But I kept these things very tightly organized in order to function. 'Or I might take a shower with my cousin at her commune because they had a group shower and that was interesting to me, too, and probably titillating. And at the same time, I'd go home and I'd go up to my dad's studio and sit there with him and draw from a naked model for a few hours.

For me there were the typical teenage fascinations with the mysteries of the bodies of the girls I was going to school with, where to glimpse a bra strap might've blown my mind. 'You shouldn't overlook the human ability to partition things and make special categories and create exemptions. On growing up on a commune where nudity was common about someone who was so into so many kinds of theoretical freedoms. I was very interested in the book in writing. Other gods die: The god literature fails her, the god of socialism fails her. And maybe some of those later beliefs become disappointed, violently disappointed, as well.

'So all of these things are muddled up for her. He joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross to discuss writing about his family's legacy. His 2003 novel, The Fortress of Solitude, was a best-seller. Lethem won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999 for his novel Motherless Brooklyn. The characters of Rose and Miriam were inspired by Lethem's mother and grandmother, and Sergius' story connects to parts of Lethem's own life. They're activists in the peace movement and live in a commune where they raise their son, Sergius, who describes his birthright as half Jewish, full hippie. Miriam eventually flees Queens and her perpetually dissatisfied mother by moving to Greenwich Village, where, in 1961, she marries a folksinger. Rose is a single mother who brings up her daughter, Miriam, to believe it's just a matter of time until the Nazis or the FBI come knocking. The novel opens in 1955 Queens, N.Y., when Rose Zimmer, a secular Jew and Communist, is expelled from the party, ostensibly because the local committee disapproves of her affair with a black police officer. People who don't believe in God but have an almost religious belief in causes are at the center of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, Dissident Gardens.

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