Riffing off of Harold Bloom’s classic The Anxiety of Influence, Jonathan Lethem writes about the influences that helped him write novels like Gun, With Occasional Music and The Fortress of Solitude. The biggest influence on Lethem is Philip K. Dick. Lethem cites Philip K. Dick in many of these essays. Lethem is also open in his acknowledgement that PKD was an uneven writer: masterpieces and dreck rub shoulders in those Library of America volumes. Speaking of those Library of America collections of Philip K. Dick’s work, Lethem lobbied hard to have PKD included in the series. If you’re interested in what influences a writer’s style and artistic development, The Ecstasy of Influence provides a model case study. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS
i: My Plan to Begin With
My Plan to Begin With, Part One
The Used Bookshop Stories
The Books They Read
Going Under in Wendover
Zelig of Notoriety
Clerk
ii: Dick, Calvino, Ballard: SF and Postmodernism
My Plan to Begin With, Part Two
Holidays
Crazy Friend (Philip K. Dick)
What I Learned at the Science-Fiction Convention
The Best of Calvino: Against Completism
Postmodernism as Liberty Valance
The Claim of Time (J. G. Ballard)
Give Up
iii: Plagiarisms
The Ecstasy of Influence
The Afterlife of “Ecstasy”/Somatics of Influence
Always Crashing in the Same Car
Against “Pop” Culture
Furniture
iv: Film and Comics
Supermen!: An Introduction
Top-Five Depressed Superheroes
The Epiphany
Izations
Everything Is Broken (Art of Darkness)
Godfather IV
Great Death Scene (McCabe & Mrs. Miller)
Kovacs’s Gift
Marlon Brando Breaks
Missed Opportunities
Donald Sutherland’s Buttocks
The Drew Barrymore Stories
v: Wall Art
The Collector (Fred Tomaselli)
An Almost Perfect Day (Letter to Bonn)
The Billboard Men (Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel)
Todd James
Writing and the Neighbor Arts
Live Nude Models
On a Photograph of My Father
Hazel
vi: 9/11 and Book Tour
Nine Failures of the Imagination
Further Reports in a Dead Language
To My Italian Friends
My Egyptian Cousin
Cell Phones
Proximity People
Repeating Myself
Bowels of Compassion
Stops
Advertisements for Norman Mailer
White Elephant and Termite Postures in the Life of the Twenty-first-Century Novelist
vii: Dylan, Brown, and Others
The Genius of James Brown
People Who Died
The Fly in the Ointment
Dancing About Architecture
Dylan Interview
Open Letter to Stacy (The Go-Betweens)
Otis Redding’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Rick James
an orchestra of light that was electric
viii: Working the Room
Bolaño’s 2666
Homely Doom Vibe (Paula Fox)
Ambivalent Usurpations (Thomas Berger)
Rushmore Versus Abundance
Outcastle (Shirley Jackson)
Thursday (G. K. Chesterton)
My Disappointment Critic/On Bad Faith
The American Vicarious (Nathanael West)
ix: The Mad Brooklynite
Ruckus Flatbush
Crunch Rolls
Children with Hangovers
L. J. Davis
Agee’s Brooklyn
Breakfast at Brelreck’s
The Mad Brooklynite
x: What Remains of My Plan
Micropsia
Zeppelin Parable
What Remains of My Plan
Memorial
Things to Remember 435
Although I have not read his work, this still interests me. Maybe my library has it.
Some of the essays in THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE are only a page or two, Patti. But Lethem always has something interesting to say.
while the TOC makes this sound interesting, I’ll probably never get around to trying it.
THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE is one of those books that you can dip into from time to time, Rick. Many of the essays are short–perfect for a quick read before bed!
Can’t imagine what the Sutherland and Barrymore pieces are like.
You need to check it out, Drongo. I can’t spoil your surprise!
Lethem is an interesting guy. He lived in the neighborhood where Jackie taught for 25 years (though he went to a different school) and set MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN there. The bookstore around the corner (which you would enjoy, George – we took the Abbotts there) run by a former student of Jackie’s (owned by his family) is one where he does readings of each of his books. (Megan Abbott did a reading there too.)
I’ll have to check the library for this.
Lethem cites working in bookstores as a big influence on his writing, Jeff. THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE is well worth reading.
That is, the parents of the store’s manager own it, not Lethem’s parents. I don’t think I was too clear up there.
I figured it out, Jeff.