About the Book

Many know Jonathan Lethem as one of our most celebrated and eclectic writers, whose iconic novels—Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, Chronic City, among many others—play with genres and storytelling modes like a DJ mixing music. But Lethem grew up in his father’s studio, went to art school, and, in his own words, “made hundreds if not thousands of drawings, collages, paintings, hand-drawn comics, and even two animated shorts” before diverting, at nineteen, to prose. The surreal and form-defying panoply of his stories, essays, and novels celebrates—and mourns—this forsaken world of the visual and plastic arts. That leap, between the cellophane ephemerality of language and the brick-like tangibility of visual art, which operates as a sublimated wellspring for Lethem’s writing, is the subject of this book. 

Cellophane Bricks mortars together Lethem’s fictions in response to (and in exchange for) artworks by his friends with dozens of original essays. Here we tour his meditations on comics and graffiti art; his collaborations with artists and interventions into visual culture; and his portrait of the museum that was and continues to be his home, untethered from geography. Unique in Lethem’s kaleidoscopic oeuvre, Cellophane Bricks comprises a kind of stealth memoir of his parallel life in visual culture. Gorgeously designed, with stunning, full-color images from the author’s own collection and elsewhere, Cellophane Bricks is a ravishing assemblage for story lovers of all kinds.

Praise for Cellophane Bricks

“A multivalent, multiform achievement . . . Cellophane Bricks takes us under the hood, revealing the ways that art and life are coextensive . . . What most distinguishes the writing is its sheer exuberance. The book, for me, sits spine to spine with the collected art writing of the late, great Peter Schjeldahl . . . One is tempted to say that he moves the touchlines of critical writing, except that his collection evinces a delightful disregard of any such conventions from the jump . . . His book is a subtle reminder that criticism of any kind should aspire to start a trialogue with the creator and reader—to solicit a visceral response—and impart aesthetic bliss.”

—Rhoda Feng, Artforum

“An entrancing collection of stories and essays celebrating visual art . . . Combining mind-bending intellectual meditations with a visceral delight in his subject, Lethem’s electric prose animates the proceedings . . . The result is a transfixing look at what it means to make, and admire, art.”

—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“How does a fiction writer write about art? By analogy, of course. The many worlds of art reflected in these pages engender spirals of narrative and anecdote and samples of other people’s books dropped in and crossfaded. The media talk to each other like two people, awake but still dreaming, on opposite ends of the couch.”

—Lucy Sante

“Jonathan Lethem continues to teach me how to write about and with and underneath the art of others—whether it’s comics, graffiti, literature, or fine art. His attention is a catalyst all its own, transforming all it graces.”

—Catherine Lacey 

“Cellophane Bricks, a beautifully crafted hardback, celebrates the author’s appreciation for the world of images through its engaging spreads . . . Lethem’s refusal to churn out conventional art writing, in favor of dreamy, headlong exercises in worldbuilding (many of them fully realized works of short fiction), is . . . a principled commitment to reward these artists with a small piece of the thing that he does best . . . Lethem enacts a glorious performance of the power of images to set the narrative imagination ablaze.”

—Karim Kazemi, Document Journal

“An acclaimed author celebrates creativity . . . A sometimes lyrical, sometimes surreal, always surprising volume, profusely illustrated with images of paintings (including a few of his own early works), sculpture, collages, movie stills, graffiti, book jackets, photographs, and comics…. Astute, often idiosyncratic responses to works of art.”

—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author