Re: RARA-AVIS: Lethem short fiction: Lessig

From: a.n.smith ( ansmith@netdoor.com)
Date: 11 Jul 2001


> AS SHE CLIMBED ACROSS THE TABLE,
> I've seen none of his short fiction.
> > Has Lethem published a collection?

AS SHE CLIMBED... was a novel. I think the collection is called AMNESIA MOON. He also edited a recent book of amnesia stories, which I think is out on Vintage Crime, although I've never seen a copy. He's an interesting case--started with sci-fi magazines, then just started deconstructing genres, from sci-fi to speculative to the campus comedy (AS SHE CLIMBED...) to hardboiled to westerns (mixing and matching as he goes). But he has recently decided to try placing things with more literary magazines. McSweeney's published a novella of his in hardback. It costs ten books, looks nice.

I still think the most impressive thing about MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is its dismantling of a typical detective's hard-boiled language through the Tourette's Syndrome narrator. Like that joke early on in the book that won't get out of Lionel's brain, just keeps circling, mutating, growing in different directions.

Neil Smith

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