Jonathan Lethem writes books. Shorter things too, but he's probably best known for writing books. Fortress of Solitude, for instance, is a novel about friendship and Brooklyn and jazz and rock'n'roll. It's about comics and loss and life. It's about magic - several kinds of magic. The cool kind of magic. The kind you leave at the bottom of your pockets for the moments you might need it. Like an alcoholic keeps a little bit of liquor in a back cabinet.

I wrote to Jonathan almost a year ago, asking him to write something for us. I can't express how sweet my creaky heart sang when he followed through. -- sean

Danielle Howle - "Still in Love with You" [buy]
Johanna Billing - "You Don't Love Me Yet" [info]
Vulgar Boatmen - "You Don't Love Me Yet" [buy]

It was Southern California in those days. We all worked in a used record store and we all were a certain age, a clerk’s age, the long middle of our twenties, already wrecked. Some of us were in their thirties already! All the clerks played vinyl on a turntable behind the counter in turns, getting royally sick of one another’s music, a certain bluegrass album a dozen times and you’d start trying to time your lunch break to that track about the horse. Somebody else played African music and you might be coming around slowly. The Go-Betweens, every album was on a different label, it was like putting together a puzzle. All the best bands were from New Zealand, mostly, except if they came from Australia. The guy with the suit and the clipboard from ASCAP came around and said we’d have to pay royalties on the songs we played behind the counter since they were being broadcast in a public place and we said they were only for our own pleasure, our customers didn’t even like to hear music, everyone else tittering behind their hands while someone offered this explanation. We’d all been in a band or were about to have been in one or else just owned a leather jacket. Confused about the difference between Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson and Robyn Hitchcock among other things. Everyone was always breaking up, the record store was even built on a fault. A chasm between failing to start and not knowing when to quit. Embarrassed to say you were applying to grad school. Somebody started coming in early and got promoted to manager. Big Dipper, Big Star, Big Daddy. The Fastbacks. The first CD came along, some rock critic dropped it off with a bunch of other comps he was selling and we regarded it like the apes in 2001. Letting some high school punks sell a zine on the magazine rack, they looked at you like you were an adult. One day your life would start. In the meantime we all worked in a used record store.

[Jonathan Lethem's next novel will be published in March 2007.]

(Previous guest-blogs, in and out of the Said the Guests series: Will Butler (Arcade Fire), Al Kratina, Eugene Mirman, artist Dave Bailey, Agent Simple, artist Keith Andrew Shore, Owen Ashworth (Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), artist Kit Malo with Alden Penner (The Unicorns) 1 2, artist Rachell Sumpter, artist Katy Horan 1 2, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Drew Heffron, Carl Wilson, artist Tim Moore, Michael Nau (Page France), Devin Davis, Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Hello Saferide, Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi), Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.). There are many more to come.)