It's All Over Baby Blue

I’ve never read anything about Jonathan Lethem’s background, hence, I never knew that he - like myself - went to Bennington for a brief time before leaving. (He dropped out, I transferred).

I rarely feel kinship with authors, outside of how their words make me feel, but there’s something about Lethem talking about how he decided to go to Bennington, about how he had to be pulled into reading contemporary authors, how he so specifically wanted to write books with a point (not a theme, but a point. When he talks about wanting to find that exact point where Philip Dick and Raymond Chandler intersect, I just want to swoon), that makes me feel like I did that first year at Bennington: hopeful, lost, and full of that melancholy beauty that signals endless possibility.

It could just be the rain. Or my writers-crush that I always have on him because he’s so good at words and atmosphere and that rush of clever mixed with lust of feeling and not so good with tying up plot and I feel like I, a definitely lesser writer, can so relate.  I feel like I understand something about how and why he writes, what he writes.

But it’s probably the rain.