Interview: Jonathan Lethem

MacArthur “genius grant” recipient and novelist Jonathan Lethem ignores the boundary between literary fiction and “lower” pop-culture or genre work, drawing inspiration from Raymond Chandler, Philip K. Dick, and comics. Lethem stayed mostly in science-fiction territory in early novels like Gun, With Occasional Music, and found wider success with 1999′s National Book Critic’s Circle Award-winning Motherless Brooklyn, about a Tourette’s-afflicted private eye. He drew on his Brooklyn childhood for 2003′s The Fortress Of Solitude, both a detailed reminiscence of the 1970s and a literary superhero tale. His new You Don’t Love Me Yet follows the romantic entanglements and unexpected success of a nameless young L.A. band. The A.V. Club recently talked with Lethem about kangaroos, the importance of escaping the familiar, and the question of who really owns an idea.

Originally published on avclub.com April 5, 2007. Read the complete article.

Inventory: 13 sidekicks who are cooler than their heroes

1. Tonto, the Lone Ranger movies
The Lone Ranger’s faithful Indian companion debuted in the 1930s, an age not known for its enlightened attitudes toward minorities. And writers like Sherman Alexie have pointed out Tonto’s more problematic aspects, like his stereotypical broken English. But from the beginning, Tonto was depicted as a heroic figure in his own right, and not so much the Lone Ranger’s assistant as his friend. Tonto was saddled with pidgin dialogue, but he wasn’t dumb, and could track bandits and right wrongs with a skill equal to the masked man’s. Also worth noting: The similar character dynamic in the Lone Ranger spin-off The Green Hornet, between the Hornet and his Asian sidekick Kato, led to Bruce Lee’s American breakthrough role on the short-lived 1966 TV series. And few people, sidekicks or not, are cooler than Bruce Lee.

9. Dr. Pretorius, Bride Of Frankenstein
It’s so hard to find good help these days, as Dr. Henry Frankenstein found out. In the original movie, his lab assistant steals the wrong brain. In the sequel, Bride Of Frankenstein, his old teacher shows up and nearly steals the entire film. Though Henry is nominally the lead scientist in their partnership, Dr. Septimus Pretorius wins hands down in the “mad scientist” department, swanning through the movie with such gleefully macabre abandon that he makes the wet-blanket Henry instantly forgettable. Where Frankenstein is plagued by his wishy-washy conscience, Pretorius revels in his blackmails and grave robberies, and even goes tomb-looting with a sense of style, sticking around after the corpse is dragged away, and having a light supper and a smoke inside a mausoleum.

11. Marvin, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
Douglas Adams’ science-fiction satire contains no shortage of characters who’d be fun to get drunk with. And even terminally bewildered protagonist Arthur Dent seems like a nice enough guy. But no character captured the hearts of Adams’ fans as much as the gloomy Marvin, the Paranoid Android. Though Marvin’s constant melancholy was a source of irritation to his shipmates on the Heart Of Gold, it was easy to sympathize with the slump-shouldered robot. Marvin may have exaggerated and obsessed over his many burdens—pain in all the diodes on his left side, or being forced to park cars for millions of years while his friends went to a fancy restaurant. But in Douglas Adams’ mixed-up and often terrifyingly random universe, Marvin’s weary resignation was one of the only sane responses to life. Besides, Marvin was more than a piece of miserable machinery, he was also the series’ stoic hero figure—often the only character smart enough to know what was actually going on, he repeatedly saved the lives of his (usually ungrateful) friends at great peril to himself. Whether it meant facing down an intelligent battle tank unarmed or staying behind on a doomed starship while the others teleported to safety, Marvin was always willing (though never eager) to put himself in harm’s way. Perhaps Marvin’s popularity also owed something to Adams’ own identification with the character—though it was inspired by a fellow writer named Andrew Marshall, Marvin’s disconsolate pessimism also came from Adams’ own bouts with depression.

Originally published on avclub.com Feb. 26, 2007 as part of a group-written Inventory feature; I wrote the sections on Tonto (and Kato), R2D2, Nobody, Inigo Montoya, Dr. Pretorius, Marvin, and Mouse. Read the complete article.

