Last night I heard Jonathan Lethem and Nathan Englander do a reading at the 92nd Street Y.  For clarification purposes, the dude on the cover of You Don’t Love Me Yet is definitely not Lethem.  Lethem did a great job reading one of the chapters by assuming the voices/personalities of his characters.  I have not read the book yet but as we have previously discussed, it’s about a nascent rock band in L.A.  During the Q&A, one of the questions referred to Lethem’s interview with Bob Dylan and asked what Lethem was currently listening to.  He talked a little about his love for music and then described how many people assumed he actually was a music critic since The Fortress of Solitude was semi-autobiographical.  He laughingly told how he got to jump to the top of the food chain and was asked by Rolling Stone to interview James Brown and Dylan even though he had absolutely no experience in this area.  Classic.

Nathan Englander also read from his newly released and first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases which took him 10 years to write.  He is definitely an interesting character - a real, “nebbishy” guy who was raised an Orthodox Jew and recently moved back to NY from Jerusalem.  He was clearly not comfortable doing the reading and speaking to an audience.  His voice throughout the reading was monotone and contrary to Lethem he did not give any insight into the characters.  That being said though, I found the writing much more engrossing than Lethem’s.  I read his first book of short stories, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, which was reviewed by me here.  I look forward to reading his new book which is set during Argentina’s “dirty war” with a protagonist named Kaddish (which is the Jewish prayer of mourning).  So far the limited reviews have been positive and a main character named Kaddish is reason alone to pick up the book.

My one disappointment with the evening was that my question which was whether the ring in Fortress of Solitude actually had superpowers was not selected.  If you have read this book - please comment on your thoughts around the “super ring.”  It has always been something that remains a mystery to me.