better than questions, a questionnaire

I'm looking forward to Jonathan Lethem's upcoming visit to Los Angeles next month - he'll be at LAPL and Skylight. In the meantime, he talks to NPR about giving away the film rights for You Don't Love Me Yet, and he also has a story in this week's New Yorker.

The ritual was made official the first time he invited me out for a glass of red after the movie, as though that were the real point of the afternoon. We’d sit at some Madison or Second Avenue wine bar in the dimming hours, invariably alongside those waiting for their dinner dates, those who made even me feel old. Whether Blondy ever felt old I couldn’t guess. His grandiosity, his U-turn anecdotes, his contempt for the obvious statement didn’t invite such guesses, only the tribute of gratified awe. I gave it. Blondy was like a skater up his own river, a frozen ribbon the rest of us might have glimpsed through trees, from within a rink where we circled to tinny music. I told him I had quit acting the first time we left a movie theatre together, before even finishing a glass. Blondy’s intimate smile seemed to say, not unsympathetically, that it was all for the best.