J. Robert Lennon
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John Robert Lennon (born 1970) is an American author of several works of fiction, including a number of short stories and four novels to date. He resides in Ithaca, New York with his wife and children.
His most famous novel, Mailman, was released to critical success in 2003 and concerns a mail-carrying protagonist named Albert Lippincott who is clearly losing his mind. The book won praise for its humorous portrayal of one man's descent into madness.
Lennon's first book, The Light of Falling Stars (1997), about the aftermath of a plane crash, was the winner of Barnes & Noble's 1997 Discover Great New Writers Award. His other books include The Funnies (1999), a comedy about a would-be cartoonist; On the Night Plain (2001), a noir western set in the 1940's; and Pieces for the Left Hand: 100 Anecdotes (2005), a collection of 100 very short stories. In 2006, his novel Happyland was inexplicably dropped by publisher W. W. Norton, which had previously published Mailman. Instead, Happyland, the story of an upstate New York town that finds itself being taken over by the wealthy owner of a toy company, is currently being published as a five-part serial in Harper's Magazine. The novel is controversial, as it can be read as a thinly veiled account of American Girl founder Pleasant Rowland's attempt to develop the village of Aurora, Cayuga County, New York into a quaint tourism destination. The novel also features a women's college, very much like Rowland's alma mater Wells College and portrays it as a center of lesbian activity.
Lennon is also a musician and composer. As a solo artist, recording as Inverse Room, he has released two full-length CDs, Simulacrum (2002) and Pieces for the Left Hand (2005), a companion to the book. He is also one half, along with musician Jim Spitznagel, of The Bemus Point, which has released one CD, Infra Dig (2005). In the early 1990s he fronted the band Wicked Bison, a cult favorite on the Philadelphia bar and fraternity scene.
