Don't try to figure me out," I said. "It doesn't work—I've tried it myself. - Jonathan Lethem

By trying to export myself into a place that didn't fully exist I asked works of art to bear my expectation that they could be better than life, that they could redeem life. In fact, I believe they are, and do. My life is dedicated to that belief. But still, I asked too much of them: I asked them also to be both safer than life and fuller, a better family. That they couldn't give. At the depths I'd plumb them, so many perfectly sufficient works of art would become thin, anemic. I sucked the juice out of what I loved until I found myself in a desert, sucking rocks for water.

His recording career spans just a decade: Rude was silenced by drug abuse and domestic tragedy at the end of the '70s.

He was a wretched excuse for a human being, but for an inquisitor he wasn’t half bad.