Jonathan Lethem is trying to tell me something, I am not listening.
You know what I like almost as much as movies? Books. Yeah super original, I know. I wish I had a cool hobby like rock-climbing or extreme body modification. Well I don't so I bought a bunch of books last night/this morning. I'm not gonna bore you with long descriptions of them but I feel the need to mention a couple of things. Okay I need to mention a couple of long boring descriptive things.
First: Jonathan Lethem. Jonathan Lethem fucking haunts my life. Jonathan Lethem is trying to brainwash me or some shit. He is a writer. He is a New York Jew person. He is everywhere. This is Jonathan Lethem, trying to force me to think about ducks:
I first came across a book of his in the Powerhouse Arena bookstore in brooklyn in the fall. I picked up a book thinking it was on color theory or disappointed people (I was kind of disappointed at the time) because it looks like this:
But then I read the back and found out it was actually a collection of Jonathan Lethem's essays on star wars, cassavetes, new york etc. So I bought it. And read it. And it was pretty good.
okay so I am in this book "club" (bookmooch, link on the right) where you can swap your books that you dont want for books you want. I have a list of maybe 30 books that i want if someone decides they wanna swap them, and what's the first book that I am offered? The only Jonathan Lethem book on my list: Motherless Brooklyn. Okay, fine, I wouldn't mind reading something else by him, but not for a while. So it's sitting on my nightstand. ok.
I go home to Iceland for christmas and ask my mom to get me some books in icelandic from the library because I haven't read any in a while. She sort of misunderstands and gets me all these originally english language books that have been translated into icelandic. She picks up, yeah you guessed it; Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of solitude and says "this one is supposed to be really good!"
I tell her yeah I wanna read it but maybe later in english, Give me something by Gyrðir Elíasson.
Last night I hung out at the St. Marks bookstore for a while because it was freezing outside and decided to buy a cool looking book of short stories about made up people mostly because Daniel Clowes is in it (and Charles Burns did the cover and I ALWAYS judge a book by its cover):
I totally DID NOT NOTICE until this morning in school when I was reading it that, guess who, YES Jonathan Lethem has a story in it. Okay wow. I can't really get rid of this guy.
So I pick up another few books at Strand after school, including Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings that I have been super excited about. As I was reading that this afternoon, Rachael London who's sitting next to me on the couch says "oh did you buy this because Jonathan Lethem loves it?" Surely enough, THERE HE IS AGAIN on the back cover of Tomines book praising it.
What the fuck. Did someone do a Jonathan Lethem voodoo curse on me? please let me read something that he is not involved in for ONE MINUTE.
Alright. Sorry about that. I just... if my life is to be taken over by one writer I would want it to be someone I really really love and not just pretty-good-Jonathan-fucking-Lethem.
The End.
As for Adrian Tomine, he happens to be one of the first people I was into when I got into my serious alt-comics stage at around 12. I remember reading this online and being like "yeah seems like a pretty cool guy." Then I read Optic Nerve and Summer Blonde, and always just thought of him as such a typical white american comic dude, maybe because he sort of did that on purpose as I learnt in a great radio interview with him (Fresh Air with Terry Gross). Turns out I've been pronouncing his name wrong for half of my life and his new book that's blowing everyone's mind these days, Shortcomings, is sort of intensely about NOT being the person I (and a lot of other people) assumed he was for a long time. I can't even comment on it further, I am too intensely intensed out after just having finished it. Well he's come a long long way since those teenage comic strips that I linked to earlier. If you like graphic novels you kind of need to read this. I just want to say this: in the beginning of the book there is a list of characters with pictures, names, occupation, birthplace and height. Every character in this book is shorter than me.
Thanks Tomine, thanks a lot for making me feel like a FREAK OF NATURE GIANT.
(this is the sad face that Adrian Tomine makes when giant scandinavian people get angry at him.)
Two people really thought I was so american for a long time recently. It makes me kind of sad, although being so terribly ambiguous can come in handy some times I guess.
Who's going to make a graphic novel about being really icelandic and confused in america? Me? I don't have time for that. I'm too busy being mistaken for an american person.
First: Jonathan Lethem. Jonathan Lethem fucking haunts my life. Jonathan Lethem is trying to brainwash me or some shit. He is a writer. He is a New York Jew person. He is everywhere. This is Jonathan Lethem, trying to force me to think about ducks:
I first came across a book of his in the Powerhouse Arena bookstore in brooklyn in the fall. I picked up a book thinking it was on color theory or disappointed people (I was kind of disappointed at the time) because it looks like this:
But then I read the back and found out it was actually a collection of Jonathan Lethem's essays on star wars, cassavetes, new york etc. So I bought it. And read it. And it was pretty good.
okay so I am in this book "club" (bookmooch, link on the right) where you can swap your books that you dont want for books you want. I have a list of maybe 30 books that i want if someone decides they wanna swap them, and what's the first book that I am offered? The only Jonathan Lethem book on my list: Motherless Brooklyn. Okay, fine, I wouldn't mind reading something else by him, but not for a while. So it's sitting on my nightstand. ok.
