L'estasi Dell'influenza. Nonfiction, Etc. (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
For the most part this is just a random grab bag of stuff that Lethem published in magazine previously, book prefaces, stuff dashed off for McSweeny's etc. Lethem's ideas and influences are dizzying, erudite, all over the place . . . while there are quite a few highlights (including interviews with both James Brown and Bob Dylan) at the end of the book you have the feeling you get if you order hash. You feel like it was just the chefs way of throwing a bunch of leftover odds and ends into a pot. The essay on Post-modernism and Liberty Valance was great. I'd rather have read a shorter book that had no filler. But his essay on Bolano's 2666 left me with no new thoughts about Bolano. His essay on J.G. Ballard is reading time that could be better spent reading J.G. Ballard. And his essay on Marlon Brando only served to make me look up the article that Truman Capote wrote on Marlon Brando back in the day, which I read, and enjoyed more than anything in this collection. Some of the essays are better than others. There is a lot of food for thought, but some of it is pretty light, not comfort food, doesn't really stay with you like the more serious stuff. I wanted to read this for two reasons - 1) I loved the only fictional book by Lethem I have read, Motherless Brooklyn, and 2) the title is an obvious nod to Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, a book which has, ahem, had a big influence on me.
What do You think about L'estasi Dell'influenza. Nonfiction, Etc. (2011)?
Lethem mentioned how he mixed up astronauts and dinosaurs as a child. I liked that.
—Karijo
couldn't actually finish the collection, to be honest
—Bad
