booktheque

They live

Jonathan Lethem · 2010

Where to buy

Check today’s price on Amazon. We do not show prices because they change daily.

View on Amazon

Affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

About the book

Kicking off the series is Jonathan Lethem’s take on They Live, John Carpenter’s 1988 classic amalgam of deliberate B-movie, sci-fi, horror, anti-Yuppie agitprop. Lethem exfoliates Carpenter’s paranoid satire in a series of penetrating, free-associational forays into the context of a story that peels the human masks off the ghoulish overlords of capitalism. His field of reference spans classic Hollywood cinema and science fiction, as well as popular music and contemporary art and theory. Taking into consideration the work of Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, James Brown, Fredric Jameson, Shepard Fairey, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Edgar Allan Poe, not to mention the role of wrestlers—including They Live star “Rowdy” Roddy Piper—in contemporary culture, Lethem’s They Live provides a wholly original perspective on Carpenter’s subversive classic.

Book details

Year
2010
Language
English
Series
Deep focus
Publisher
Soft Skull Press
Editions
1
Pages
163
ISBN
9781593762780

Data source: Wikidata

More by Jonathan Lethem