“I grew up in a house full of paintings and books,” writes Jonathan Lethem in his introduction to Cellophane bricks: a life in visual culture (2024). “My father made the paintings and my mother gave me the books. » From this artistic and literary background, Lethem became an acclaimed novelist, essayist and short story writer – and, as the texts in this book demonstrate, an extraordinary art lover.
The book’s “Art Fictions” section, the first in a series of five, presents examples of Lethem’s writing that parallel, rather than directly relate to, an artist’s work. “I couldn’t do art writing, or maybe I wanted to invent another version of what art writing would be,” he explains, “so I wrote what I always written: scenes and situations and voices, characters and settings, bursting elements. of my response to art.
The resulting text is not ekphrastic writing, nor the kind of simple fiction like that which Ann Patchett, Louise Erdrich, Richard Russo and company wrote in response to The Dark Paintings of Maine by Linden Frederick. Lethem’s article on Fred Tomaselli, for example, takes the form of a letter to a friend describing a visit to the artist’s studio in Brooklyn. During the story of their interactions, he offers a critical reading. “His work is celebratory,” says Lethem, “and I find it explosive and joyful, even when the drugs or certain other images take on a somewhat disturbing connotation.” But the rest of the piece is more entertaining than incisive, an account of their day in Williamsburg that includes lunch at Peter Luger’s.
Lethem’s texts are often wonderfully absurd, echoing his fiction, such as his surrealist detective novel, Gun, with occasional music (1994). In a tribute to Perry Hobermana new media artist who often integrates machines into his installations, he offers a series of amusing vignettes. Here’s one: “You call missing people and you get your own answering machine. You wait to leave a message, but the beep never comes. The beep never comes. The beep never comes. Beep.” This funny prank fits Hoberman’s focus on people and technology.
Part of the fun of this collection is the diversity of artistic practices covered by Lethem. In one section, he pays homage to graffiti which, he writes, “inserts like the blade of a knife between creation and destruction, between advertising and stealth, between word and image, cartoon, icon and hieroglyph” – a eloquent way to describe this fugitive art form. He also highlights his love for comics and cartoons, “objectified books,” and Italian verbo-visual artist Mirella Bentivoglio’s stone typewriter, among other subjects.
The collection ends with two essays related to the author’s father. In the first, “My father started a painting” (which also serves as a foreword to a new book by Richard Brown Lethem poems, Roots, stones and baggage (2023)), he shares his memories of how the aforementioned childhood home, with its studio and library, shaped his worldview.
Lethem immediately admits to suffering from a certain desire to be an artist. “I am sure I am not the first writer,” he muses, “to aspire to the apparently more solid and absolute situation of the painter or sculptor, who lives in what seems to be an enviable realm of craftsmanship , routine and skill.” As a former painter himself, identifying with visual artists, Lethem is “in search of a lost self”, as he puts it. With this collection of tributes various to painters, sculptors, etc., he is well on his way to finding it.
Cellophane bricks: a life in visual culture (2024) by Jonathan Lethem, published by ZE Booksis available for purchase online and in bookstores.
