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Audiobook3 hours
The Disappointment Artist
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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About this audiobook
In a volume he describes as "a series of covert and no-so-covert autobiographical pieces," Jonathan Lethem explores the nature of cultural obsession-in his case, with examples as diverse as western films, comic books, the music of Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, and the New York City subway. Along the way, he shows how each of these "voyages out from himself" have led him home-home to his father's life as a painter, and to the source of his beginnings as a writer. THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST is a series of windows onto the collisions of art, landscape, and personal history that formed Lethem's richly imaginative, searingly honest perspective on life as a human creature in the jungle of culture at the end of the twentieth century.
From a confession of the sadness of a "Star Wars nerd" to an investigation into the legacy of a would-be literary titan, Lethem illuminates the process by which a child invents himself as a writer, and as a human being, through a series of approaches to the culture around him. In "The Disappointment Artist," a letter from his aunt, a children's book author, spurs a meditation on the value of writing workshops, and the uncomfortable fraternity of writers. In "Defending The Searchers" Lethem explains how a passion for the classic John Wayne Western became occasion for a series of minor humiliations. In "Identifying with Your Parents," an excavation of childhood love for superhero comics expands to cover a whole range of nostalgia for a previous generation's cultural artifacts. And "13/1977/21," which begins by recounting the summer he saw Star Wars twenty-one times, "slipping past ushers who'd begun to recognize me . . . occult as a porn customer," becomes a meditation on the sorrow and solace of the solitary movie-goer.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST confirms Lethem's unique ability to illuminate the way life, his and ours, can be read between the lines of art and culture.
From a confession of the sadness of a "Star Wars nerd" to an investigation into the legacy of a would-be literary titan, Lethem illuminates the process by which a child invents himself as a writer, and as a human being, through a series of approaches to the culture around him. In "The Disappointment Artist," a letter from his aunt, a children's book author, spurs a meditation on the value of writing workshops, and the uncomfortable fraternity of writers. In "Defending The Searchers" Lethem explains how a passion for the classic John Wayne Western became occasion for a series of minor humiliations. In "Identifying with Your Parents," an excavation of childhood love for superhero comics expands to cover a whole range of nostalgia for a previous generation's cultural artifacts. And "13/1977/21," which begins by recounting the summer he saw Star Wars twenty-one times, "slipping past ushers who'd begun to recognize me . . . occult as a porn customer," becomes a meditation on the sorrow and solace of the solitary movie-goer.
THE DISAPPOINTMENT ARTIST confirms Lethem's unique ability to illuminate the way life, his and ours, can be read between the lines of art and culture.
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Reviews for The Disappointment Artist
Rating: 3.375 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
16 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Although I haven't read more than a paragraph of Chuck Klosterman, I'm reminded. If you're into 70s art rock, PKDick, Magritte, Godard, Kubrick, and well, finish the list yourself, this should be a treat. I'm into those things too, but what boy isn't? But this boy likes to learn something when he reads.
Then there's the 'densely allusive' quality of the essays. Er. Watch for the echo from Finnegans Wake, congratulate yourself for catching it, berate yourself for your self-congratulation given the obviousness of the allusion, and then wonder why it's there at all. Hella Catchall Egotism?
For nostalgics only. I wish I hadn't read it.
And I suppose I just don't see the point of memoir, a genre Lethem does nothing to justify. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5ok
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People like to shit on this book for being self-congratulatory and indulgent..however, since these essays effectively work as a memoir, and I think we all like to talk about ourselves sometimes..I really didn't have a problem with it. In fact I found most of it quite enjoyable.Lethem has essentially compiled essays detailing his obsessions ranging from adolescence to present day (he's a little older than 40 now). You have an essay on "The Searchers" (John Wayne western), watching Star Wars 21 times in 4 months, acquiring every Philip K. Dick novel, riding the subway, Cassavetes films, Brian Eno, etc. Meanwhile, we learn a lot about Lethem's life growing up in Brooklyn with his hippie parents during the 1970s, and his coping with his mother's death at an early age. I think people get turned off because they feel like Lethem is a pretentious asshole just trying to show what "hip" taste he has. Maybe I'm more into it because my tastes overlap his somewhat or perhaps I'm just more willing to listen to someone be excited/neurotic about something. Either way, I think the essays provide an interesting analysis of pop culture as well as a form for telling a life story without just telling it. While I think we are larger than the sum of what we watch, read, and listen to, I don't think that negates the influence that pop culture and art have on shaping our identities.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading this slim collection of essays and personal reminiscences by Jonathan Lethem, you get the sense of his past novels being brought sharply into focus.The pop culture references that litter his novels (most notably Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress Of Solitude) are here given a context, a voice. From his first piece which recount his attempts to unsuccessfully defend the John Wayne film The Searchers to all his friends, to the chapter 13, 1977, 21 where he tells of his mixed emotions at going to see Star Wars 21 times. Lethem's style is witty and self-deprecating, and there's an underlying warmth and tenderness to his subjects that means it's difficult not to crack a smile whilst reading this fine volume.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sweet and sour in the right amounts, with occasional attacks of lachrymose sentimentality and preening self-awareness, but all in all, crisp like a whip-snap and exuberant in all its tweedy, four-eyed enthusiasms. IT WAS NICE. I HAD A NICE TIME.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jonathan, you're lonely and scar(r)ed. I get that and I respect that. Whether I get anything out of that… well, I think I'm just too well-adjusted, and this isn't irony.I'm willing to forgive hell of a lot for sentences such as "In either case, and in dozens of others, I wanted to submit and submerge, even to die a little. I developed a preference, among others, for art that required endurance, that mimicked a galactic endlessness and wore out the nonbelievers. By ignoring my hunger or need to use the bathroom during a three-hour movie by Kubrick or Tarkovsky I'd voted against my body, with its undeniable pangs and griefs, in favor of a self comprised of eyeballs and brain, floating in the void of pure art."and, even more so,"I tried to obliterate my teenage years in movie theaters because my teenage years embarrassed and saddened me. Between double features of French films, between putting one book down and picking up the next, I'd glance at my wristwatch to see if I was in my twenties yet."Anyhow – get rid of the adverbs, would you? Love, me
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Lethem seems to think the superifical details of his life as a boy and young man have significance by dint of being his. At best, his recollections are mildly interesting, and at worst--and more often--merely trivial. There's little insight here, and not much to engage the reader.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5i haven't read anything else by lethem yet and i might not if all his writing has such pretentious text.he's a great writer. i can't relate to his experiences 100% and i don't really want to, but it's great to read about that pocket of surreality that was brooklyn life in the 70s. it gives perspective to delany's dhalgren, und das freut mich.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Some boring but others good. Very inspiring.