The Gray Area with Sean Illing

The Fortress of Solitude saw it all coming

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Vox's Constance Grady talks with writer Jonathan Lethem about his 2003 work The Fortress of Solitude in this recording from a live Vox Book Club event. They discuss the prescient and still-relevant themes of the novel — like the issues of appropriation in art, gentrification, and superheroes, how Lethem approaches "realism" in his writing, and the role of music and comics in both his own life and the lives of his characters.

Vox Conversations will be on summer break the week of July 4th, and will return on Monday, July 11th.

Host: Constance Grady (@constancegrady), staff writer, Vox

Guests: Jonathan Lethem, author

References: 

  • The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem (Vintage; 2003)
  • "The Fortress of Solitude is a fraught and uneasy love letter to a vanished Brooklyn" by Constance Grady (Vox; May 20)
  • "The Author Looks Inward: A Conversation with Jonathan Lethem" by Brian Gresko (LARB; Sept. 8, 2013)
  • Another Country by James Baldwin (1962)
  • Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901)
  • Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)


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    This episode was made by: 

    • Producer: Erikk Geannikis
    • Editor: Amy Drozdowska
    • Engineer: Patrick Boyd
    • Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall

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