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April 24, 2007
Interview: Jonathan Lethem Talks About New Book and Much Else
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
By Brad Lockwood
In the middle of a five-week book tour, novelist Jonathan Lethem pauses for an interview about his latest book, his work, Brooklyn as home and backdrop for writers and another smaller project to benefit Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn:
Only at Book Court in Brooklyn may fans buy Patchwork Planet — a short story/essay and collection of images co-produced with photographer Kate Milford...
Right.
And sales of that book underwrite one of your very local causes, could you talk about that?
Well, yeah, I mean it’s probably a drop in the bucket, to underwrite sounds like somehow carrying the day, and I can only wish that it was possible. But, yeah, it’s a little contribution to help defray the costs of the legal effort to at least slow down what I still believe is — what should I say? — An incompletely... (long pause)
Um, let me back up a bit...To at least slow down the developer, Ratner, and the construction of the enormous, really questionable and I think ill-conceived set of skyscrapers that are headed into the neighborhood just to the east of me. I don’t think that it ought to be left to the courts, it really should have been something that was decided at another level. And I continue to feel immensely disappointed by figures like Governor Spitzer and Mayor Bloomberg and Marty Markowitz for not finding a way to bring the needs and wishes of the immediate neighboring communities, the ones who will be so radically impacted, into the decision-making process. Rather than letting a kind of developer’s fait de complété become the way the borough’s fate was decided in this case.
Posted by lumi at April 24, 2007 9:12 AM