The normal things that beguile 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,

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 amazing.

You know, like 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 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 Leitham. 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 airs 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 a MacArthur during that period. You know, it really changed his life in his career. And all of

that work is circling his childhood in the 60s and 70s in Boreham Hill, Brooklyn. Also happens to be

where I live. Well, this novel is kind of recircling the stuff that earlier work 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 interested in what it means to go back to stuff you've already covered and to approach it again and what that process might look like.

Amazing. Well, I cannot wait to hear that conversation, but I bet you have a little something

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