I go home to Iceland for christmas and ask my mom to get me some books in icelandic from the library because I haven't read any in a while. She sort of misunderstands and gets me all these originally english language books that have been translated into icelandic. She picks up, yeah you guessed it; Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of solitude and says "this one is supposed to be really good!"
I tell her yeah I wanna read it but maybe later in english, Give me something by Gyrðir Elíasson.
Last night I hung out at the St. Marks bookstore for a while because it was freezing outside and decided to buy a cool looking book of short stories about made up people mostly because Daniel Clowes is in it (and Charles Burns did the cover and I ALWAYS judge a book by its cover):
I totally DID NOT NOTICE until this morning in school when I was reading it that, guess who, YES Jonathan Lethem has a story in it. Okay wow. I can't really get rid of this guy.
So I pick up another few books at Strand after school, including Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings that I have been super excited about. As I was reading that this afternoon, Rachael London who's sitting next to me on the couch says "oh did you buy this because Jonathan Lethem loves it?" Surely enough, THERE HE IS AGAIN on the back cover of Tomines book praising it.
What the fuck. Did someone do a Jonathan Lethem voodoo curse on me? please let me read something that he is not involved in for ONE MINUTE.
Alright. Sorry about that. I just... if my life is to be taken over by one writer I would want it to be someone I really really love and not just pretty-good-Jonathan-fucking-Lethem.
The End.
As for Adrian Tomine, he happens to be one of the first people I was into when I got into my serious alt-comics stage at around 12. I remember reading this online and being like "yeah seems like a pretty cool guy." Then I read Optic Nerve and Summer Blonde, and always just thought of him as such a typical white american comic dude, maybe because he sort of did that on purpose as I learnt in a great radio interview with him (Fresh Air with Terry Gross). Turns out I've been pronouncing his name wrong for half of my life and his new book that's blowing everyone's mind these days, Shortcomings, is sort of intensely about NOT being the person I (and a lot of other people) assumed he was for a long time. I can't even comment on it further, I am too intensely intensed out after just having finished it. Well he's come a long long way since those teenage comic strips that I linked to earlier. If you like graphic novels you kind of need to read this. I just want to say this: in the beginning of the book there is a list of characters with pictures, names, occupation, birthplace and height. Every character in this book is shorter than me.
Thanks Tomine, thanks a lot for making me feel like a FREAK OF NATURE GIANT.
(this is the sad face that Adrian Tomine makes when giant scandinavian people get angry at him.)
Two people really thought I was so american for a long time recently. It makes me kind of sad, although being so terribly ambiguous can come in handy some times I guess.
Who's going to make a graphic novel about being really icelandic and confused in america? Me? I don't have time for that. I'm too busy being mistaken for an american person.
Labels: asians, books, weird americans
posted by Júlía at
11:31 PM
3 Comments:
Getum við farið í þessa Brooklyn bookstore þegar ég kem á morgun? Mig langar að kaupa soldinn Bukowski og sjálfsævisögur reiðra kínverskra kvenna sem ólust upp í New York ... og ef þig langar í Játningar Ágústínusar kirkjufaðirs, Stuart Mill autobiography eða leið 12, Hlemmur Grensás (sem er svaðaleg sakamálasaga frá 1987 - morð í strætó say no more...) Þá er ég alveg til í að skipta við þig ...
Mæli með Gangandi íkorna, Bréfbátarigningunni eða Sandárbókinni eftir Gyrði.
Já ég var einmitt að lesa gangandi íkorna. stórfín. brooklyn bókabúðin er geðveik en selur aðallega listaverkabækur (hence hélt ég að þetta væri litafræði)
...en við getum samt alveg farið! og/eða farið í aðrar frábærar bókabúðir, einsog st. marks bookstore sem er independent og skemmtileg með frábært úrval og opin til miðnættis, strand sem er með endalaust af ódýrum notuðum og nýjum og svo er nottlega allt til í Barnes and Nobles. þetta er allt í nágreninu! vei!
I don't envy you being followed by Jonathan Lethem, I read 'Fortress of Solitude' and just couldn't get into it. He's too wordy ('verbose' would make me sound smarter) or something. Of NY authors named Jonathan, my favorite is Ames- b/c he's kind of kreepy and gay. PS way to mention my triumphant return in your blog.
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