Jonathan Lethem is the author of eight novels, including Girl in Landscape and Chronic City, and five collections of stories and essays, including The Ecstasy of Influence (2011). He has previously written the introductions for the NYRB Classics editions of A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis and On the Yard by Malcolm Braly, as well as Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley. He teaches at Pomona College and lives in Los Angeles and Maine.
Books
Store of the Worlds
An original collection of stories from an overlooked master. “One of the few acknowledged humorists in SF, and by far the funniest, Sheckley plays with myths the way Mel Brooks plays with classic movies.” —The New York Times Book Review
A Meaningful Life
A black comedy about real estate and redemption and the pitfalls of using the one to get the other. Lowell Lake (from Idaho) thinks that he has found the cure for the quarter-life doldrums in the form of a fixer-upper in Brooklyn, but soon discovers that he has lost his livelihood, his wife, and possibly his sanity.
On the Yard
A major American novel, and arguably the finest work of literature ever to emerge from a US prison, On the Yard is a book of penetrating psychological realism.