jonathan lethem, “the ecstacy of influence” from, “sound unbound”

Jonathan Lethem’s essay in DJ Spooky’s anthology “Sound Unbound.” Originally from Harper’s.

A few notes, first regarding collage:

Visual, sound, and text collage–which for many centuries were relatively fugitive traditions (a cento here, a folk pastiche there)–became explosively central to a series of movements in the twentieth century: futurism, cubism, Dada, musique concrete, situationism, pop art, and appropriationism. In fact, collage, the common denominator in that list, might be called the art form of the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first. …it becomes apparent that the appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sin qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production. (28-29)

Later, regarding allusion:

What happens when allusion goes unrecognized? A closer look at The Waste Land may help make this point. The body of Eliot’s poem is a vertiginous melange of quotation, allusion, and “original” writing. When Eliot alludes to Edmund Spenser’s “Prothalamion:” with the line “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song,” what of readers to whom the poem, never one of Spenser’s most popular, is unfamiliar? … Taken from this angle, what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety? (29-30)

Yet later, regarding second uses:

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. [Recounting of The Velveteen Rabbit] … Seen from the perspective of the toymaker, the Velveteen Rabbit’s loose joints and missing eyes represent vandalism, signs of misuse and rough treatment; for others, these are marks of its loving use.

The essay then jumps into copyright mode with a look at art as engaging withing a “gift economy” and the commons as some public thing, mostly derivatively drawing from a number of previous thinkers, like Lessig and LItman. But, here’s the kicker: he actually is drawing from these previous thinkers–the essay, while not entirely, draws on a number of ideas, writings, even personal anecdotes that go un-cited. At the end, however, he outlines where certain passages come from. For example, of the passage about the Velveteen Rabbit, he says, “This is a mashup of Henry Jenkins, from his Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, and Michel de Certeau, whom Jenkins quotes.”

This might fit in by describing collage as an historically situated practice, drawing connections between appropriation, mixing, sampling, and the creation of the novel. Lethem seems to say that most work is derivative, positively so, but I’m willing to take a few more postmodern leaps toward an understanding of the pastiche’s novelty in its own right.

~ by Gabriel on July 1, 2008.