The novelist Jonathan Lethem listens here to recordings of his own New York State Writers Institute events over the past two decades. This propels conversation into wild places. It turns out that going into familiar moments—even listening to one’s own voice—can prompt discoveries. There’s a chance to find, as Lethem puts it, “worlds within the world.”

William Kennedy describes a similar discovery here. Going back as a journalist to his hometown of Albany, NY, was “a revelation,” he says. The city that once bored him became, to the writer in search of stories, a place of proliferating character, of drama—a world full of worlds.

You’ll hear in this episode the reward of applying mind to matter. Says Lethem: “We have tables and chairs and apples and cherries and shirts and pants and socks, but everything else seems to me pretty much up for grabs. Once you put subjectivity and consciousness in the mix, it all gets pretty strange.”

On this episode:

Jonathan Lethem (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Motherless Brooklyn and The Arrest.

Samuel Delany (from the archives). Books: Dhalgren and Nova.

Ann Beattie (from the archives). Books: What Was Mine and Another You.

Denis Johnson (from the archives). Books: Jesus' Son and Train Dreams.

William Kennedy (conversation with Adam Colman). Books: Very Old Bones and The Flaming Corsage.

Find out more about the New York State Writers Institute at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org.

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