Jonathan Lethem will be signing issue 7 at Printed Matter Tuesday, September 15th from 5-7PM!
image by Lenny Gonzalez
Issue 7 of THE THING will be released to the public on Tuesday September 15 at Printed Matter in New York City. Jonathan Lethem will be on hand to sign issues from 5:00-7:00PM. If you are around, come and join all of us. We would love to see you and say hi.
The issue, which is titled “Chaldron Optical System,” consists of a clam-shell case, a care and maintenance instruction booklet (written by Jonathan and the editors), and a pair of glasses with text embedded on the inside arms. It was designed and manufactured in collaboration with Matt Singer and Selima Salaun of Selima Optique. This is their first collaborative endeavor under the banner of Project Selima & Matt.
Jonathan Lethem is the author of The Fortress of Solitude and six other novels. His stories and essays have appeared widely. In 2005 he was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation.
Jonathan’s issue is based on his ongoing interest in “impossible objects.” In describing his work on this issue, he says, “ for the last few years (and in another sense, for my entire life), I’ve been concerned with fictions that among other things present human encounters with “impossible objects”, a description that encompasses instances as diverse as Henry James’ THE GOLDEN BOWL, Arthur C. Clarke’s RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA and Dr. Seuss’s ON BEYOND ZEBRA. I’ve finished a novel, to be published in October, called CHRONIC CITY, in which the object in question is called a “chaldron”. During the years of this book’s writing I found myself by chance repeatedly drawn into collaborations with a series of other artists or art-presenters (see: Jennifer Palladino, Matthew Ritchie, and THE THING) and in each case I used it to further the foolish postulate that “chaldrons” were a part of the world outside the novel, an error shared by my book’s characters.”
Issue 7 will be available on-line at thethingquarterly.com and through Printed Matter in New York City; The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco; and Ooga Booga in Los Angeles. The price of the back issue is $60.