Jonathan Lethem's Reading List
As a child, the author of “Motherless Brooklyn” and the forthcoming “Dissident Gardens” read and reread Alan Watts’s “Wisdom of Insecurity”: “It’s still the help I need.”
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Jonathan Lethem (2013)
NYT By the Book column (2013-08-29).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Russell Hoban · Buy on Amazon
"In my office I tend to be racing through short books — Russell Hoban’s “Turtle Diary” and Edward St. Aubyn’s Melrose books and Lydia Millet’s “Magnificence” just now"
Edward St. Aubyn · Buy on Amazon
"In my office I tend to be racing through short books — Russell Hoban’s “Turtle Diary” and Edward St. Aubyn’s Melrose books and Lydia Millet’s “Magnificence” just now"
Lydia Millet · Buy on Amazon
"Russell Hoban’s “Turtle Diary” and Edward St. Aubyn’s Melrose books and Lydia Millet’s “Magnificence” just now"
Robert Musil · Buy on Amazon
"while at the bedside table and on trains and airplanes I’m grinding away at monsters over a period of months, if not years: Robert Musil’s “Man Without Qualities” and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle.”"
Karl Ove Knausgaard · Buy on Amazon
"Robert Musil’s “Man Without Qualities” and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle.”"
Doris Lessing · Buy on Amazon
"last summer I had my head broken open by Doris Lessing’s “Four-Gated City” and so now appear doomed to read the Martha Quest novels — backwards."
Christina Stead · Buy on Amazon
"I also recently noticed how many unfinished novels have been important to me: Musil’s, Kafka’s, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, Christina Stead’s “I’m Dying Laughing.”"
Ralph Ellison · Buy on Amazon
"Reading around in Ellison’s “Three Days Before the Shooting . . . ”; I bet I’d like that thing in Salinger’s safe."
Claudia Roth Pierpont · Buy on Amazon
"I just devoured in succession two spanking-new studies of great artists, both terrific reading experiences, brain-expanding but embracing, too: Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “Roth Unbound” and T. J. Clark’s “Picasso and Truth.” Both hit their very tricky targets."
T. J. Clark · Buy on Amazon
"Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “Roth Unbound” and T. J. Clark’s “Picasso and Truth.” Both hit their very tricky targets. They’ll be with me for a good long time."
Alan Watts · Buy on Amazon
"As a kid I used to compulsively reread Alan Watts’s “Wisdom of Insecurity.” I didn’t think of that as self-help at the time, but I think of it that way now. It’s still the help I need."
Paula Fox · Buy on Amazon
"Two merciless little novels — Paula Fox’s “Desperate Characters” and L. J. Davis’s “A Meaningful Life” — bring to life the South Brooklyn I knew as a child in the early ’70s."
L. J. Davis · Buy on Amazon
"Two merciless little novels — Paula Fox’s “Desperate Characters” and L. J. Davis’s “A Meaningful Life” — bring to life the South Brooklyn I knew as a child in the early ’70s."
Lewis Carroll · 1865 · Buy on Amazon
"Starting at about 11, with “Alice in Wonderland” and Lewis Carroll, I began identifying with the writer — or what I’ve learned now to call “the implicit author” — of a given fiction, rather than with the characters directly."