The Ecstasy of Influence: Book summary and reviews of The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem

The Ecstasy of Influence Summary

What's a novelist supposed to do with contemporary culture? And what's contemporary culture sup­posed to do with novelists? 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.

A constellation of previously published pieces and new essays as provocative and idiosyncratic as any he's written, 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, as well as on a shelf's worth of his literary models and contemporaries: Norman Mailer, Paula Fox, Bret Easton Ellis, James Wood, and others. And, writing about Brooklyn, his father, and his sojourn through two decades of writing, Lethem sheds an equally strong light on himself.

The Ecstasy of Influence Reviews

"Starred Review. In a tsunami of literary and cinematic references, familiar and obscure, Lethem easily rises to the surface as a brilliant, incisive essayist who loves to sing the body eclectic." - Publishers Weekly

"Absorbing reading for the smart set." - Library Journal

"Starred Review. Inevitably a mixed bag, but with high ambitions and a strong sense of purpose." - Kirkus Reviews

"Peppery nonfiction... thoughtful and rambunctious... dynamically juxtaposed and connected... [a] fresh, erudite, zestful, funny frolic in the great fields of creativity." - Booklist

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Jonathan Lethem Author Biography

Jonathan Lethem is the author of nine novels, a novella, a number of short story collections and many essays. His novel Motherless Brooklyn, was named Novel of the Year by Esquire and won The National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award. He is also the author of the story collection, The Wall of the Eye and the novella This Shape We're In. He edited The Vintage Book of Amnesia, guest-edited The Year's Best Music Writing 2002, and was the founding fiction editor of Fence Magazine. His writings have appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeney's, and many other periodicals. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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