Join us in the Research & Development Store for a captivating conversation with Denise Markonish, MASS MoCA Chief Curator, and author Jonathan Lethem as they venture into a discussion of Lethem’s latest book Cellophane Bricks.

Many know Jonathan Lethem as one of our most celebrated and eclectic writers, whose iconic novels — Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and 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 fiction.

We’re excited to launch Cellophane Bricks (Ze Books) which gathers a lifetime of Lethem’s art-writing, along with stunning, full-color images collected by the author. Here we tour Lethem’s fictions in response to (and in exchange for) artworks by his friends; 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. Cellophane Bricks comprises a stealth memoir of Jonathan Lethem’s parallel life in visual culture.

About the Author:
Jonathan Lethem is the author of Brooklyn Crime Novel and twelve other novels. His work has been translated into over 30 languages. He has been recipient of The National Book Critics Circle Award, The World Fantasy Award, The Berlin Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches creative writing and contemporary fiction at Pomona College.

A Summer Chalet Book Event