Reminder—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, Fortress of Solitude, the so-so new novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, and tons of other books, stories, and essays, will be appearing at the Schnitz tonight as part of Portland Arts & Lectures.

My little write-up/interview with Lethem can be found in this week’s Mercury, or online here. While I was working on that, several people asked me if I was a big Lethem fan. My typical answer was a sort of yes-and-no. Aside from that recent essay, I’ve never read anything of his that I unequivocably loved, but I still find him incredibly ambitious and talented. I thought Brooklyn got way dragged down in the plot category, but that the protagonist and Lethem’s writing style were amazing. I though Fortress was close to perfect, except for the superhero subplot. (Several people I’ve talked to felt the same way. Lethem has said in interviews that we’re missing the point of the book. I’m not sure that’s for him to say.) And I find most ofhis essays, particularly those collected in The Disappointment Artist, stiflingly dull. This sounds like a pretty dreary assesment of his work, but I still consider him one of our leading writers. When he hits, it’s usually in a total display of virtuosity (see his passage on Prince’s b-side to the Batdance cassette single in Brooklyn), which makes it very easy to overlook his less successful parts. Plus, his failures are of the super-ambitious type, which are infinitely more fascinating than the failures that come from lack of sticking your neck out. The guy is wildly talented, and an incredible writer. The fact that he hasn’t written anything that I absolutely love* fails to deter my fandom.

*the afore-linked essay notwithstanding