JONATHAN LETHEM was spooning down a bowl of canned soup between interviews at his Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment a few weeks ago. This month’s release of his new book, “You Don’t Love Me Yet,” had his cell phone steadily ringing – to the tune of Television’s “Marquee Moon.” “It’s a fragment of the song,” said Lethem. “And it doesn’t use the part of it it should use.” Lethem, who lives part time in the Blue Hill area, won critical praise and hipster fans for his novel “Motherless Brooklyn” [1999] and dazzling reviews for “The Fortress of Solitude” [2003]. He also won a 2005 MacArthur “Genius” Award. Mostly, readers know him as an intrepid recorder of gritty street life in New York City, his hometown. In “You Don’t Love Me Yet,” Lethem turns his writer’s eye toward the alternative music scene and trendy art world in the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park – basically the Brooklyn of L.A. The characters are hip wannabe rockers, whose nearing-30 lifestyles involve beer, coffee shops, pizza, a kangaroo and an ongoing quest to name the band. In the spirit of the generation he writes about, Lethem has also launched “The Promiscuous Materials Project,” an online story site that allows filmmakers and dramatists to adapt some of his work at the cost of $1. Which is probably less than the can of soup Lethem finished off during our meeting. Excerpts from our conversation follow.

You’re best known as a Brooklyn writer. Why did you set “You Don’t Love Me Yet” in Los Angeles? Some L.A. critics seem a little put out by this.

There are ways in which this book reflects my impulse to move away from setting. I wanted to get back into that rubbery, playful, fantasy book place. Which is probably why the L.A. people are aggrieved. I feel very affectionate about Los Angeles. But there is a literary defensiveness. I shouldn’t say this – it will make it worse. But writers there have a big chip on their shoulder about New York.

Did you choose Silver Lake because it reminds you of Brooklyn?

The reason Silver Lake is comfortable for me is the same reason I liked East Berlin. It was a disputed, broken city. It’s that familiar gentrified muddle.

Is that why you like East Blue Hill?

Is that East Berlin? We’re actually right midway. I write in Blue Hill. I sleep in East Blue Hill. The line runs right down the center of our house.

I was surprised by the female voice in this book. I wasn’t alarmed in “Motherless Brooklyn” when you wrote from the point of view of a guy with Tourette’s, or when you’ve written from the point of view of black men. But something about the girl thing bothered me.

It’s not the first time I’ve done a female point of view. “Girl in Landscape” [1998] is a 13-year-old girl. But you’re right to relate it to Tourette’s or a black crack addict. The only explanation I have for you is that if I thought about these things categorically – such as: Now I am going to write the 13-year-old – I’d be terrified, and I wouldn’t write. But I don’t think about it categorically. I write from the inside. It’s not that I think: What would it be like to be a woman? I write from the grain of the voice of character.

Why did you want to write about the indie rock world?

In a way, I’ve colonized what I love about books. I’ve domesticated them. But music still remains a halo. It connects me to my pure fan-ishness. When I was thinking about writing about people in their 20s – amateur, wide-eyed, posturing – it made me remember what I felt about music in my 20s.

Were you hoping to snag a younger audience with “You Don’t Love Me Yet”?

That sounds great. But if I thought: What would the young people want today? – it would be a hopeless way of writing. It’s hard for a novel to be like a pop artifact. The form fights it at every level. I wanted – without presuming I could do it – to push it as far as I could that way, like a single you hear on the radio.

Why did you decide to sell story ideas online?

I’ve been building up to it because of an interest in intellectual property and my real-world experiences and disbelief at how Hollywood has handled my properties. In order to have the more personal transaction, you do get less money. But it’s really only an exaggeration of what writers do. There’s a “gift act” inherent in what writers do anyway. I don’t act as if these things have absolute value. You do things because you want to see certain things happen. What if we made the dollar value zero? People are stimulated by this question.

Will you ever write about Maine?

People have asked me that, and I’m at a loss. I don’t know if there’ll be a time. I’m so urban in my sensibility. I like living in the country but I don’t see it as anything but a passing glance in my work.

Where does Maine fit into your world then?

In other ways. Simple pragmatic ways. It is really where I write now. It is where I go for deep exploration. It’s a very, very substantial answer to a question I was managing in a patchwork. In Maine, I dwell inside the work in a much more effortless way.

Have you been there in winter?

Yes. The winter is as much an attraction of the place as summer.