Jonathan Lethem discusses science fiction, comics and his new novel Dissident Gardens with Jesse Hicks at The Verge:
I like that Philip K. Dick and the science fiction writers that I fell in love with were intrinsically in this termite role, nibbling around the edges of the culture. I know it was uncomfortable for them, and it certainly didn’t pay as well as they might have liked, but it meant that their work had a relevance and vitality and disreputable energy that, for me as a younger reader, hands-down won over the official literary product of the same time period.
Though one of the things that’s wrong with marginal identities is that you tend to act as though the big hegemonic center is all one thing itself. “The mainstream” doesn’t agree with itself or make any kind of sense or have a coherent position, except in the very small matter of believing itself to be the only action. That’s the only thing it agrees about. [laughter] The rest of it, if you really pay any attention and care, and I started to care about all kinds of novels and all kinds of literary ventures, and possibilities — different kinds of lives that writers led — the rest of the mainstream is pretty much at one another’s throats over various matters of style and politics, minor grudges and so forth. But it looks like one big thing if you’re in exile from it.