Best­selling writer Jonathan Lethem — author of one of my favorite con­tem­po­rary nov­els Moth­er­less Brook­lyn — has a new short sto­ry fea­tured in the sum­mer edi­tion of the Paris Review. The sto­ry is called “The Emp­ty Room,” and, once again, the back­ground, child­hood, moves to the fore­ground. It begins:

Ear­li­est mem­o­ry: father trip­ping on strewn toys, hop­ping with toe out­raged, mother’s rolling eyes. For my father had toys him­self. He once brought a traf­fic light home to our apart­ment on the thir­ty-some­thingth floor of the tow­er on Colum­bus Avenue. The light, its taxi yel­low gone mat­te from pen­du­lum-years above some pol­lut­ed inter­sec­tion and crack­led like a Ming vase’s glaze where bolts had been over­tight­ened and then eased, sat to one side of the cof­fee table it was meant to replace as soon as my father found an appro­pri­ate top. In fact, the traf­fic light would fol­low us up the Hud­son, to Dar­by, to the house with the emp­ty room. There it nev­er escaped the garage.

Anoth­er mem­o­ry: my play­mate Max’s par­ents had bor­rowed, from mine, a spare set of chi­na plates. I spent a lot of time vis­it­ing with Max and, when he let us inside his room, Max’s old­er broth­er. So I was present the after­noon my father destroyed the chi­na set. Max’s fam­i­ly lived in a duplex, the base­ment and par­lor floor of a brown­stone, a palace of abun­dance . . . Max and his broth­er had sep­a­rate rooms, and a back­yard. All this would pale beside the spa­cious­ness of our Dar­by farm­house. That was the point.

You can read the full text here. And please note: the Paris Review has just launched its first dig­i­tal edi­tion, let­ting you read the famous lit­er­ary jour­nal on your com­put­er, iPad or mobile device. More on that here. H/T Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

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Mar­tin Amis will nev­er win a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test. Nor did Nor­man Mail­er. Back in 1960, Mail­er famous­ly stabbed his wife after a din­ner par­ty in New York City, and even when things weren’t so extreme, he was often behav­ing bad­ly. Take for exam­ple this appear­ance on The Dick Cavett Show with Gore Vidal in 1971. It’s hard to find a less sym­pa­thet­ic fig­ure, at least dur­ing his ear­ly years.

As for Amis, he has nev­er worked hard to make friends, stak­ing out con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on Mus­lims and euthana­sia and then, ear­li­er this year, going out of his way to mock writ­ing for chil­dren: “Peo­ple ask me if I ever thought of writ­ing a chil­dren’s book. I say, if I had a seri­ous brain injury I might well write a chil­dren’s book, but oth­er­wise the idea of being con­scious of who you’re direct­ing the sto­ry to is anath­e­ma to me, because, in my view, fic­tion is free­dom and any restraints on that are intol­er­a­ble.” You get the drift.

But good writ­ers rarely win pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests. And few will deny that Mail­er and Amis have put their stamp on the Anglo-Amer­i­can lit­er­ary scene. So here you have it — Mar­tin Amis inter­view­ing Nor­man Mail­er in 1991, upon the release of Mail­er’s sprawl­ing 1400-page CIA epic, Har­lot’s Ghost. The first clip (above) starts with the nov­el, the remain­ing parts move in many dif­fer­ent direc­tions. The writ­ing life, writ­ing about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, the state of cap­i­tal­ism, Amer­i­ca after the Cold War, Mail­er’s lega­cy — it’s part of the 40 minute con­ver­sa­tion. Find Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

You can find this video per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our new col­lec­tion of 235 Cul­tur­al Icons.

via Metafil­ter