I was most intrigued by both of Lethem's works, 'Cars' because I did detect a break in the narrative (mostly relations of day and night, characters and their spaces) but that didn't curb the enjoyment I took out of it or made me anything less than impressed with the author's feat to FIND all these pieces in the first place to put them together into a new whole.
The philosophy that stands behind that kind of creative work is thoroughly expanded in the essay, which once again drove home one of the most striking points of our dealings with literature in contemporary times. There's NOTHING that hasn't been done before, and while some things have been done to death (yes, I'm looking the franchising in modern day movie culture, which gloriously nails the argument of economizing intellectual property in a way that is detrimental for creativity and originality) others have sunk back into the obscurity of time until some creative mind unearths them again, whether consciously or by chance and brings them back to the discourse of literary narrative.
The ingenious thing is that everyone is influenced whether they'd like to admit it or not, because no one can claim a blank slate for a cultural background. And they shouldn't have to. While the livelyhood or artists - literary or otherwise - of course rests on the fact of whether their products are 'marketable', a notion which is certainly not to be discarded, the current state of affairs regarding usemonopoly and copyright (culminating presently in the ongoing and harrowing debate about legislation like SOPA and PIPA) are woefully behind the consumer reality and in urgent need of a revision to free up all this potential for creative forces to be applied.
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