More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers
by Jonathan Lethem | 
The Ecstasy of Influence
by Jonathan Lethem | 
Walk Through Walls
by Marina Abramovic | 
How to Write An Autobiographical Novel
by Alexander Chee | 
The Man Who Ate Everything
by Jeffrey Steingarten | 
The Wrong Way to Save Your Life
by Megan Stielstra | 
Vermeer in Bosnia
by Lawrence Weschler | 
Medium Raw
by Anthony Bourdain | 
The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New
by Annie Dillard | 
How Reading Changed My Life
by Anna Quindlen | 
Meditations from a Movable Chair
by Andre Dubus | 
The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
by Edwidge Danticat | 
Hungry Heart
by Jennifer Weiner | 
The Situation and the Story
by Vivian Gornick | 
After Henry
by Joan Didion | 
Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs
by Heather Lende | 
My Ideal Bookshelf
by Thessaly La Force | 
The Faith of a Writer
by Joyce Carol Oates | 
I Just Lately Started Buying Wings
by Kim Dana Kupperman | 
For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs
by Kathleen Rooney |
In a volume he describes as "a series of covert and not-so-covert autobiographical pieces," Jonathan Lethem explores the nature of cultural obsession--from western films and comic books, to the music of Pink Floyd and the New York City subway. Along the way, he shows how each of these "voyages out from himself" has led him to the source of his beginnings as a writer. The Disappointment Artist is a series of windows onto the collisions of art, landscape, and personal history that formed Lethem's richly imaginative, searingly honest perspective on life. A touching, deeply perceptive portrait of a writer in the making.