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The Disappointment Artist
by Jonathan Lethem


9.0

based on 13 reviews
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based on 1 vote
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Official Publisher Site

The novelist ventures into nonfiction territory with this collection of essays about various aspects of popular culture and his own childhood.

Doubleday, 160 pages
03/15/2005
$22.95

ISBN: 0385512171

Nonfiction
Essays
Literary Criticism

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

New York Observer Tom Shone

This is a gem of a book. I can't think of another that captures so well the livid warmth -- later curdling into embarrassment -- that characterizes the jejune, impassioned and borderline-pretentious tastes with which we first find, and then lose, ourselves. [21 Mar 2005, p.7]

San Francisco Chronicle Adam Baer

These are the highest form of personal culture essays: They explain what the subject means to the writer and then, through the use of story, they chart how that meaning became a strand in the dirty rubber-band ball he calls his self.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Zsuzsi Gartner

A collection that will be more appreciated by committed Lethem fans than by the casual sidetracked reader. [9 Apr 2005, p.D14]

The Onion A.V. Club Keith Phipps

The best essays in The Disappointment Artist, however, erase boundaries separating the personal world from the world at large.

Booklist Donna Seaman

Lethem succeeds in granting readers insights not only into his passions but also into their own. [1 Feb 2005, p.930]

Kirkus Reviews

Persistent and persuasive, like listening to that friend with the smartest take on just about any subject under the sun. [15 Dec 2004, p.1185]

Publishers Weekly

Starts with an intriguing, if emotionally distant, consideration of his lifelong relationship with popular culture and develops into a moving memoir that transcends those references altogether. [13 Dec 2004, p.53]

Boston Globe Amanda Heller

With surprisingly little sentimentality or self-flattery he tells us, essentially: Here are the seeds. See how they grew.

Entertainment Weekly Gilbert Cruz

Lethem's trademark pop insight makes this slim volume a remarkable read.

Los Angeles Times Marc Weingarten

By conflating rich critical insight with moving emotional subtext, Jonathan Lethem has produced a disarming treatise on the essential connectivity between life and art. [15 Mar 2005, p.E7]

The Observer Sean O'Hagan

An odd little book.

TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Henry Hitchings

The Disappointment Artist, while an unabashedly quirky book, succeeds on several fronts. Jonathan Lethem offers a probing critique of art forms and artists that are frequently underestimated, narrates his own creative genesis, and writes poignantly about the way we engage with our idols.

The Observer Steven Poole

Some of the writing is gimmicky... But Lethem, as readers of his novels will know, certainly has style.

The average user rating for this book is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dan H gave it a9:
Lethem is quickly becoming one of my favorite living writers. His obsession with his obsessions and his the ways in which he defines himself by them made me shudder with self recognition. I've enjoyed everything I read by him, particularly this, and his two most recent novels, motherless brooklyn and fortress of solitude which are as good as anything else i've discovered in the past couple years.

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The Disappointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem

The Disappointment Artist
by Jonathan Lethem