The normal things that begile you in fiction that make you identify with characters are also

choices about who to care about and what to pay attention to and what I wanted this

book to say was, don't decide, don't make any clear decisions about who you're paying

attention to. Welcome back to working. I'm your host, June Thomas. And I am your other

host, Isaac Butler. Isaac, it is so nice to see you again and to hear your slightly

cold, ridden voice. Yeah, I'm getting over a cold, but it means that I have like a truly

amazing podcasting voice. Truly. If I had this voice all the time, imagine the thousands

of dollars I could make. But enough about your voice. Tell me about the voice we heard

at the top of the show. That was the voice of the wonderful, brilliant, novelist, essayist,

creative writing professor, Jonathan Leatham. Now, Jonathan is one of our rare returning

guests. Why did you want to talk to him now? Well, the first time I interviewed him was

right after we launched this show. And I do feel like we have a more audience, different

audience now. And so it's new to you. But the second thing is that Jonathan has a new

book coming out. It comes out about a week after this episode, heirs called Brooklyn

Crime novel. It's a revisiting of material he last wrote about 20 years ago in his novels,

Motherless Brooklyn, and Fortress of Solitude, as well as his essay collection, The Disappointment

Artist. Now, these three books really catapulted him to like an international renown and made

him a prominent American novelist. He won him a Arthur during that period. You know, it

really changed his life and his career. And all of that work is circling his childhood

in the 60s and 70s in Borum Hill, Brooklyn. Also happens to be where I live. Well, this

novel is kind of re-circling the stuff that earlier worked circled. And in the process,

I think kind of reinventing what the novel is for and what it can do. And so I was really

...