Jonathan Lethem Libri

Lionel Essrog, per tutti Testadipazzo, ha la tendenza a cacciarsi nei guai: la sindrome di Tourette lo rende un ribelle dalle frasi sconnesse, violento e pieno di imprevedibili tic. Senza genitori e senza pace, la sua esistenza è colorata da urla e pugni sferrati all'improvviso. La sua salvezza si chiama Frank Minna, un mafioso di poco conto a Brooklyn, che lo tira fuori dall'orfanotrofio e lo trasforma nel suo tirapiedi. Quando però Minna viene pugnalato e il suo corpo senza vita gettato in un cassonetto, Testadipazzo si mette sulle tracce dell'assassino per difendere il suo fragile mondo, ingabbiato dalla malattia ma assetato di giustizia. Un noir che consegna alla letteratura contemporanea un personaggio esploratore dei bassifondi di New York con la stessa caotica determinazione con cui affronta il labirinto della propria mente.

Siamo nel 2467 e da diverse generazioni sono i robot a prendere ogni decisione, mentre un individualismo esasperato regola la vita dell'uomo: la famiglia è abolita, la coabitazione vietata e ogni persona assume quotidianamente un mix di psicofarmaci e antidepressivi. I suicidi sono in aumento, non nascono più bambini e la popolazione mondiale sta avviandosi all'estinzione. Simbolo e guardiano dello status quo è Spofforth, androide di ultima generazione che agogna un suicidio che gli è però impedito dalla sua programmazione. A lui si contrapporranno Paul Bentley, un professore universitario che, riscoperta casualmente la lettura dimenticata da tempo, grazie ai libri apprende l'esistenza di un passato e la possibilità di un cambiamento, e Mary Lou, che sin da piccola ha rifiutato di assumere droghe pur di tenere gli occhi aperti sulla realtà.Tevis si muove dall'incrocio di queste tre vite creando una distopia postmoderna sulle inquietudini dell'uomo, dove la tecnologia senza controllo si trasforma da risorsa in pericolo. Prefazione di Goffredo Fofi. Con una nota di Jonathan Lethem.

An unexpected visitor in a man's apartment pens a peculiar confession intended for the host who is not present. This intriguing scenario unfolds into a deeper exploration of secrets and personal revelations, as the guest's thoughts reveal insights into both his own character and the absent host's life. The narrative invites readers to ponder themes of identity, connection, and the impact of uninvited intrusions on one's private world.

'A detective novel of winning humour and exhilarating originality.' - Sunday TimesLionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourette's Disease drives him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for mobster Frank Minna. But when Frank is fatally stabbed and his widow skips town, Lionel attempts to untangle the threads of the case.

A New York Times Book Review EDITORS' CHOICE. From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, comes the vividly told story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. In a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. Through the knitting and unraveling of the boys' friendship, Lethem creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race and class, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging, loyalty, and memory. "A tour de force.... Belongs to a venerable New York literary tradition that stretches back through Go Tell It on the Mountain, A Walker in the City, and Call it Sleep." --The New York Times Magazine "One of the richest, messiest, most ambitious, most interesting novels of the year.... Lethem grabs and captures 1970s New York City, and he brings it to a story worth telling." --Time

Exploring a diverse range of subjects, the book delves into themes such as sex in cinema, drugs, and cyberculture, while reflecting on significant events like 9/11. The author challenges conventional wisdom and shares deep insights into the multifaceted nature of artistic vision. Personal experiences serve as a catalyst for creative expression, making the narrative both provocative and introspective.

Conrad Metcalf has problems. He has a monkey on his back, a rabbit in his waiting room, and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. (Maybe evolution therapy is not such a good idea.) He's been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent Oakland urologist. Maybe falling in love with her a little at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, Metcalf finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the inquisitor's Office and the gangsters in the back room of the Fickle Muse. Jonathan Lethem's first novel is a science fiction mystery. It's funny. It's not so funny.

Jonathan Lethem is perhaps our most active literary voice mining the genre margins of our culture. In this unique collection he creates an anthology that no one else could. He draws on the work of such unforgettables as Julio Cortazar, who presents a man caught between the ancient and modern worlds unable to say which is real; Philip K. Dick, who tells the story of a man trapped on a spaceship of the somnolent, unable to sleep and slowly losing his mind; Shirley Jackson, who takes us on a nightmarish trip across town with a young secretary; and Oliver Sacks, who presents us with an aging hippie who possesses no memory of anything that has taken place since the early seventies. What Lethem has done is nothing less than define a new genre of literature-the amnesia story-and in the process he invites us to sit down, pick up the book, and begin to forget. Also including: John Franklin Bardin, Donald Barthelme, Thomas M. Disch, Karn Joy Fowler, David Grand, Anna Kavan, Haruki Murakami, Flann O'Brien, Edmund White, and many others.

Anna Karenina left her husband for a dashing officer. Lady Chatterley left hers for the gamekeeper. Now Alice Coombs has her boyfriend for nothing … nothing at all.  Just how that should have come to pass and what Philip Engstrand, Alice’s spurned boyfriend, can do about it is the premise for this vertiginous speculative romance by the acclaimed author of Gun, with Occasional Music.Alice Coombs is a particle physicist, and she and her colleagues have created a void, a hole in the universe, that they have taken to calling Lack. But Lack is a nullity with taste — tastes; it absorbs a pomegranate, light bulbs, an argyle sock; it disdains a bow tie, an ice ax, and a scrambled duck egg. To Alice, this selectivity translates as an irresistible personality. To Philip, it makes Lack an unbeatable rival, for how can he win Alice back from something that has no flaws — because it has no qualities? Ingenious, hilarious, and genuinely mind-expanding, As She Climbed Across the Table is the best boy-meets-girl-meets-void story ever written.

Omega, a mute, reluctant super hero from another planet, shares a strange destiny with a teenager, and they both face danger when a legion of robots and nanoviruses are sent from afar to hunt the two of them down.