I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.
Jonathan LethemNo matter how enormous a novel may become, the physical act of reading determines that there's no way it can become a communal experience. To read is intimate. It's almost masturbatory.
Jonathan LethemI grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.
Jonathan LethemI guess they needed a maze in Japan, where everything's neat and tidy. In America everybody's already wandering around lost.
Jonathan LethemI've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they described the world I live in, with all of its subjectivity, irrationality, and paradox, were those which made free use of myths and symbols, fantastic occurences, florid metaphors, linguistic experiments, etcetera - to depict the experiences of relatively 'realistic' characters - on the level of their emotions and psychology, rather than in terms of what kinds of lives they led or what kind of events they experience.
Jonathan Lethem