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loujoseph's review
4.0
I did end up skimming a little bit through some essays, but some of these are great, including his 30 page report from being imbedded with the James Brown Band, and his New Yorker review of Bolano's 2666.
spinstah's review
3.0
An interesting collection of Lethem's short writing - this includes criticism, reviews and essays, as well as some short fiction. Topics are all over the place, so my method with this was to start reading each piece, and then if it didn't grab me to continue on to the next one. He's done some music and art writing that was very interesting, in particular an assignment for Rolling Stone that had him sort of embedded with James Brown and his band for a while. Very interesting and wide ranging collection.
rbreade's review against another edition
Lethem divides his collection into ten sections: My Plan To Begin With; Dick, Calvino, Ballard: SF and Postmodernism; Plagiarisms; Film and Comics; Wall Art; 9/11 and Book Tour; Dylan, Brown, and Others; Working the Room; The Mad Brooklynite; and What Remains of My Plan. In addition to the usual sources or original publication--Salon, the New Yorker, various literary magazines--some of the pieces here were written for artists' catalogs, CD liner notes, and blogs.
The best known essay here might be "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism," his brief against those who would lock down every tangible creative act in a kind of intellectual enclosure movement. It's a long, persuasive effort, with a twist ending, or, rather, a revelation: almost all of the essay is borrowed from others. Lethem provides a key immediately afterward that he introduces this way:
"This key to the preceding essay names the source of every line I stole, warped, and cobbled together as I 'wrote' (except, alas, those sources I forgot along the way)."
It's a long list. I'll briefly focus on this one essay, but the entire book is crammed with my marginalia, indicating how deeply I was engaged with almost every essay in the collection.
In "Ecstasy," Lethem grapples with appropriation and the resulting "contamination anxiety" felt by modern artists and everyday people in general. He gets right at the heart of this in a passage on Eliot's Waste Land and how deeply it relies on allusion and quotation; in the passage, he examines a line borrowed from Spenser and writes, "Two responses are possible: grant the line to Eliot, or later discover the source and understand the line as plagiarism. Eliot evidenced no small anxiety about these matters; the notes he so carefully added to The Waste Land can be read as a symptom of modernism's contamination anxiety. Taken from this angle, what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?"
That last sentence is terrifically perceptive, because it comes at the end of a section where Lethem has built a case from examples in many art forms, jazz, blues, visual, cartoon. It feels apt, one of the best definitions of postmodernism I've encountered, and certainly one of the most concise.
The best known essay here might be "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism," his brief against those who would lock down every tangible creative act in a kind of intellectual enclosure movement. It's a long, persuasive effort, with a twist ending, or, rather, a revelation: almost all of the essay is borrowed from others. Lethem provides a key immediately afterward that he introduces this way:
"This key to the preceding essay names the source of every line I stole, warped, and cobbled together as I 'wrote' (except, alas, those sources I forgot along the way)."
It's a long list. I'll briefly focus on this one essay, but the entire book is crammed with my marginalia, indicating how deeply I was engaged with almost every essay in the collection.
In "Ecstasy," Lethem grapples with appropriation and the resulting "contamination anxiety" felt by modern artists and everyday people in general. He gets right at the heart of this in a passage on Eliot's Waste Land and how deeply it relies on allusion and quotation; in the passage, he examines a line borrowed from Spenser and writes, "Two responses are possible: grant the line to Eliot, or later discover the source and understand the line as plagiarism. Eliot evidenced no small anxiety about these matters; the notes he so carefully added to The Waste Land can be read as a symptom of modernism's contamination anxiety. Taken from this angle, what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?"
That last sentence is terrifically perceptive, because it comes at the end of a section where Lethem has built a case from examples in many art forms, jazz, blues, visual, cartoon. It feels apt, one of the best definitions of postmodernism I've encountered, and certainly one of the most concise.
scottnygaard's review against another edition
4.0
Lethem's non-fiction is so inventive and colorful that reading a book about his literary, musical, and artistic interests, etc. is almost as good as reading one of his novels.
adamz24's review against another edition
4.0
I devoured this fairly long collection in two days of doing little other than restlessly reading these essays and rereading select passages, armed with a leaky ballpoint pen to underline the many fascinating sections, the names I sort of knew but hadn't gotten around to exploring, the many endearingly awkward sentences.
