So you know now which Jonathan it is who's in the current issue: the shape-shifting Franzen. But many of us in the grip of New Yorker love (not unlike Jimmy Fallon's for the Red Sox in the Fever Pitch movie or Nick Hornby's for Arsenal in the book, in that it's a force of constancy without which our lives would become shabby and crumpled) would have been more or less satisfied with any of them. By which I mean, of course, Lethem, Franzen, and Safran Foer.

Strangely, so often left out of the Jonathan Mafia (a term I use with the utmost affection, I assure you), though—at least by those who prefer life in tidy triangles—is the fearless author of, among others, Wake Up, Sir!, What's Not To Love? and The Extra Man. That's Jonathan Ames. What's not to love, indeed, so I hereby nominate Ames for induction into the public secret society. Perhaps Dave Eggers could whip up an anthology? (See last quoted line of an interview with Ames by Sarah Stodola, below.) There may well be a ripe young Jonathan right now scribbling and coughing in his garret, pining for a chance to be one of the Jonathans. Don't expire—we're all waiting for you!

SS: And also, why are there so many male novelists named Jonathan these days (in addition to you and Foer, Lethem also comes immediately to mind, and Franzen)?

JA: I once addressed this in an essay for Bookforum and I wrote that I was like the weird brother in this family of brothers named Jonathan, that I was the pin-headed one who would go missing but then would be found in the woods screwing sap-holes in trees. I somehow saw this as a Medieval family of brothers named Jonathan. But I had to cut that paragraph because of the word-count. I don't know where that paragraph might be. And I forget the exact topic of the essay, but it was something about how I screwed up my literary career by choosing the wrong subtitle for my memoir, What's Not to Love? The subtitle was/is: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer. At the time I thought it would be catchy, but the result has been to see the word pervert associated repeatedly with my name. And so I had come to realize (in the Bookforum essay) that I was bad at marketing—that using the word "genius" as Dave Eggers had done was a much better idea.

SS: Yeah, I don’t think anyone who would like to remain sane should try to compete with Eggers in the arena of marketing...

JA: Not trying to compete. I admire D. Eggers. He's remarkable in many different ways.