The ecstasy of influence: nonfictions, etc.

This volume sheds light on an array of topics fromsex in cinematodrugs, graffiti, Bob Dylan, cyberculture, 9/11, book touringandMarlon 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 aboutBrooklyn,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.

InThe Ecstasy of Influence, Jonathan Lethem, tangling with what he calls the 'white elephant' role of thewriter as public intellectual, arrives at an astonishing range of answers.

Funny and unfettered,The Ecstasy of Influencesimmers 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.