Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Oh do!

And sure, I'll lob one: what are you listening to for pleasure?
  

    
And how has your taste in music evolved over the years?
  

    
Just this moment -- King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard has just
dropped a gigantic number of live albums for free on Bandcamp --
what riches! There's a completely accoustic show from Detroit that
I'm particularly thrilled by...

Somebody snuck me some of the new Neil Young archive and I'm having
a great time with it.

My 17-year-old has turned into a bebop purist and so we're hearing a
ton of classic jazz in the house and I'm feeling it.
  

    
Nice! I'm another Bandcamp enthusiast, and I'm listening to the
"ambient country" music of SUSS.
  

    
Ooh, see "ambient country" is a description that immediately
quickens my pulse. Reminds me of an old favorite band that recently
reappeared, Souled American. I think their catalog is suddenly
available again on Bandcamp and perhaps Spotify as well.

Also, Tonsstartbandt. Ridiculous name (and I'm not even certain I've
spelled it right). 
  

    
Thank you for both of those, listening to Tonstartssbandht (so
close!) now.

Another Bandcamp/SUSS connection is BNDCMPR, which is a way to make
playlists. The SUSS guys have a podcast that I don't listen to but they
place the music they discussed on BNDCMPR:

Ambient Country Episodes 1 & 2
<https://bndcmpr.co/9b52be48>

which has led me to Balmorhea, Stars of the Lid, William Tyler,
and others.
  

    
I have an ancient Spotify playlist that was seeded with Brian Eno,
Harold Budd and, yes, Stars of the Lid that I play pretty much
constantly. So, reading you two, I scurried over for a search on
Ambient Country and see that it is also called Bootgazing. Oh yes,
Bootgazing music. It's playing now. I'd like to call it Eno with a
Twang but it's not, it's actually its own interesting self. Maybe
I'd say Psychedelic Tumbleweeds.
  

    
"Bootgazing" is great!
  

    
No kidding. Spotify got pretty generic pretty fast, but I just asked
it to play SUSS and I'm surprised it hasn't offered them up to me
before now
  

    
Making a Spotify playlist based on these names as we speak.
  

    
Jonathan, I’m curious about the Jukebox section of your website,
jonathanlethem.com, with “lyrics by Jonathan Lethem.”  Tell us about
that!
  

    
I first wrote lyrics for my friends Eliot Duhan and Thiele Valdina,
in high school -- then for my friend Philip Price in my college
years. Philip's band then was called Memorial Garage -- he's gone
through a few different names and lineups but he's still making
music, now for a long time under the name Winterpills. I guess just
between Eliot and Philip I'd co-written fifteen or so songs before I
was publishing books.

Later I fell in with Walter Salas-Humara, of The Silos. He and I
wrote a whole album together in one shot, which came out under the
name I'm Not Jim. That set me off on a series of collaborations with
other musicians, including John Linnell of They Might Be Giants,
Jill Sobule, One Ring Zero, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. Then,
just to be promiscuous, I threw a bunch of lyrics (some of them from
my fictional rock band in You Don't Love Me Yet) onto my website and
invited anyone to have a go at them. There were some takers. And
Walter and I continued to write together; at this point I think he
and I have about thirty-five or forty songs together.

Most recently I began a collaboration with some musicians here in
Claremont, members of local bands associated with the Shrimper label
-- Refrigerator, Wckr Spgt, and Falcon Eddy. We're a kind of
supergroup. I even play bass on a few tracks. Stay tuned for the
release of that record -- the band is going to be called The
Disassociation. 
 
  

    
More music: You interviewed Bob Dylan and profiled James Brown for
Rolling Stone. There were other assignments around the same time,
plus several pieces about you and your fiction. What was the
connection there? Did you seek out those assignments? What struck
you about them at the time, and what has stuck with you?    
  

    
I read somewhere online a list of your influences.  The list started
with Philip K. Dick and ended with Lester Bangs, which was an
interesting progression.  I imagine that influence ties in with
<richardsonpete>'s observations.
  

