Jonathan Lethem is almost exactly my age, and apparently even worked at Moe's Books in Berkeley during the time I was a student at Cal. Which means that his cultural reference points, which turn up repeatedly in this collection of non-fiction pieces, are nearly identical to mine. His writing style is often workman-like, wearing its (explicitly stated) influences on its sleeve and failing to transcend them. All of which means that I can easily identify with Lethem as a doppelgänger for what my life could have been like if I'd become a novelist.
My rating for the book wavered between four stars and three stars depending on which section I was reading. I enjoyed his pieces about film and music more than the ones about art and books. (Low culture vs high?) Overall, though, the individual pieces work together to present a portrait of the writer (in the piecemeal style of Thirty-two short films about Glenn Gould) and to make an argument about an artist's position relative to his influences, centered around the title essay.
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