Cosmic Cheeto Podstack 1: Jonathan Lethem, "Brooklyn Crime Novel"

On the Dean Street Boys as a collective consciousness and puking up Lego-chunks that you then end up tripping over

Subscriber, I’ve been promising you a Substack-podcast for some time: a series of videos in which I chat with some truly incredible writers about their books and their lives and their various sources of inspiration. Like a version of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee that’s called Writers on Zoom Getting Goofy. 

The good news is that I’ve finally made good on my promise. Introducing: The Cosmic Cheeto Podstack, a podcast-within-a-Substack during which I get to nerd out with some incredibly talented writers about their amazing work! And who better to inaugurate this podstack than Jonathan Lethem, whose appetite for silliness – like his appetites for rare books, microfiche, and Criterion Collection films – is unmatched?

I hope you enjoy this rambling conversation in which Lethem and I chat about the “soothing clockwork” of major Gen X novelists’ creative output, what it’s like to be a queer comic book nerd in Boerum Hill in the 70s, and how Brooklyn Crime Novel is both alike and different from his other books. I could have chatted about all this with him for another two hours, but the English students at Pomona needed their creative writing professor back!

Thanks for watching! More podstack updates to come ;)

Also, you can check out the My Queer Jobs series mentioned in the video here!