Jonathan Lethem on writing under the influence

In this interview with the literary journal AGNI, MacArthur-prize-winning author Jonathan Lethem discusses originality and the way that "influence" and copying from other writers are part of the creative process. Lethem's previous essay on this, The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism, is a masterwork (I'm also a big fan of his novels, e.g. this one and this one).

I’ve always been a consciously influenced writer. I usually have some models in mind for anything I’m writing, whether it’s other novels, or some films, or sometimes even a comic book. In terms of prose style, I am almost always open to writing some degree of homage, or trying to adopt or import a part of another writer’s style into what I’m doing. Usually it’s more than one author, and/or it’s in combination with some radically different influence on the narrative strategy, or on the kind of motifs, characters, or situations that I’m writing about. I never think that this is going to simply seem like writer X, because I’m always colliding that influence with a number of other elements.

I’ve come to believe that there is something innate in my method, my sentences, and my approach to narrative and characters that’s inalterable, and that transforms these influences even when I’m not conscious of it. So I don’t ever think in terms of embarrassment or hesitation or reservations about being influenced or working with models. I pretty much assume that’s how it works for me.

I understand that a lot of other people are much more deflective or diffident or uncertain or unconscious about these processes, but I believe strongly that they’re what’s going on in making narratives for anyone. That is to say, I don’t see being open to influence as some kind of radical or postmodern or experimental or unorthodox proposition, I see it as a way of talking about what simply is the case, and always has been for writers of all kinds.

These levels of inhibition from talking about influence may represent a kind of contemporary condition. Certainly the frameworks for identifying influence or for being anxious about it or resisting it are very recent ones. I don’t think that these questions bedeviled people one way or another until relatively recently. So anytime people express surprise about my disinhibitions, I suspect that they’re responding to the discourse, not the practice.

Anyway, it has always been my pleasure to assert my influences, partly because it connects my reading life to my writing life, and they seem so fundamentally connected. It’s a way of talking about my enthusiasms for narrative arts of all kinds. And this preference makes the condition of having to talk about one’s work vastly more interesting, because I’m talking about stuff I love all the time.

Open to Influence: Jonathan Lethem on Reading, Writing, and Concepts of Originality (via 3 Quarks Daily)

• [hypersomniac]

  I really liked ‘You Don’t Love Me.’ I didn’t finish ‘Chronic City.’ Maybe I should.

• [Jeremy Duncan]

  Given the title of the post and the title of the book, I was expecting something a bit different

• [querent]

  Nietzsche  was paranoid about influence.  I’ll thank you kindly to restrain yourself from Nietzsche bashing.

  /huffs and pulls out a worn copy of Thus Spoke.

• [elron]

  Chronic City is not one of Lethem’s best books.  About 1/3, 1/2 way through I thought, why am I reading this?  It’s not compelling –plotless, meandering.  One character smokes a lot of pot –it seems to infuse the book.  If Lethem was smoking pot while writing this, it’s a demonstration of how not to write.  There are no bursts of creative thinking, or flashing insights one sometimes associates with marijuana.  I think the bits about the lost wife floating in a space station work better as a short story –which is what Lethem did, and you can read it in the New Yorker.    I’m not trying to be nasty.  I bought this book from Lethem at the book faire in LA last year.  I figure I’m paying him for Gun With Occasional Music which I read from the library.  

  • [hypersomniac]

    That’s probably why I couldn’t finish it. Now stuff from Lipsyte I have no trouble finishing.

    • [John Ohno]

      Having read Chronic City all the way through several times, I can tell you that it’s intentionally meandering. There’s a huge uptick in plot about three quarters of the way through, and it does indeed resolve itself in such a way that the rest of the apparently undirected material was retroactively important to the plot (just as occurred in As She Climbed Across the Table).

      As a result, I strongly recommend finishing it. Yes, it drags a little in the middle. But, for me at least, the remainder of the book made it worthwhile. In fact, despite being far from my favourite Lethem book when I was halfway through, it made it to first place by the time I finished it.

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  I started reading Lethem because either Cory or Gareth B. recommended him here.  Chronic City was outstanding.  Like others, I’m sure, I was hoping he was about to confess writing it while baked.  Omega the Unknown definitely reads like a long form drugs freakout.  There’s a definite Chandler/Hammett vibe in Gun, With Occasional Music.

• [double_tilly]

  It’s cool that Lethem is proactive with his ideas. A lot of times, the discourse on the nature of influence is all caught up in scandal.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    If you haven’t figured it out yet, something is not right with your account.  The spam bin snagged some of your comments, and they still didn’t show up when I fished them out.  If your comment doesn’t show up, e-mail me.  If you make the same comment more than once, it will only reinforce the spam filter’s perception of you as a spammer.

    • [double_tilly]

      I believe the edit function was my undoing. Is it a bit touched by the wonk? Or perhaps I am the wonky one. Regardless, thanks for the heads up.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        The filter has been unusually aggressive for the last few days.

• [double_tilly]

  There must be more authors who use writing to explore the reading they’ve done. I suppose books like Reading Lolita in Tehran cover some of that ground–probably more in terms of plot and theme, though, rather than in terms of the prose style.

  I think that the U.S. publishing marketplace–the publishing houses AND the readers–reject appropriation, mimicry, and modeling at a high cost to freedom of inquiry.

  It is for this reason, arguably, that no U.S. author has won a Nobel Prize in Literature for nearly twenty years. Remember when the Nobel jury secretary said the U.S. hasn’t won lately because we “don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature?” 

  I believe he’s talking about how U.S. readers and publishers will not acknowledge the post-modern challenge to our inherited ideas of authorship and influence. 

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/01/nobelprize.usa

• [pjcamp]

  So he’s sort of the antimatter Ray Bradbury?

• [Rob Hobson]

  Agree… excellent article.

  Reminds me, just a little, of Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent. http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html