Publisher's 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.
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- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who's ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs who want to get out, and artists who don't want to starve anymore will all find valuable inspiration and guidance in these pages. It's time to rework work.
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-
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-
Overall
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Story
On the streets of 1970s Brooklyn, a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged, belongings surrendered, power asserted. The promise of violence lies everywhere, a currency itself. For these children, Black, brown, and white, the street is a stage in shadow. And in the wings hide the other players: parents; cops; renovators; landlords; those who write the headlines, the histories, and laws; those who award this neighborhood its name. The rules appear obvious at first. But in memory’s prism, criminals and victims may seem to trade places.
By: Jonathan Lethem
-
The Fortress of Solitude
- By: Jonathan Lethem
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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-
-
A smorgasbord of language
- By Jonathan on 10-21-03
By: Jonathan Lethem
What listeners say about The Ecstasy of Influence
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- KT
- 12-03-21
A lifetime of sharing is understandable long read.
I loved this book. We are near enough contemporaries that I have huge respect for his writing and more so his reading. The vocabulary is daunting in the audio version without a thesaurus tool. But I kept up while walking the fur baby around the Hollywood Haunts of the Day of the Locust he references.
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