by JULIET WATERS

If writers had superpowers these would be Jonathan Lethem's...

We know already from his early experiments in science fiction, from his unique detective novel Motherless Brooklyn, and from his masterpiece Fortress of Solitude, which reads in some parts like Don Delillo guest writing the X-Men series, Lethem has the power to leap genres in a single bound. From The Disappointment Artist we learn of two more: the power to deflect the usual skepticism that greets the hippest writer of the day, and the power to melt hearts.

Forgive the mixed cultural metaphor (though it does seem the thing to do when writing about Lethem), in the animated movie of his life maybe he'll be played by Antonio Banderas. Like Puss 'n Boots, Lethem can draw blood, and he will with some of the bitter truths he has to say about writers, aspiring writers and writing groups - the very people who will be buying this book. But I suspect few of them will notice. Most will be too enthralled by the dilated pupils of his irresistible self-awareness.

What nudges Lethem out of the pack of self-conscious entertainment essayists and hyper-intelligent novelists that seems to be growing yearly is not his tremendous talent as a writer, it's his indisputable life wisdom. There's brilliance in his writing that is clearly innate, but just as clearly earned. Lethem probably would have been a great writer no matter where or how he was raised. What emerges, however, from these largely autobiographical essays is that he's had a life lived from many, often incongruous, angles. A life that must have been pretty painful at times.

His early years, oddly enough, given his impeccable New Yorker status, were spent living in Kansas City. This seems to be a rare period in his life that was relatively uncomplicated and happy. Big house, big space and much of his formative years spent in the company of an aunt who was a productive poet, essayist and children's writer. Things weren't as simple for his parents, however, particularly his father, a Midwest boy made good on a Fulbright scholarship to Paris, who taught art at the Kansas City Art Institute. An early anti-Vietnam activist, his father lost any chance of tenure, though it's clear his parents were itching anyways to get back to his mother's home turf.

From the age of five, Lethem grew up in the epicentre of Brooklyn counterculture. His parents lived in an urban commune, experimenting with drugs and an open marriage until their separation a couple of years before his mother died of brain cancer at 36. A chaotic life, exacerbated by the psychological and physical stress of being one of the few white kids in his Brooklyn public school, Lethem seems to have spent most of his youth as a chronic nerd. Any kid who saw Star Wars alone, 21 times over the course of its opening year, is more than a tiny bit lost.

Most of his young life seems to have been spent in the grip of these kinds of cultural obsessions. At some level they continue, but serve him better as an endearing critic. Occasionally Lethem reveals a geekiness that flirts with insufferable. He still loves seeing movies alone, and likes to take bathroom breaks so he can return to a different seat. But is anyone really going to believe "The rupture of the spectator's contract with perspective feels as transgressive as wife-swapping"? Then again, context is everything.

More often than not he rescues himself with a keen instinct for what kind of pretensions he can and can't get away with. Like a kid who has to live by his wits, but might get jumped any minute for being too smart for his own good, he knows the only strategy that's really going to save him in the end is authenticity and wisdom. Most of his life, by his own confession, he's had to fake it. Judging from this collection, he's having to do that less and less.

The Disappointment Artist by Jonathan Lethem,
Doubleday, hc, 149pp, $32.95