The Collapsing Frontier

Jonathan Lethem is a novelist from Brooklyn, known for books such as Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude. His fiction began in science fiction and moved into mainstream literary writing, and he is known for dark yet compassionate humor. This collection gathers his personal responses to some of the most interesting and most troubling subjects in America today, and it mixes new fiction with essays on popular culture, cult and canonical authors, and difficult figures.

In "David Bowman and the Furry-Girl School of American Fiction," Lethem tells a true story about trying, with the help of a supposed expert, to force his way into literary respectability. The title piece, "The Collapsing Frontier," is new fiction about a journey into an ominous, uncharted realm. "Calvino's 'Lightness' and the Feral Child of History" recounts a personal encounter with a literary legend, in which Calvino's Italy meets Lethem's Brooklyn. "On Lem-ness" and "Snowden in the Labyrinth" both explore courage, art and the search for truth, and they arrive at very different results.

The book also includes a bibliography and the publisher's usual Outspoken Interview.