As much as I care about historical context - I'm very eager to read a really great historical account.
Jonathan LethemReading and writing are the same thing; it's just one's the more active and the other's the more passive. They flow into each other.
Jonathan LethemI work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.
Jonathan LethemAs a child growing up in pre-gentrification Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, I went everywhere by bicycle. My bike was in many ways the key to my neighborhood, which, at the time, was Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. This was in the 60s and 70s, before all the white people and restaurants. I really can't underscore boldly enough the fact that I grew up in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, before it was gentrified. You could get mugged!
Jonathan LethemInsomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.
Jonathan Lethem