Writer Jonathan Lethem stops by the Borders store on Liberty Street this Friday at 7 p.m. for a reading and book signing in support of his new novel, “Chronic City,” a sprawling look into the lives of Manhattanites lost in dreams and delusions. Best known for his previous best-sellers “The Fortress of Solitude” and “Motherless Brooklyn,” Lethem has also written extensively for numerous magazines, and had the rare honor of interviewing Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone in 2006.

“Chronic City” has won both praise and pans from critics, including a particularly vicious notice from Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, who dubbed it “tedious and overstuffed.” The Wall Street Journal’s Alexander Theroux weighed in with a far different opinion, calling it “an entertaining novel” and a “lively and learned odyssey.” Talking to AnnArbor.com by phone recently, the words “lively” and “learned” also aptly describe the 45-year-old Lethem — a clever, engaging man interested in all aspects of pop culture.

Q: Who are the main protagonists in your new novel, “Chronic City”? A: Chase Insteadman, the narrator, is a kind of a grown-old child star. He was an actor on a sitcom in the '80s and has been coasting ever since. He’s still kind of pleasant and good looking and gets a lot of attention for doing not much at all. He’s kind of a chronic dinner party guest, basically superficial in the extreme, but a more or less well-intentioned guy.

He falls in at the beginning of the book with a guy who’s almost the opposite of himself, Perkus Tooth, who’s an intensely angry, paranoid and charismatic cultural critic. He’s someone who likes to see deeply into the heart of things and read dangerously much into every piece of art, book, song or movie he consumes, and he tends to do the same things with his friendships. So the minute he gets a hold of Chase Insteadman, he starts lecturing him on the important meaning of Chase’s life that Chase has overlooked. So they have this interesting push and pull dynamic and the novel is centered around the two of them. It also includes a wide panorama of Manhattan types; there are all sorts of other folks who come through.

Q: Are Chase and Perkus inspired by anyone in real life? A: Lots of people, and as always, there are parts of myself in both of those guys. For Perkus I had in mind a dear friend of mine. He grew up in Minnesota and knew Bob Dylan as a a teenager and wrote a famous (fan)zine about folk music called the Little Sandy Review, a guy named Paul Nelson. Paul was someone I befriended in my 20s and he was my entry point to a lot of cultural stuff. He helped me discover all sorts of film makers and musicians who would become very important to me — almost talismanically important. His influence is all over the book. He wasn’t like Perkus Tooth very much; he was calm while Perkus was frantic, modest, and dressed-down while Perkus is a dandy who dresses in these weird, shiny three-piece suits. But there’s something about the relationship between me and Paul that got into the book in terms of the relationship between Chase and Perkus.

Jonathan Lethem, author of “Motherless Brooklyn” and “The Fortress of Solitude,” spoke with Martin Bandyke about his latest novel, “Chronic City.”

Q: How long did this you work on this novel? A: It was probably three years in the writing, but that’s a deceptive answer to give because there is stuff in this book that had been coming for a long time. I’d been thinking about Perkus Tooth as a character, for instance, well in advance of the book and looking for a home for him in my fiction. The actual work was three years at my desk, but parts of this book go back a great deal longer than that.

Q: Do you have a statement that you set out to make when you write, some type of conception of exactly where you’re going before you start writing a book? Or do the characters take you to unforseen places? A: It’s some combination of the two. I don’t really deal in statements, but I do have ideas of characters, situations, set-pieces, images that I’m excited to try to write, and I do hold on to those as a kind of plan. But the plan can only help you a certain amount. You have to deal with a lot of improvisation and invention on the spot. It’s just the nature of novel writing.

I sometimes compare it to a musician playing jazz. You know what the main chord changes are, and you can go back to them and play them recurrently, but between them there are these long, improvisational sequences that you have to be committed to and excited about, working in that free style as you come to them.

Q: I share your love for and obsession with Bob Dylan’s music. What do you think of his new Christmas album “Christmas In The Heart”? A: I’ve just gotten it and it’s surprisingly listenable! There something very relaxed about it and I think I’ll be playing it a lot more.

Q: What was it like interviewing him for Rolling Stone magazine? That must have been a pinch-me moment. A: He was surprisingly charming and he really seemed to make an effort to amuse me and keep me surprised throughout the interview. He certainly didn’t have anything to prove and I would’ve been impressed no matter what. But he was kind of a beguiling guy to hang out with.

Q: At one time you were seriously going to pursue art as a career. How did that switch over to writing? A: I was a painter because my father was a painter, so it seemed like the natural thing to do. But I also always loved books and read voraciously and thought about novels I wanted to write. So it was kind of a natural switch, and actually a lot of the training and preparation that art school consisted of was very useful to me. They’re not so different; the notion of going off into the studio and spending a lot of time making stuff that has no clear redeeming social value, but is meant to divert and fascinate people, is a pretty similar way of life compared to writing. One prepared me pretty nicely for the other.

Martin Bandyke is the 6-10am morning drive host on Ann Arbor’s 107one. Follow him on Twitter @martinbandyke and at his web site.