    
We only have a couple more days until the official part of the
discussion comes to an end.  There is a question I've been waiting
to ask, and this seems like as good a time as any.

Out of all the reading that I've done about you for this interview,
I can only recall one place - your Wikipedia page - that mentions
the fact that you are a MacArthur Fellow. You won in 2005, which
means we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of that notable
achievement.

Apparently, nominees first discover that they have won via a
telephone call. Was that the case for you?  That must have been a
mind-blowing phone call.  Did you have any inkling before that, or
any idea who nominated you?   You've certainly demonstrated the kind
of astonishing genius that the Fellowship is intended to enable in
the nearly 20 years since then.

I think it would have completely changed my life.  Did it change
yours? 
  

    
Peter, there's a real story there. And it's a story I told, at great
length, in this piece I wrote on Medium a couple of years ago -- a
kind of "now it can be told" outtakes-and-backstory version of my
big James Brown assignment, which was also my origin story as a
Rolling Stone writer. 

https://medium.com/@jonathan.lethem/who-was-mr-rolling-stone-995a61be4e48

This long piece has numbered sections; if you want to skip past all
the James Brown stuff, the story of how Jann Wenner briefly decided
he needed to turn me into a big-time music writer is in section #8.

You'll also see there how I fell back out of the practice, and ended
up turning down some pretty wonderful opportunities: I could have
also done Bruce Springsteen and Sly Stone. It's all there in that
piece, including how I also had encounters with Jonathan Richman and
Keith Richards, though not under the auspices of Rolling Stone.

My experiences were variable -- a lot had to do with what drug
researchers call "set and setting" -- both for me, and for the
interview subjects. Dylan, for instance, who people expect to be
very difficult to talk to, had hand-picked me (he liked Motherless
Brooklyn) and was highly motivated to promote his new records. We
talked easily for three hours, and struck a lot of sparks. He was
deliberately funny and charming, but I also think we got along.

I will say that no such encounter (including some similar times
spent with a couple of movie stars) has ever led to an ongoing
connection. The experiences were deep, and unforgettable, but
they're islands in time. The only person I stay in touch with is one
of James Brown's sidemen.
  

    
Linda, taking your first question first -- the influences -- I'll
just say that what the internet arranges to have people learn about
you is often weird and sort of calcified around two or three
interviews or pieces written by others -- to which everyone then
refers, until they become 'reified'. (I can only imagine how much
worse this is about to get.) I don't know where I ever called Lester
Bangs an influence on me, though I do suppose he is one -- whereas I
probably mention Philip K. Dick every single time the question is
asked, which is to say by now hundreds of times. But I'd be
especially wary of seeing the list you found as a "progression" --
I've continued to gather influences, over the years, but they've
never seemed to me to be some kind of organized procession. More
like a sky full of stars that form various constellations each time
I focus my eyes on them.
  

    
So far as relating Lester Bangs to my actual work at that magazine,
I'd say it wouldn't have occurred to me. I was much more activated,
and enabled, when I began trying to write about music, by Greil
Marcus and Peter Guralnick. Paul Williams, of course. And another
old friend, Paul Nelson. Lots of people, but especially those four.
 
  

    
I'll try to tell the Macarthur story tomorrow, Linda. Meanwhile,
everyone feel free to keep the questions come -- I'm not going
anywhere! (Well, actually, I'm going to London on Monday. But they
have the internet there.)
  

    
Thanks for the link to your Medium article. It looks perfect for a
late summer Sunday afternoon. And it spurs me to ask, what do you
think of online these days? There was Medium, there was Patreon, now
there's Substack - the energy of being the new great thing seemed to
move from one to another - and of course there's Facebook, Xitter,
BlueSky, TikTok - what's working for you personally? And do you see
any format that is working for creatives in terms of reaching
readers and also maybe making some money in the process? 
  