Review: Richard Stark, Ask The Parrot

When Donald Westlake invented Parker, the iron-cold thief protagonist of the series Westlake writes under the pen name Richard Stark, he didn’t know that Parker would be one of the noir genre’s most enduring creations. If he had, he’d have given Parker a first name. But Parker has been just fine without one through 23 novels. What’s important about him isn’t who he is, but what he does: He steals, and survives the aftermath. Under his real name, Westlake writes lighthearted comic caper novels, often about luckless burglar John Dortmunder. Stark offers colder, bloodier, and more psychologically tense tales—if Westlake takes after Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, Stark takes after Red Harvest. At its heart, the Parker series is about professionalism, and a man utterly ruthless in pursuit of his job.

Originally published on avclub.com Nov. 30, 2006. Read the complete article.

Interview: Donald E. Westlake (a.k.a. Richard Stark)

Crime novelist Donald Westlake is a man of many aliases—Samuel Holt, Tucker Coe, Curt Clark, pseudonyms picked up over the course of 100-odd published books—but two names stand out, his own and Richard Stark. As Westlake, he mostly writes comic caper novels, notably his half-dozen books about luckless criminal John Dortmunder. As Stark, he’s created one of the noir genre’s most definitive antiheroes in the cold-hearted master thief Parker. His books have been filmed many times, including the well-regarded Point Blank in 1967, and he was nominated for an Oscar for his 1990 adaptation of Jim Thompson’s The Grifters. His latest book is a new Stark novel, Ask The Parrot, which picks up Parker on the run from the law after the disastrous bank heist of the previous Nobody Runs Forever. Recently, Westlake talked with The A.V. Club about making it up as he goes, getting into his characters, and the crooks who read his books.

Originally published on avclub.com Nov. 16, 2006. Read the complete article.

Review: Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions And Wonders

English expatriate Neil Gaiman has arguably received the most attention for fantasy novels like American Gods and Anansi Boys, whose success raised him from genre obscurity to a space on the bestseller lists near Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. But he’s had a knack for the short story ever since his work on the Sandman comic series—a format that rewards the ability to say everything that needs to be said in 24 pages of large illustrated panels and short word balloons.

Fragile Things, Gaiman’s third short-story collection, is probably best viewed as a collection of B-sides rather than any kind of unified artistic statement. The works here include short poems, a novella-length American Gods sequel, and stories compiled from far-flung anthologies, including one written to illustrate a photograph of a sock monkey. So it’s understandable that some pieces are more consequential than others. Still, even the trifles are engagingly written, such as “Strange Little Girls,” a set of brief character sketches written for his friend Tori Amos, as liner notes to her 2001 album of the same name. The similar “Fifteen Painted Cards From A Vampire Tarot” seems even more like a warm-up writing exercise published prematurely, especially since Gaiman admits there are seven more cards yet to be written about.

That isn’t to say that the 31 pieces here (32, counting one tucked away in Gaiman’s introduction) are all oddments. The Hugo-winning “A Study In Emerald” cleverly interweaves the worlds of Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft by re-imagining Sherlock Holmes’ debut mystery in a Victorian England ruled by Cthulhu and its brethren. Another Lovecraft-inspired gem plants a character inspired by P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster in a world of wittily overstuffed gothic horror, and follows his frustrated attempts to write “serious” fiction to a satisfyingly logical conclusion. And it might seem odd that one of the best stories here, “Goliath,” was written for-hire to help promote the first Matrix movie, but Gaiman has a facility for putting his own twist on other people’s invented worlds, especially when he’s given the freedom to explore on his own terms. Though Fragile Things‘ odds-and-ends nature inevitably makes it disjointed, it’s also a good showcase for the breadth of Gaiman’s darkly whimsical imagination, wry humor, and penchant for elegantly creepy horror.

Originally published on avclub.com Oct. 19, 2006. Read the complete article.

Laying odds in the Harry Potter dead pool: Who will die in “”Deathly Hallows””?

A year or more from the final chapter in the Harry Potter series, the boy wizard can still make headlines. Author J.K Rowling recently let slip a particularly juicy piece of news — in the forthcoming book, two major characters will die during the final confrontation with the evil wizard Lord Voldemort — and Harry himself seemed especially likely.

