Kafka Americana
Kafka Americana
The Vintage Book of Amnesia: An Anthology of Writing on the Subject of Memory Loss
Jonathan Lethem is perhaps our most active literary voice mining the genre margins of our culture. In this unique collection he creates an anthology that no one else could. He draws on the work of such unforgettables as Julio Cortazar, who presents a man caught between the ancient and modern worlds unable to say which is real; Philip K. Dick, who tells the story of a man trapped on a spaceship of the somnolent, unable to sleep and slowly losing his mind; Shirley Jackson, who takes us on a nightmarish trip across town with a young secretary; and Oliver Sacks, who presents us with an aging hippie who possesses no memory of anything that has taken place since the early seventies. What Lethem has done is nothing less than define a new genre of literature-the amnesia story-and in the process he invites us to sit down, pick up the book, and begin to forget. Also including: John Franklin Bardin, Donald Barthelme, Thomas M. Disch, Karn Joy Fowler, David Grand, Anna Kavan, Haruki Murakami,
Motherless Brooklyn
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER - A complusively readable riff on the classic detective novel from America's most inventive novelist. 'A half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome.... The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity.... Unexpectedly moving.' --The Boston Globe Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow
Fortress of Solitude
From the prize-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America. This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They live in ...
Philip K. Dick: Five Novels of the 1960s & 70s (Loa #183): Martian Time-Slip / Dr. Bloodmoney / Now Wait for Last Year / Flow My Tears, Thepoliceman S
Jonathan Lethem, editor 'The most outr science fiction writer of the 20th century has finally entered the canon,' exclaimed Wired Magazine upon The Library of America's May 2007 publication of Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s, edited by Jonathan Lethem. Now comes a companion volume collecting five novels that offer a breathtaking overview of the range of this science-fiction master. Philip K. Dick (1928-82) was a writer of incandescent imagination who made and unmade world-systems with ferocious rapidity and unbridled speculative daring. 'The floor joists of the universe,' he once wrote, 'are visible in my novels.' Martian Time-Slip (1964) unfolds on a parched and thinly colonized Red Planet where schizophrenia is a contagion and the unscrupulous seek to profit from a troubled child's time-fracturing visions. Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965) chronicles the deeply-interwoven stories of a multi-racial community of survivors, including the scientist who
Talking Heads' Fear of Music
Fear of Music, the third album by Talking Heads, was recorded and released in 1979. It is, like each of their first four albums, a masterpiece. Edgy, paranoid, funky, addictive, rhythmic, repetitive, spooky, and fun - with Brian Eno's production, ...
Gun, with Occasional Music
The first novel by Jonathan Lethem (author of the award-winning Motherless Brooklyn) is a science-fiction mystery, a dark and funny post-modern romp serving further evidence that Lethem is the distinctive voice of a new generation. Conrad Metcalf ...
Brooklyn Crime Novel
On the streets of 1970s Brooklyn, a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged, belongings surrendered, power asserted. The promise of violence lies everywhere, a currency itself. For these children, Black, brown, and white, the street is a stage in shadow; some days it may seem that no one knows what happens there. Yet in the wings hide the other players: parents; cops; renovators; landlords; those who write the headlines, the histories, and laws; those who award this neighbourhood its name.The rules seem obvious at first. But in memory's prism, criminals and victims may seem to trade places. The voices of the past may seem to rise and gather as if in harmony, then make war with one another. A street may seem to crack open and reveal what lies behind its glimmering facade. None who lived through it are ever permitted to forget.Written with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit, Brooklyn Crime Novel is a breathtaking tour de force by a writer at the top of his powers. Jonathan Lethem, "one of America's greatest storytellers," (Washington Post) has crafted an epic interrogation of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our remorse at the world we've made.
Brooklyn Crime Novel
1978 and two 14-year-old white boys are creating dubious art by using a hacksaw to cut multiple quarters into pieces. A child who's just bought ice cream from a Mr. Softee truck witnesses a daylight sidewalk shooting in 1979. At another time, a couple of blocks over, a kid gets caught trying to shoplift an adult magazine from a Puerto Rican hole-in-the-wall. A Black teenager and his white friends square up to a rival Italian gang over the right to play hockey in the street. In 1977 a white kid craters a baseball right in the centre of a Cuban guy's windscreen. And so it goes.On the streets of Brooklyn, the faces of the children change but the patterns remain the same: sex; boredom; friendship; violence; a million daily crimes committed, some small, some unimaginably big. But the real action is away from the streets, played out behind closed doors by parents; cops; renovators; landlords; gentrifiers; those who write the headlines, the histories, and the laws; those who award this neighbourhood its name and control its shifting demographics. Across the decades, buildings are developed and homes are razed; communities come in and muscle other communities out; the past haunts the present and perspectives change, so that perpetrators sometimes become victims, and victims sometimes become the worst criminals of all... Written with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit, Brooklyn Crime Novel is a breathtaking tour de force of a quarter of a city and the humanity it contains, and an epic interrogation of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our remorse at the world we've made
Brooklyn Crime Novel
Brooklyn Crime Novel
BROOKLYN CRIME NOVEL
Named a Best Book of the Year by: Boston Globe * New Yorker * NPR * PopMatters From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn comes a sweeping story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing more than fifty years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood. 'A blistering book. A love story. Social commentary. History. Protest novel. And mystery joins the whole together: is the crime 'time'? Or the almighty dollar? I got a great laugh from it too. Every city deserves a book like this.' -- Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin On the streets of 1970s Brooklyn, a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged, belongings surrendered, power asserted. The promise of violence lies everywhere, a currency itself. For these children, Black, brown, and white, the street is a stage in shadow. And in the wings hide the other players: parents; cops; renovators; landlords; those who write the headlines, the
Cellophane Bricks
Many know Jonathan Lethem as one of our most celebrated and eclectic writers, whose iconic novels-Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, Chronic City, among many others-play with genres and storytelling modes like a DJ mixing music. But Le...
Arrest
The Arrest isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted - cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters - stops working... Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a...
Motherless Brooklyn
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN IS RELEASED IN CINEMAS NOVEMBER 2019 Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. the Human Freakshow, is a victim of Tourette's syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, ...
Farm Digesters
A no-nonsense guide to farm digesters, providing a wealth of useful information for anyone interested in installing one. Most people have heard of farm digesters and how they can produce renewable energy from cattle slurry and other organic waste....
A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories
A definitive collection of new and selected stories by a master of the form 'Comparisons might be drawn to writers ranging from Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami to Margaret Atwood and J. D. Salinger. All of Lethem's stories are enlivened by his wit and provocative wordplay.' --Chicago Tribune This dazzling, genre-defying collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his best work spanning more than three decades. A major new story, 'The Red Sun School of Thoughts,' never published before, follows a teenage boy coming to terms with figures of authority and power--those in both his biological family and in the family he creates for himself. Elsewhere we meet 'Super Goat Man,' a down-at-heels bohemian superhero; 'The Porn Critic,' whose accidental expertise wrecks his own romantic aspirations; and 'Sleepy People,' who pose interpersonal conundrums without ever rousing from their slumber. Fluidly moving between realism
Motherless Brooklyn; Fortress of Solitude
Motherless Brooklyn is a compulsively readable riff on the classic noir detective novel. Brooklyn's self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three other veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and he must untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. The Fortress of Solitude is the vividly told story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in Brooklyn in the 1970s. In a neighbourhood where the entertainments include muggings and games of stoopball, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. Through the knitting and unravelling of the boys' friendship, Lethem creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of