The experience of reading The Ecstasy of Influence was pretty much the Platonic ideal of reading an essay collection. It's not that the book is perfect, and it's certainly not that I wasn't bored by it on several occasions; it's that the book is everything it ought to be. It's sprawling, committed, and serious, but also funny and profound and ecstatically silly when it needs to be.
I've only read two of Lethem's books, Gun, With Occasional Music and Motherless Brooklyn. I wasn't really impressed with either one, though I liked both, and though I have nothing against his fiction, I've yet to read anything that suggests that Lethem's reputation as one of the finest and most important contemporary American novelists is deserved. His writing never struck me as bad, but rarely resonated. On the other hand, The Ecstasy of Influence resonated entirely. It is a totally absorbing and ecstatic read, the sort of book you hold dear, the sort of book you keep in a special spot on your bookshelf so you can go back to it and refer to it. It is a wealth of exuberant love for novels, films, comics, and life.
None of the music essays are anything more than okay, and the odds and ends on Brooklyn aren't very interesting. The 9/11 stuff, as it itself seems to admit, is not as much a memorable and important response to 9/11 as it is, necessarily, unsatisfying, emblematic of a New York wordsmith's wordlessness at the experience. Yet none of all this stuff ought to have been left out of the book, because it would be a different experience had this stuff been left out. Lethem has put himself out in the world, in book form. I wouldn't have it any other way. This book is honest and all-encompassing and perceptive and real.
The essays on literature and film are the best. They're exactly what we probably want from writing on literature and film, but so rarely get. They're personal and serious, written by an author who understands the media, but from the humble position of spectator and reader, not exactly from the lofty heights of the critic, yet they are more critically engaged and perceptive than most critical writing. Some of the finer examples are "Crazy Friend" on Philip K. Dick, the brilliant and astute and not-at-all-bullshitty interrogation of the 'postmodern'in "Postmodernism as Liberty Valance" (which yes, brilliantly deals with postmodernism by analogy to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the legendary John Ford film), "Against 'Pop' Culture," which sanely makes the argument its title suggests, "Great Death Scene," a perfect short essay on the great Robert Altman Western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, "Donald Sutherland's Buttocks," on those rare depictions of sex in movies that reach the heights of the scene in Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, and the essays on Norman Mailer, Bolano's 2666 (the best critical appreciation of that absurdly great novel I've read thus far), Thomas Berger, Shirley Jackson, the various Mt. Rushmores of American Lit, and Nathanael West.
Other highlights include the hilarious "Missed Opportunities" and the terrific formal experiment and reasonably good argument found in the title essay.
This book really is a treasure. Its charm and wit and voice is essential. It now is in a special spot on my shelf, hidden from all the slight but 'perfect' critical works, from the competent novels. It rests alongside those books that readers who really care more than anything about books and movies and the life of the voracious voyeur dream about. It's fucking inspirational. I don't know how much I care about Jonathan Lethem's fiction, but this collection is a rare sort of thing, and has instantly made Jonathan Lethem a writer I care about, a writer I hence think you should care about, too.
The experience of reading The Ecstasy of Influence was pretty much the Platonic ideal of reading an essay collection. It's not that the book is perfect, and it's certainly not that I wasn't bored by it on several occasions; it's that the book is everything it ought to be. It's sprawling, committed, and serious, but also funny and profound and ecstatically silly when it needs to be.
I've only read two of Lethem's books, Gun, With Occasional Music and Motherless Brooklyn. I wasn't really impressed with either one, though I liked both, and though I have nothing against his fiction, I've yet to read anything that suggests that Lethem's reputation as one of the finest and most important contemporary American novelists is deserved. His writing never struck me as bad, but rarely resonated. On the other hand, The Ecstasy of Influence resonated entirely. It is a totally absorbing and ecstatic read, the sort of book you hold dear, the sort of book you keep in a special spot on your bookshelf so you can go back to it and refer to it. It is a wealth of exuberant love for novels, films, comics, and life.
