Jonathan Lethem talks about 'The Ecstasy of Influence'

Rick Kleffel and the Agony Column have a long podcast interview with Jonathan Lethem commemorating the publication of his new essay collection, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc., a discussion about how art builds on other art and how writing is done:

An interview about 'The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.' with Jonathan Lethem is, for this book reviewer, something between therapy and a session with one of those gurus you see in cartoons sitting on a mountaintop, dispensing the wisdom of the ancients.

Informative, but a bit on the intimidating side, seeing as to how you're talking to a gentleman paid highly and handsomely, who is actually asked to review books by the world's premiere editors and publications. You can find them in 'The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.'

It helped then, that I've spoken with Lethem before, and that the thesis of his book, the sweet surprise center, is an argument that I tend to agree with and have been seen bandied about for the last few years now. It's the cornerstone of what makes the Internet so powerful.

12-26-11: A 2011 Interview With Jonathan Lethem

MP3 link

(Thanks, Rick!)

• [planaplagiarism]

  merry fucking christmas. so excited this is getting a mention! read about this originally in feb 07 in a harper’s article. i think it was an excerpt, called, “the ecstacy of influence: a plagiarism”. totally reference it all the time (how do you think i got my username?). great writing, and pretty much the most entertaining/informative thing i’ve ever read on the topic of intelectual property. this too… http://www.foolfactory.com/haus/comics/2gtech.html

• [Mooky Mooky]

  1 commemerate ?
  2 “… seeing as to how you’re talking to a gentleman paid highly and handsomely, who is actually asked to review books by the world’s premiere editors and publications”?

  Did literacy levels just drop over Christmas day???

  • [Cory Doctorow]

    So, let’s see: you think that using the informal voice in writing  is bad and qualifies as illiteracy, but you also think that it is “literate” to use multiple punctuation marks for emphasis. If you’d like to supply a stylebook describing your English usage preferences, by all means bring it around and I’ll put it in a place where it will do us both a world of good.

  • [Noctilucent Studios]

    I just read it and it seemed fine to me. Not sure what you are referring to.

• [Mordicai]

  I’ve always felt that his attitudes towards “genre” fiction always seemed…like he was apologetic for liking it.  His essays always have a twinge of “oh, I know science fiction & comics are for kids, but…” that rubs me the wrong way.  I think this is borne out in his fiction, too– I generally find the first half of his books really enjoyable– he’s got a great command of language– but then I feel like the second half tries to throw in a “literary twist” that ends up ruining everything.

  • [Cory Doctorow]

    I don’t get that at all. Jonathan’s firmly of the genre; his first short fiction sale was to Aboriginal SF, and books like Fortress of Solitude make it clear (to me, anyway) that he venerates the genre and its literary traditions.

    • [Mordicai]

      I am thinking specifically of his essay on The Searches & Ford– also some other essays that I read a long time ago, & I wish I could remember them to source my opinions. I really disliked Fortress of Solitude & I haven’t revisited his writing since then. I’m willing to be won back– I really liked the first half of Girl in Landscape & As She Crawled Across the Table is delightful– but I haven’t been willing to give him a second chance to earn his way back in.

      • [mitchwagner]

        I interviewed Lethem; he said basically that he didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a genre writer, that he dealt with many non-genre themes in his work. I see this as a valid ambition. He said it in a way that was in no way condescending to genre.
        I found “Fortress” hard to read at first because it awakened too many memories of childhood bullying. I put it aside for a few years, then started it again and loved it. 

        I spent my early childhood in roughly the same time and place as Lethem, and his book awakened so many memories for me, many of them happy ones. One example: Jamming your feet into leather shoes without tying or untying them. After a few times putting on shoes that way, the backs would be completely broken down and crumpled. I hadn’t thought of THAT since I was about 7 years old and getting dressed that way every day. 

  • [Ryan David Jahn]

    I’ve never really noticed that apologetic attitude. Dude worships Philip K. Dick (while acknowledging he wasn’t much of a prose stylist), and Men & Cartoons, at least, is full of a playfulness toward both genre fiction and comics that could only be the result of deep familiarity with both.

    Of his novels I’ve only read Girl in Landscape and half of Gun, With Occasional Music, and while neither did much for me, I sensed that his treatment of the material was less an apology for using genre tropes than his attempt to push beyond what came before in the genres with which he was playing.

    While influence should be acknowledged, nobody wants to live in the shadow of his or her artistic “parents”; so you step out of that shadow and into new territory.

    That said, I’m probably not familiar enough with his work to make any sort of broad statements about it. My interpretation is different, is all.

    • [Mordicai]

      I just think there have been great “literary science fiction”– Gene Wolfe!– but I felt like Lethem wasn’t trying to write science fiction, so much as using the genre & then discarding it half way in favor of the conventions of the “literary” genre. I remember being like “oh man, these aliens & this planet are neat!” & then…frowning. Like, it could have been a great Heinleiny trip, but it ended up being more like whatever flavor of drama-literary.

• [Ryan David Jahn]

  @Mordicai,

  Fair enough. Could be that my perspective is different because I’m more familiar with his short fiction than his novels, and each of his short pieces seems simply to own its premise wholly, whatever it is, without space enough to go off track.

• [Alan Goulding]

  “How writing is done”. That was ironic right?