    
I defer to Renshin here, but just a quick thanks for the pointer on
James Brown and Rolling Stone, Jonathan. I'm finishing a book about
the first decade of the magazine--in fact, I interviewed Renshin for
it--so your references to Wenner, Dylan, Marcus, Guralnick,
Williams, and Nelson are right up my alley. Your mention of Glen
Ellen, where I now live, also landed.

The vibe with Dylan comes through in your interview, and I can see
why you wouldn't want to repeat the James Brown experience.  
  

    
And I'm back to report that your James Brown piece in RS is
currently out from behind the firewall, free for all to read.
  

    
I remember laughing out loud reading the Dylan interview because of
your use of italics to capture his emphatic speech patterns.
  

    
So, Linda, the Macarthur moment: I'd had a little warning, a
suggestion they were considering me. Their vaunted secrecy had a
leak or two. Yet of course I didn't want to get any hopes up and be
disappointed, so I kept it out of mind. Then, the day the phone call
came I had a mysterious email asking to confirm my phone number, and
asking if I'd be available for a call later that day. That was
auspicious-sounding enough that I *did* get my hopes up. And kept my
phone on.

My then-wife and I were driving around Ellsworth Maine doing
errands. I was trying to keep busy. She never saw a drive-through
carwash she didn't want to drive through, so we were in the middle
of it, under the water jets and rolling brushes, when my phone
finally rang.

Of course it was a life-changer, but not in any way that isn't
obvious. I paid off credit cards, and two other people's financial
aid debt. And I spent the next couple of years reading and writing,
not teaching, and mostly able to say no to journalism too.

I also spent a month in Australia and the south island of New
Zealand, the most lavish journey I've ever paid for myself, or
likely ever will. At the great barrier reef I snorkeled with rays
and (tiny) sharks.

The direct products in my writing life of the freedom were Chronic
City and "The Ecstasy of Influence".

Then we had kids and soon I was poorer than I'd ever been before,
and still haven't totally recovered.
  

    
Rensin, Scott, Peter, thanks. I should have realized that I'd be
talking to some folks with expertise and knowledge of the RS world.

It was fun for me to be elevated to a kind of status in that
magazine for a while. Seems like a dream now.

Rensin, I don't know how to quantify my scattered impressions of
'the internet now' -- it's the ultimate "blind men and the elephant"
conversation, isn't it? (see also: "hyperobject") I mean, it seems
abject to me in a lot of ways, but that's been true for a while.

I spent twelve months being paid to be on Medium, and that was
terrific, since I was able to use it to develop some pieces that I
wanted to write that I was certain I wouldn't get paid for
elsewhere. A number of those are in the Cellophane Bricks collection
now. Some others that I'm quite proud of -- like the JB follow-up
piece I linked to, and the "Queer Jobs" trilogy, and the "Improving
the Searchers" piece, etc. -- just stay up on Medium, and I can
steer readers to them when there's a suggestion that they might
somehow be relevant to them.

But -- after a brief, almost prehistorical dalliance with HotWired
-- I haven't been the most online of authors, especially given my
involvement with science fiction folks. I'm the ultimate late
adopter of social media. After doing nothing for decades I finally
made an Instagram page about a year ago, and I'm having fun with it.
Seems low-pressure, at least the way I'm doing it.

Some folks have suggested I should be using Substack. Substack
suggested it themselves. I don't know. Of course the notion that it
would replace a lot of teaching income somehow is tantalizing, but I
don't know that I'm temperamentally inclined to do straightforward
enough things that I'd actually be worth paid subscription for very
many people. I'd hate to have to do a lot of arm-twisting to get $$
from friends. That said, I'm not against it for those for whom it's
working well. I read Greil Marcus there (but I've always followed
him anywhere) and also really love Laurie Stone's "Everything is
Personal". She just seems to have clicked into a very special gear
with that venue.

But I don't know if that adds up to much of a "take" on the whole
situation, sorry!