Lethem Leaves Brooklyn

Brooklyn-born author Jonathan Lethem recently announced he'd be leaving the borough to serve at his new post: the Roy Edward Disney Professor in Creative Writing at Pomona College in California, a position once held by David Foster Wallace. Last week Lethem spoke about his departure at the New York Public Library (video below), and Marty Markowitz even commented upon it by telling the NY Post: "maybe he'll miss the Gowanus Canal and come back to us when he gets tired of La-La Land." Yep, we hear the first thing people miss when they leave Brooklyn is the raw-sewage flowing in that long-polluted body of water.

While the borough has often showed up in Lethem's novels, the New York Observer reports today that Queens is the setting for his next! At the aforementioned talk at the library, Lethem does mention that his mother was from Queens.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Carlson in Arts & Entertainment on October 1, 2010 5:10 PM

Comments [rss]

John L

Another native New Yorker goes into exile.

justthinkin

Hey, jonathan, just take a right turn when you hit the end of the Gowanus Canal, make your way to the Panama Canal, and you'll hit the coast in about a week. But watch out for those Gulf hurricanes.

thelexiphane

If You Don't Love Me Yet = Lethem in Los Angeles, then I hope he makes it a short engagement.

Mordicai

Lethem has gone back & forth for me-- I like some of his fringe-ier stuff, like "As She Climbed Across the Table," but I mostly feel like he writes a good half-a-novel & then decides to get "cute" with it-- witness "Girl in Landscape." Can I go ahead & blame "Fortress of Solitude" on California? I was deeply unimpressed. I think he has a lot of potential but he wants to write genre but doesn't want to admit that any given genre is just as good as the genre we call "literary."

jaycjay

"I even miss his tobacco-spitting."

Yep, we hear the first thing people miss about Wallace is the tobacco juice flowing from his mouth.

Now does the Markowitz comment make sense? See, the things people miss about a person or place are whatever things they remember most clearly.

Lethem probably will miss the canal. That doesn't mean that he particularly likes it as it is, it means that it's one of things that defined his childhood neighborhood.

jaycjay

"Yep, we hear the first thing people miss when they leave Brooklyn is the raw-sewage flowing in that long-polluted body of water."

Lethem grew up in Gowanus, and the canal has figured prominently in his work -- in particular in Motherless Brooklyn.

At least Marty Markowitz knew that.

nicemarmot

I'm a Pomona alumnus who studied with David Foster Wallace. He was an amazing guy and utterly brilliant teacher (I would say hands-down the best teacher I ever had) and it broke my heart to see him go the way he did. I can't even express how much I miss his endless footnotes. I even miss his tobacco-spitting.

That being said, Lethem could be a good replacement. We'll see how he gets along with the student crowd at Pomona, they can be a prickly bunch.