“Ecstasy’’ is a kind of literary throwback to a time when favorite writers didn’t hesitate to offer thought piñatas to loyal readers. If you believed that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. or Hunter S. Thompson were key voices - or if you couldn’t get enough of them - you were fine with a once-a-decade volume of other stuff. This wasn’t “Cat’s Cradle’’ or “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,’’ but these works did promise a kind of Secret Santa stash of your hero’s other, presumably lesser, material.
So we get “Ecstasy,’’ a book broken into 10 sections, each with an introductory essay. There are mainstream pieces (Rolling Stone, Playboy) but also works released first in smaller, more adventurous publications such as Black Clock. The writing ranges from memoir to short fiction to review. There’s revenge, as Lethem attacks James Wood, whose negative take - eight years ago! - still bugs him. In our Gawkerfied culture, that six-page self-indulgence has already garnered ample weblines.
It hopefully won’t distract the reading public from one of the big surprises of “Ecstacy’’: How wonderfully Lethem writes about music. His essays are cozy and personal and presented with a refreshing level of insecurity. “I was afraid to write about music for a long time,’’ he shares. “I felt the obvious reluctance to try what seemed destined to fail but also wondered if I wanted to see my writing brain colonize an area of such sheer joy.’’
Lethem is a rock geek’s rock geek. He mentions twice, in different pieces, how much it bothers him to have learned that Ringo Starr didn’t play on all of “The White Album.’’ He chooses to avoid interviewing the Go-Betweens due to his imagining a particular scheme involving the exit of drummer Belinda “Lindy’’ Morrison. He gives props to Lewis Shiner’s fantasy novel “Glimpses,’’ a wonderful and underappreciated book that contemplated the completion of rock’s greatest unfinished works.
Not everything Lethem writes is insightful.
“This next piece irks me,’’ he writes, as a simple way of introducing a piece about his hitchhiking trip after his freshman year at Bennington College.
