Published by Vintage, part of Vintage Publishing
Format: Paperback
£9.99
Author:
Jonathan Lethem
Format: Paperback
EAN: 9780099563433
£9.99
Available for dispatch within 1-2 working days
EAN: 9780099563433
Published: 7 Mar 2013
This volume sheds light on an array of topics from sex in cinema to drugs, graffiti, Bob Dylan, cyberculture, 9/11, book touring and Marlon Brando. Then there are investigations of a shelf's worth of Jonathan Letham's literary models and contemporaries: Norman Mailer, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis, James Wood, and others. And, writing about Brooklyn, his father, and his sojourn through two decades of writing, one of the greats of contemporary American literature sheds an equally strong light on himself.
In The Ecstasy of Influence, Jonathan Lethem, tangling with what he calls the 'white elephant' role of the writer as public intellectual, arrives at an astonishing range of answers.
Funny and unfettered, The Ecstasy of Influence simmers with direct challenges to conventional wisdom and deep insights into the kaleidoscopic nature of artistic vision, the primacy of the writer in the cultural marketplace, and the way the author's own experiences have fuelled his creative passions.
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A high-wire juggling act where all the balls are kept spinning perfectly
- Irish Independent
The pleasure for readers is twofold: on one hand, there is the intrinsic interest in the subjects...On the other, there’s the fact that this is Lethem telling us these things, and how it gives an insight into his own creative practice
- Guardian
A collage of what makes Lethem tick
- Monocle
Thoughtful and rambunctious ... a jazzy, patchwork memoir ... [a] fresh, erudite, zestful, funny frolic in the great fields of creativity
- Booklist
Hefty and remarkable... These byways, all of which make room for eccentric flights as well as proper essays, augment the charm and impact of what Lethem prefers to call an autobiographical collage
- The New York Times Book Review
I love this book
- The Los Angeles Times
He’s a novelist who has spent a lifetime creating his own subversive pantheon, a jumpy CBGB’s of the literary soul… Several of the essays here marinate in the fish sauce that is literary gossip… feisty, freewheeling, funny
- The New York Times
The Ecstasy of Influence is, more than anything, a record of Mr. Lethem’s life as a public novelist, a role for which he is obviously well suited… Mr. Lethem has such a gift, and The Ecstasy of Influence is evidence of it
- New York Observer
Lethem writes with a commitment to sharing his enthusiasm for whatever obsesses him ... While the results illuminate his formative influences and artistic development, they also cast considerable light on the culture at large, which is both reflected in Lethem's work and has profoundly shaped it
- Kirkus Reviews
Jonathan Lethem...writes superb essays... lovely subtlety
- Evening Standard
Jonathan Lethem, the New York novelist, writes superb essays
- Scotsman
Superb collection of essays… Clever but satisfying, too
- Glasgow Sunday Herald
A funny and clever selection of essays
- Observer
Impassioned and detailed studies offset with bagatelles
- Guardian
Witty, astute and irreverent
- Financial Times
Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times-bestselling author of eight novels, including Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Lethem has also published his stories and essays in the New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire and the New York Times, among others.
