In "My Disappointment Critic," the essay excerpted in the Los Angeles Review of Books from Jonathan Lethem's new collection, the author defends his book The Fortress of Solitude (eight whole years later!) against what he considers to be an unfair review written by the august literary critic James Wood.

"Why, I hear you moan in your sheets, [...] violate every contract of dignity and decency, why embarrass us and yourself, sulking over an eight-year-old mixed review?" Lethem asks in the very first paragraph. The fairness of this question is evident in the general response to the essay so far, e.g. this comment: "Nothing more tedious than authors [...]

"Cul-de-sacs, like the one on Douglass Street, serve as observation posts. At one, Alberto Lasso keeps his collection of empty bottles, gathered from the surrounding streets in carts he built with help from a local welder. Mr. Lasso comes to the same spot every night, sorting bottles of imported beer into cardboard boxes to return for their 5-cent deposits. Once, he saw a car plow through the metal barrier at the end of the street and land in the canal. But otherwise, it's quiet. 'That's why I'm here,' Mr. Lasso said." -Kareem Fahim's ode to the Gowanus Canal in today's Times is nice to read. And the accompanying collection [...]