There’s a great article up on the New York Magazine website about Jonathan Lethem’s forthcoming book, Chronic City. For those who may not know, his most famous book is probably Motherless Brooklyn, and the man is very Brooklyn-centric. He usually writes about Brooklyn. He lives in Brooklyn. I’ve seen him at the Brooklyn Book Festival. And now he is crossing the bridge…to the “weirder” side.
In his interview, he suggests that his inspiration for the derailment came from Woody Allen.
Lethem is encroaching upon Allen’s territory: Chronic City, whose working title was Manhattan, and which Lethem describes as a cross between the famous borough-centric New Yorker cartoon and “the darkest Seinfeld episode ever,” takes place entirely on the Upper East Side.
Sounds good to me. I also have read an excerpt from this book and can tell you myself that the language he uses is on par with the greatest writers of out time. Check out the article when you get a chance!
-David