J. Robert Lennon

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2012-02-20T14:21:36Z

As an exercise, I just created a Google doc and gave my creative writing students semester-long editorial access to it, in the hope that they would create a crowdsourced short story. The original text reads: It was a type of day, with a certain kind of weather, in a place different from other places in a number of key ways. Then, at some point, something happened. An event. The event had repercussions. Those involved reacted variously, resulting in changes to the place and its inhabitants. One specific person, a person with numerous qualities, underwent some especially noteworthy changes. This is that person’s story. If you’d like to follow the story’s progress over the next few months, here’s the public link to do so.

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2012-02-18T14:11:56Z

Podcast listeners: Writers At Cornell is back! It’s now on a new page of this website, which you can access via a convenient new URL (http://www.writersatcornell.com) or via the Cornell drop-down menu above. I have just posted two new interviews, with novelists Catherine Chung and Alexi Zentner. If you subscribe to the podcast via iTunes, wait a few days for the new feed to take hold; these two interviews should appear soon.

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2012-02-01T21:32:00Z

This just in from Graywolf Press: the cover of my forthcoming novel FAMILIAR (click for full size). The gist:

Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual, somber visit to her son Silas’s grave when something changes. Actually, everything changes: her car, her clothes, her body.

When she arrives back home, her life is familiar—but different. There is her house, her husband. But in the world she now inhabits, Silas is no longer dead, and his brother Sam is disturbingly changed. Elisa has a new job, and her marriage seems sturdier, and stranger, than she remembers. She finds herself faking her way through a life she is convinced is not her own.

Has she had a psychotic break? Or has she entered a parallel universe? Elisa believed that Silas was doomed from the start, but now that he is alive, what can she do to repair her strained relations with her children? She soon discovers that these questions hinge on being able to see herself as she really is—something that might be impossible, for Elisa, for anyone. In FAMILIAR, J. Robert Lennon continues his profound and exhilarating exploration of the surreal undercurrents of contemporary American life.

It’s coming out in October. Watch this space for tour dates, interviews, and the like.

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2012-01-29T20:01:17Z

A correction to my Art of Fielding review in the LRB, from reader Mark Golden: “WP Kinsella, like so many baseball fans and like Cornell’s great classicist Gordon Kirkwood, is a Canadian, not an American.” Thank you! My penance will be an afternoon of poutine and Neil Young.

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2012-01-21T01:37:52Z

…and now, to conclude Reviews Of Novels By Other Youngish White American Men Week, I give you this piece on Ben Marcus’s “The Flame Alphabet,” from the Times Book Review.

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2012-01-18T03:02:27Z

My review of Chad Harbach’s The Art Of Fielding, temporarily flaunting itself openly on this side of the LRB paywall. Click while it’s hot!

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2011-12-30T23:54:05Z

Happy New Year. A few new things are coming out, and I’ll be doing a couple of university appearances in the coming months. First, I’ve written a book review for the January 22 issue of the New York Times Book Review; I’ve also got another long review coming soon in the London Review of Books. Both are of celebrated/anticipated novels, please look out for them!

I’m going to be in Sarasota, Florida January 17-20 to work with film students at the Ringling College of Art and Design; not sure yet if this will involve a public reading, but check their events calendar if you live in the area. And I will be giving a reading at Kingston University in London, at 7:30pm on March 1st. I’ll post more details as I get them.

Finally, here’s a new Inverse Room song, “Her Lifestyle Tools,” which will likely appear on some eventual new album. It may interest you to know that most of the lyrics came from this online random paragraph generator. (Please note the delightfully retro Firefox 3 and “Powered by Microsoft.net” logos.) Enjoy.

Her Lifestyle Tools by inverseroom

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2011-12-01T21:58:35Z

Oh yeah...those of you who have been using the Random Poem Idea Generator--it's in the links folder above, in the navigation bar. I'll be adding other stuff there, too--links to interviews, articles, and stories published online, among other things.

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2011-12-01T15:45:10Z

If you’ve been here before, you might notice that the website is undergoing an overhaul. There’s a new layout, new pages for video and my classes at Cornell, a clearer list of books with links to buy them, and a twitter feed in the sidebar. The “read online” page is gone, but most of that content is available in Video Game Hints, which you can download in the sidebar. The rest I hope to post on a new page before too long. Thanks for visiting; please let me know if anything is not working right or is unclear.

I’ve got a new story, “Total Humiliation in 1987,” out now in the new Epoch, and two short-shorts coming out soon in the Los Angeles Review. My review of Chris Adrian’s The Great Night has just been published in the London Review of Books, and the 2011 Best American Nonrequired Reading is now available; it includes my story “Weber’s Head.” Finally, I’ve got a new story, “Cottage On The Hill,” in the new experimental fiction annual Unstuck.

Books: my next novel, Familiar, will be published by Graywolf in October 2012, and I am told that the Happyland ebook release is imminent. Fingers crossed on that. It contains a lot of never-before-published content, 30,000 words’ worth in fact.

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2011-08-30T09:24:00Z

Salon has asked a bunch of writers to imagine the final days of Mummar Ghaddafi, so here's my take. It's called "Blood In The Corners" and features Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," Tina Turner, "The Breakfast Club," and a Rubik's Cube.