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 Lethem grew up in his father’s studio, went to art school, and, in his own words, “made hundreds if not thousands of drawings, collages, paintings, hand-drawn comics, and even two animated shorts” before diverting, at nineteen, to prose. The surreal and form-defying panoply of his stories, essays, and novels celebrates—and mourns—this forsaken world of the visual and plastic arts. That leap, between the cellophane ephemerality of language and the brick-like tangibility of visual art, which operates as a sublimated wellspring for Lethem’s writing, is the subject of this book.
Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture mortars together Lethem’s fictions in response to (and in exchange for) artworks by his friends with dozens of original essays ranging from comics and graffiti art, to his collaborations with artists and interventions into visual culture, to his portrait of the museum that was and continues to be his home, untethered from geography. Unique in Lethem’s kaleidoscopic oeuvre, Cellophane Bricks comprises a kind of stealth memoir of his parallel life in visual culture. Gorgeously designed, with stunning, full-color images from the author’s own collection and elsewhere, Cellophane Bricks is a ravishing assemblage that makes the perfect gift for story lovers of all kinds.
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents
008 Introduction: CELLOPHANE, BRICKS, FOG & CINDER / A Life in Material Culture
Fictions of Art
024 INTRODUCTION
028 THE SUBJECTIVE FOG / for Julian Hoeber
038 THE COLLECTOR / Fred Tomaselli
048 AN ALMOST PERFECT DAY / Letter to Bonn
054 RECIPROCITY OF ARTIFACTS: A DOMESTIC / Rachel Harrison
058 TRAVELER HOME / Martin & Munoz
068 THE BILLBOARD MEN / Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel
080 IMMACULATE KILLS / Alexis Rockman
084 STATIONS OF THE RELOCATED WITNESS / Gregory Crewdson
102 MISSING PERSONS: AN HOMAGE TO PERRY HOBERMAN
108 X, CURATOR / David Maisel
120 CELLOPHANE BRICKS: A FUGUE FOR MEMORY LOST / Nan Goldin
130 JIM SHAW KILLS
Graffiti and Comics
142 INTRODUCTION
148 ONE-TRACK MIND: ON PHIL COPPOLA
150 COVER THE CITY: GRAFFITI GRAPHOMANIA, OR, THE FLÂNEUR WITH TOURETTE’S / KEO, PRAY & Katie Merz
162 CRUNCH ROLLS / Introduction to Mascots & Mugs: The Characters and Cartoons of Subway Graffiti
166 THE ORGY OF THE REAL / Todd James
172 A FURTIVE EXCHANGE / Chester Brown
178 BLACK KRYPTONITE / A Script for Pettibon
188 20TH CENTURY VOMIT / Collaboration with Julia Jacquette
Book
196 INTRODUCTION
206 OBJECTIFIED BOOKS / Alexander Munn, Cynthia Winings, Charles Child & Me
222 THE RICHARD PRINCE STORIES
230 FIVE RUN-INS WITH ROSALYN DREXLER
246 GOD IN A SPRAY CAN / Robert Jimenez’s Ubik
252 SYLVIE SELIG
256 NOW IT CAN BE TOLD / For Tom Clark
Ecstasy
262 INTRODUCTION
266 ANDY MIRRORBALL (WARHOL)
272 TERMITE FOOTPRINTS / On Manny Farber’s Art Writing
286 A VOYAGE AROUND MIRELLA BENTIVOGLIO’S STONE TYPEWRITER
290 OVERHEARD AT THE INSTALLATION / For Charles Sheeler’s “Suspended Power”
299 THE SLEEVE SHOULD BE ILLEGAL For Hans Holbein theYounger’s “SirThomas More”
302 SEARCHING FOR UBLAND A Voyage to the Edges of My Disney Hyperartifact
At Home
326 INTRODUCTION
330 VINYL CIRCLE, ON MY WALL / Chad Gerth
334 FACES OF JEANNE AND TOM / On Living With a Forgotten Painter’s Masterpiece / Jeanne Redpath
344 THE SKIN OF REALITY / A Studio Visit with Kari Gatzke
350 JOYCEAN SLICES / Emily Joyce
354 ALL MY CHALDRONS
366 THE EASEL OF THE UNSEEN / Mark Johnson
374 HAZEL
378 COFFEEHEAD AND THE DECAYERS / Life in a Charles Long Sculpture Zone
392 MY FATHER HAS STARTED A PAINTING
402 ON A PHOTOGRAPH OF MY FATHER
408 CREDITS
About the Author :
Jonathan Lethem is the author of Brooklyn Crime Novel and twelve other novels. His stories and essays have been collected in five volumes, and his work translated into over thirty languages. He has been recipient of The National Book Critics Circle Award, The World Fantasy Award, The Berlin Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches creative writing and contemporary fiction at Pomona College.
Review :
Combining mind-bending intellectual meditations with a visceral delight in his subject, Lethem’s electric prose animates the proceedings. The result is a transfixing look at what it means to make, and admire, art.
An acclaimed author celebrates creativity... Sometimes lyrical, sometimes surreal, always surprising.
