Jonathan Lethem American novelist, essayist and short story writer Date of Birth: 19.02.1964 Country: USA

Jonathan Lethem: A Biography

Jonathan Allen Lethem, an American writer, essayist, and author of short stories, was born on February 19, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in a bohemian environment and attended a democratic school, unaware of his parents' poverty. However, he realized this when he went to college.

Jonathan's father, Richard Brown Lethem, was an avant-garde artist, and his mother, Judith Lethem, was a political activist. His younger brother, Blake Lethem, became an artist, and his sister, Mara Lethem, pursued a career in photography and writing. Jonathan grew up in the community of Boerum Hill in Brooklyn, which provided him with a rich multicultural experience. He became an encyclopedia of knowledge in all things related to Bob Dylan's music, watched "Star Wars" 21 times, and read the complete works of renowned science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Dick's works later had a significant formative influence on Lethem's own books.

Jonathan's parents divorced when he was a child, and when he was 13 years old, his mother passed away from a malignant brain tumor. This bitter experience haunted him for a long time and inevitably influenced his writing. In 2007, Lethem, already an established and successful writer, explained that his books always convey a tremendous sense of loss, whether it be the loss of speech, memory, or someone disappearing.

After high school, Jonathan intended to become an artist and spent his senior years at the specialized High School of Music & Art in New York. During this time, he drew in a vibrant cartoon style and published his own magazine called "The Literary Exchange." He wrote, drew, including cartoons, and even wrote a 125-page novel titled "Heroes," which was never published.

In 1982, Lethem enrolled at Bennington College in Vermont, where he studied art. It was at Bennington that he first encountered class differences. He realized that he was raised in a bohemian environment and attended a democratic school without realizing his parents' poverty. Soon, he discovered a stronger inclination towards literature rather than visual arts and left college in his second year.

In 1984, with only $40 in his pocket, Lethem embarked on a journey from Denver, Colorado, to Berkeley, California, hitchhiking thousands of kilometers through mountains and deserts. He spent the following 12 years in California, working in bookstores and writing his own books in his spare time. In 1989, he published his first short story, followed by several more in the early 90s. Finally, when he turned 30, Jonathan's luck turned around. His first novel, "Gun, with Occasional Music," combining elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It won the Locus Magazine Award for the "best novel of the year" and was nominated for the prestigious Nebula Award.

This success was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published one of his most successful books, "Motherless Brooklyn," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was recently announced that the novel will be adapted into a film, with Edward Norton in the lead role. In 2003, his novel "The Fortress of Solitude" became a New York Times bestseller.

In 2005, Jonathan Lethem received a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "genius grant." In 1987, he married writer and artist Shelley Jackson, but they divorced ten years later. In 2000, he married Canadian Julia Rosenberg, a film studio executive, but they divorced two years later. Currently, Lethem resides in Brooklyn and Berwick, Maine, with his third wife, director Amy Barrett, and their son, Everett Barrett Lethem, born on May 23, 2007. Since the spring of 2011, he has been teaching creative writing at Pomona College in California.