Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence” mainly focuses around the nature of plagiarism. Although I understand that in an academic setting, plagiarism is definitely unacceptable due to the strict rules provided by schools, there’s a very fine line between plagiarism and inspiration when it comes to the real world art. It is hard to be able to use a sample of someone’s work as an inspiration without being labelled as plagiarist or untalented. This is what the author talks about too, but it is important to realize that this fine, blurry line makes it hard to pinpoint when it is being crossed, and when the work is actually being plagiarised in the name of “inspiration”. There needs to be a few hard and fast rules that define plagiarism more than just stealing other’s work and ideas.