Episode One Hundred and Three: Jonathan Lethem

In This Episode:

Jonathan Lethem drops into the Damn Library and the guys are damn excited to have him. They talk about Lethem's new one, The Feral Detective, of course, but they also talk about his work as a whole, and how his books are in conversation with each other, along with a tangent into timeliness and how lucky he feels. Then they get into Sei Shōnagon's Pillow Book, a classic unclassifiable Japanese work, began in the year 990. Translation conversation, and what a "pillow book" is, ensues. One for the ages!

The Ep. 103 Bookshelf

THIS EPISODE'S BOOKS:

The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem
The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon

WHAT'D YOU BUY?:

Drew: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Jonathan: Milkman by Anna Burns // Call Me Ishmael: A Study of Melville by Charles Olson
Christopher: Cocktail Codex: Fundamentals, Formulas, Evolutions by Alex Day and Nick Fauchald // Hark the Herald Angels Scream, ed. by Christopher Golden

ALSO MENTIONED:

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
They Live by Jonathan Lethem
Fear of Music (33 1/3) by Jonathan Lethem
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Gun with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem
Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem
A Gambler’s Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem
The Fortress of Solitude (music by Michael Friedman, book by Itamar Moses)
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
King Lear by William Shakespeare
The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits
Fables by Aesop
In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
”Investigations of a Dog” by Franz Kafka

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Drew: Those Who Knew by Idra Novey / Poso Wells by Gabriella Alemán / The Wilderness
Jonathan: The Town by Shaun Prescott
Christopher: Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis

The Damn Bar