Rowling has known for years how the series ends; the final chapter of the as-yet-untitled closing novel was one of the earliest she wrote. But in a June interview with the British TV talk show “Richard & Judy,” she revealed that she had changed her plans: One character she’d thought would die now survives, but two others die instead.

That’s the price, said Rowling, of fighting evil. Villains “don’t target the extras, do they? They go for the main characters, or I do,” she said. Not surprisingly, fans began speculating on the identity of the unlucky pair almost immediately, and the Internet gambling site WagerWeb.com even began offering odds.

It’s not the first time a major character has died. Harry’s grandfatherly mentor, Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, was murdered at the end of the most recent book, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” Or was he? It’s clear that more remains to be revealed about what really happened. Did Dumbledore fake his death? Is his apparent killer, Severus Snape, really evil, or a double agent? We have yet to find out.

In real life, death is permanent, but not always in fiction. Obi-Wan Kenobi of “Star Wars,” another mentor figure, is killed at the end of the first film, but reappears later as an advice-giving spirit. And in “Lord of the Rings,” the wizard Gandalf returns from the beyond even more powerful than before.

Originally published on msnbc.com Aug. 1, 2006. Read the complete article.

Will next ‘Potter’ book answer these questions?

It’s been a long two-year wait for fans of the Harry Potter novels for J.K. Rowling to finish the next installment — a wait made a little easier by the best film adaptation so far, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” But at last, on July 16, copies of “Harry Potter And The Half-BloodPrince” will fly off bookstore shelves so fast it will seem like readers have cast summoning spells. (“Accio book!”)

Since there’s one more volume left in the seven-book series, it’s too soon to expect resolution to many of Rowling’s as-yet-unanswered questions. In fact, it’s likely that Harry will be in worse trouble than ever at the end of this book, the better to create a cliffhanger leading into the as-yet-untitled final story. But here are a few mysteries, some important and some trivial, that I hope Rowling will explore in “Prince.”

Originally published on msnbc.com July 16, 2005. Read the complete article.

Can Hitch-Hiker’s survive Hollywood?

Over the course of nearly three decades, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” has been many things. It began as a radio drama — a terrifically sharp, satirical sci-fi piece about the destruction of the Earth because of a bureaucratic snafu, and all the fun that came next. … The radio series was a smash hit on its debut in 1977, making a star (or at least a popular cult author) out of its creator, Douglas Adams, and spawning “Hitchhiker” adaptations in nearly every form imaginable — books, two stage plays, a TV series, a computer game, even a beach towel.

Just about the only thing “Hitchhiker” hadn’t been turned into was a feature film, which became a lifelong quest for Adams, who spent nearly 20 years trying to get a film project off the ground before his untimely death from a heart attack in 2001. Ironically, that tragic event seemed to break the Hollywood dam, leading to the movie starring Martin Freeman, Mos Def and Sam Rockwell that arrives on screens Friday.

Originally published on msnbc.com April 28, 2005. Read the complete article.

Review: H.P. Lovecraft, Tales

Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft died in poverty in 1937, mostly unknown and treated with derision by the reputable literary world, to the degree that it acknowledged him at all. But over time, he found increasing cult popularity—his works have been filmed at least 40 times—and a more grudging but genuine critical acceptance. The new Lovecraft anthology Lovecraft: Tales, part of the prestigious Library Of America series, is the clearest indication yet of his rising reputation, and a victory both for Lovecraft and for the often-disrespected genres he worked in. Edited by Ghost Story author Peter Straub, Tales collects 20 of Lovecraft’s best stories, including “The Call Of Cthulhu,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “Herbert West—Re-Animator.”

Originally published on avclub.com March 8, 2005. Read the complete article.

The myths behind the magic of ‘Azkaban’

One of the aspects we love about the “Harry Potter” series is J.K. Rowling’s sly use of mythological creatures and characters to help populate the world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rowling’s fervent imagination supplies her stories with more than a few magical creatures of her own devising, but even the most imaginative writers have their sources, and we thought it might be fun to trace a few of the mythic antecedents of some of the monsters and magics you’ll encounter when the movie version of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” opens June 4.

Originally published on msnbc.com June 3, 2004. Read the complete article.