None of the music essays are anything more than okay, and the odds and ends on Brooklyn aren't very interesting. The 9/11 stuff, as it itself seems to admit, is not as much a memorable and important response to 9/11 as it is, necessarily, unsatisfying, emblematic of a New York wordsmith's wordlessness at the experience. Yet none of all this stuff ought to have been left out of the book, because it would be a different experience had this stuff been left out. Lethem has put himself out in the world, in book form. I wouldn't have it any other way. This book is honest and all-encompassing and perceptive and real.
The essays on literature and film are the best. They're exactly what we probably want from writing on literature and film, but so rarely get. They're personal and serious, written by an author who understands the media, but from the humble position of spectator and reader, not exactly from the lofty heights of the critic, yet they are more critically engaged and perceptive than most critical writing. Some of the finer examples are "Crazy Friend" on Philip K. Dick, the brilliant and astute and not-at-all-bullshitty interrogation of the 'postmodern'in "Postmodernism as Liberty Valance" (which yes, brilliantly deals with postmodernism by analogy to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the legendary John Ford film), "Against 'Pop' Culture," which sanely makes the argument its title suggests, "Great Death Scene," a perfect short essay on the great Robert Altman Western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, "Donald Sutherland's Buttocks," on those rare depictions of sex in movies that reach the heights of the scene in Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, and the essays on Norman Mailer, Bolano's 2666 (the best critical appreciation of that absurdly great novel I've read thus far), Thomas Berger, Shirley Jackson, the various Mt. Rushmores of American Lit, and Nathanael West.
Other highlights include the hilarious "Missed Opportunities" and the terrific formal experiment and reasonably good argument found in the title essay.
This book really is a treasure. Its charm and wit and voice is essential. It now is in a special spot on my shelf, hidden from all the slight but 'perfect' critical works, from the competent novels. It rests alongside those books that readers who really care more than anything about books and movies and the life of the voracious voyeur dream about. It's fucking inspirational. I don't know how much I care about Jonathan Lethem's fiction, but this collection is a rare sort of thing, and has instantly made Jonathan Lethem a writer I care about, a writer I hence think you should care about, too.
deborama's review
3.0
Some of the essays are better than others. There is a lot of food for thought, but some of it is pretty light, not comfort food, doesn't really stay with you like the more serious stuff. I wanted to read this for two reasons - 1) I loved the only fictional book by Lethem I have read, Motherless Brooklyn, and 2) the title is an obvious nod to Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, a book which has, ahem, had a big influence on me.
ewbanh's review against another edition
4.0
God I love Lethem's writing. Though the pieces included in this collection vary in quality (from "eh, pretty good" to "damn that was good"), the effect as a whole is overwhelming. Lethem is thoughtful - not pondering, but chock-full of thoughts, and they come spilling onto the page in a torrent.
aziz_reads's review against another edition
5.0
There aren't many authors that can hook me on the first page, much less the preface, much less by writing the truth. It seems to be that I only read nonfiction books if I need information or examples for something I'm writing. This is the exception.
"The Ecstasy of Influence" is one of those books that may be a turning point in life for the reader. I don't know if this is so yet; get back to me in a month.
But Jon Lethem seems to understand that readers first want to be entertained, then told the truth, then told something that they didn't realize was the truth. Lethem does all this in the first two pages of his Preface.
My advice: Get this book as fast as you can; it'll be a bestseller before long.
"The Ecstasy of Influence" is one of those books that may be a turning point in life for the reader. I don't know if this is so yet; get back to me in a month.
But Jon Lethem seems to understand that readers first want to be entertained, then told the truth, then told something that they didn't realize was the truth. Lethem does all this in the first two pages of his Preface.
My advice: Get this book as fast as you can; it'll be a bestseller before long.