisible man: my correspondence with Thomas Berger -- Footnote on Berger -- VII. OK you mugs -- Heavy petting -- More than night -- You talkin' to me? -- New York characters -- Lost and found -- The original piece of wood I left in your head: a conversation between director Spike Jonze and critic Perkus Tooth -- Johnny's graying teenaged sense of what isn't boring (Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002) -- Close reading (Ricks on Dylan) -- Rod Serling -- Mutual seduction -- VIII. Fan mail -- Carved in need -- New old friend (a toast to Kenneth Koch) -- Eyes wide open -- Something about a slice -- Pynchonopolis -- To Cosmicomics -- Anthony Burgess answers two questions -- A furtive exchange -- Books are sandwiches.
Summary:
"A collection of bestselling, NBCC prize-winning author Jonathan Lethem's finest writing on the subject of writers and writing. A readerly wake-up call from one of America's finest and most acclaimed working writers. Picking up where his NBCC Award finalist collection The Ecstasy of Influence left off, More Alive and Less Lonely collects more than a decade of Lethem's finest writing on writing, with new and previously unpublished material, including: impassioned appeals for forgotten writers and overlooked books, razor-sharp essays, and personal accounts of his most extraordinary literary encounters and discoveries. Only Lethem, with his love of cult favorites and the canon alike, can write with equal insight about the stories of modern masters like Lorrie Moore and Salman Rushdie, graphic novelist Chester Brown, science fiction outlier Philip K. Dick, and classic icons like Moby-Dick. Edited by novelist Christopher Boucher (Golden Delicious), More Alive and Less Lonely deserves a place on every serious reader's bookshelf. Lethem's joyful approach to literature will inspire you to dive back into your favorite books and then point you towards what to read next"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.