A mixture of personal memory and cultural commentary, The Disappointment Artist offers a series of windows onto the collisions of art, landscape, and personal history that formed Jonathan Lethem's richly imaginative perspective on life at the end of the twentieth century.

Lethem illuminates the process by which a child invents himself as a writer, and as a human being, through a series of approaches to the culture around him. In the title piece, a letter from his aunt (a children's book author) spurs a meditation on the value of writing workshops, the role and influence of reviews, and the uncomfortable fraternity of writers. In 'Defending The Searchers', Lethem explains how a passion for the classic John Wayne Western became occasion for a series of minor humiliations. In 'Identifying with Your Parents', an excavation of childhood love for superhero comics expands to cover a whole range of nostalgia for a previous generation's cultural artefacts. And '13/1977/21', which begins by recounting the summer he saw Star Wars twenty-one times, 'slipping past ushers who'd begun to recognize me...', becomes a meditation on the sorrow and solace of the solitary moviegoer.