Exclusive Preview: SongWriter Season 3 Continues with Jonathan Lethem and Tift Merritt
Photos by Leonardo Cendamo, Alexandra Valenti
SongWriter is a podcast of stories and “answer songs,” featuring David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Gauthier, Cheryl Strayed, Amanda Shires and George Saunders. You can hear an exclusive preview of next week’s episode featuring Jonathan Lethem and Tift Merritt, only at Paste.
Bestselling author Jonathan Lethem has contributed lyrics to songs by They Might Be Giants and The Silos, and released an album co-written with Walter Silas-Humara. He says that he has always wanted “to be in the band.”
“I would just seek every opportunity to collaborate, and to try to inspire musicians to incorporate my language into their stuff,” Jonathan says.
On the newest episode of SongWriter, Jonathan offers a different kind of inspiration to Americana star Tift Merritt, in the form of his most recent novel, The Arrest. The book is what Jonathan calls a “dystopian pastoral” about a small farming community in Maine coping with the mysterious global failure of technology.
“The crisis that starts the book is [when] the past comes rushing back in the form of … Peter Todbaum, who is driving a nuclear-powered supercar,” Jonathan explains. “The last weapon, the last vehicle, the last espresso maker on planet earth.”