Questions and Assignments for Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy Of Influence”

QUESTIONS FOR A SECOND READING

1.

One of the pleasures of Lethem’s essay is its broad range of reference. This is also one of the essay’s strategies — to range quickly and widely among examples of influence in literature, music, the visual arts, and popular culture. Lethem refers, for example, to the Disney Studios, the Oulipo group, Bob Dylan, Vladimir Nabokov, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, South Park, Muddy Waters, Andy Warhol, and Led Zeppelin — to name just a few.

Question 25.1

2.

It is common to talk about punctuation in relation to the sentence. Writers use marks of punctuation (commas, dashes, colons, semicolons, parentheses) to organize a sentence and to help readers locate themselves in relation to what they are reading. Writers also, however, punctuate essays or chapters — longer units of text. Lethem provides an excellent model of this practice. You can notice immediately, for example, how he uses subheadings to organize the essay into sections. The unit is larger than a paragraph. Each section could be said to function as an aid to both the reader and the writer.

Question 25.2

3.

Question 25.3

4.

Question 25.4

5.

Here is Lethem on “active” reading:

Active reading is an impertinent raid on the literary preserve. Readers are like nomads, poaching their way across fields they do not own — artists are no more able to control the imaginations of their audiences than the culture industry is able to control second uses of its artifacts. (para. 32)

As you reread, think about how you might construct a definition of “active reading.” Take notes and write out some sentences that you can turn to in class discussion.

Question 25.5

ASSIGNMENTS FOR WRITING

1.

These are the final words of Lethem’s essay:

As for canons, why should it be that to valorize reuse indicated, of all things, an enmity to canons? I was a fiend for canons. Sampling was “Ancestor worship,” according to D.J. Spooky. Let a million canons Bloom. Only, canons not be authoritarian fiat but out of urgent personal voyaging. Construct your own and wear it, an exoskeleton of many colors. (para. 136)

Write an essay that is composed as Lethem’s essay is composed, built out of pieces you’ve read elsewhere. Take a subject that matters to you. Work with texts you care about and want to read or reread. Please take into mind Lethem’s sense that his was an act of “urgent personal voyaging;” it was an “ecstatic” act, not just a fishing expedition. Is such urgency possible for you? Make it a goal of your work on this project.

Question 25.6

2.

Question 25.7

3.

Here is Lethem in the final section of his essay, “Give All”:

Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself are stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste ourselves, might we not forgive it of our artworks? (para. 57)

This is a long, rich and complicated (and even “ecstatic”) passage. And it comes close to bringing together all the threads that make up the argument of this essay. What is this argument as you understand it? How might you explain it to others? And where do you locate yourself in relation to what Lethem has to say?

Write an essay in which, essentially, you present Lethem’s argument, explain it to others, and take a position of your own. You can imagine that your audience is made up of smart and interesting people, but that they’re people who haven’t read Lethem and might be a bit suspicious of the notion that we all “cut-and-paste.” You will, in other words, not only need to provide summary and paraphrase, but you will need to work with Lethem’s text, presented in block quotation and followed by your version of what it says, followed, that is, by translation.

Question 25.8

4.

One of the pleasures of Lethem’s essay is its broad range of reference. This is also one of the essay’s strategies — to range quickly and widely among examples of influence in literature, music, visual arts, and popular culture. For example, Lethem refers to the Walt Disney Studios, Bob Dylan, Vladimir Nabokov, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, South Park, Muddy Waters, Andy Warhol, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few.

Question 25.9

MAKING CONNECTIONS

1.

These are the final words of Lethem’s essay:

As for canons, why should it be that to valorize reuse indicated, of all things, an enmity to canons? I was a fiend for canons. Sampling was “Ancestor worship,” according to D.J. Spooky. Let a million canons Bloom. Only, canons not be authoritarian fiat but out of urgent personal voyaging. Construct your own and wear it, an exoskeleton of many colors. (para. 137)

Write an essay that is composed as Lethem’s essay is composed, built out of pieces from two other selections in Ways of Reading. The first task is to locate a subject that matters to you. Please take into mind Lethem’s sense that his was an act of “urgent personal voyaging;” it was an “ecstatic” act, not just a fishing expedition. Is such urgency possible for you? Make it a goal of your work on this project.

Question 25.10

2.

“Most artists,” Lethem says,

are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one’s voice isn’t just an emptying and purifying of oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiation. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must humbly be admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she submerges that knowing. (para. 12)

Lethem’s essay touches on the relation of the individual (the artist, the writer, the reader, the citizen, the student) to tradition, whether that tradition is one represented by single texts of individual “masters” or by larger cultural expectations, institutions, and formations. He says,

Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. (para. 57)

The relation of the individual to tradition, history, the words and the work of others — this is a concern at the center of many of the selections in Ways of Reading. Here is a partial list of those selections, though others that could easily be added: John Berger, “Ways of Seeing,” Judith Butler, “Beside Oneself,” (p. 112 of the print book) Ralph Waldo Emerson, “ The American Scholar,” Paulo Freire, “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” (p. 336 of the print book) Richard Rodriguez, “The Achievement of Desire,” (p. 297 of the print book) Richard Miller, “The Dark Night of the Soul,” and Walker Percy, “The Loss of the Creature.” (p. 297 of the print book).

Question 25.11