In Jonathan Lethem’s personal narrative essay, “13, 1977, 21”, Lethem reflects on when he was 13 years old, in the year 1977, where he watched the film Star Wars 21 times. But the essay is not actually about the Star Wars film. It is about the way Lethem used going to the movies to remove himself, or “hide” from the realities of his life, such as his mother’s illness and awkward pre-teenage years.
The first few sentences of Lethem’s essay is where he blatantly tells the readers that he’s watched Star Wars twenty-one times in four months. He then uses the next three paragraphs to reflect on the circumstances surrounding his trips to the movie theater in the summer of 1977 and trying to understand what triggered him to go all twenty-one times. He describes the theater he watched the film in, down to the street in Manhattan it was on, and the interior of the theatre, that he explains was “a superior place to watch anything”. He also mentions that getting into the theater itself was “an accomplishment, both elevating and slightly dangerous”. He describes the popularity of the film at the time, where he says “any kid with a television had brought a single ticket for the same film in a single summer”, but emphasizes that he was a part of the small percent that turned watching the film into a full blown obsession. In the second paragraph,
Lethem questions why he even went all twenty-one times. He writes: “But what actually occurred within the secret brackets of that experience? What emotions lurk within that ludicrous temple of hours? What the fuck was I thinking?”. These first three paragraphs introduce his teenage obsession with going to the movie theater to watch Star Wars, which may be embarasing now, but was Lethem’s escape from reality and personal accomplishment.
Lethem’s essay is very much informal. My first
