Hypodermic Light: The Poetry of Philip Lamantia and the Question of Surrealism is the first examination of the American surrealist poet Philip Lamantia, who was associated with the Beats and the San Francisco Renaissance, and attempts to theorize the nature of surrealism in literature. Surrealism is seen as a continually excessive style that through a relentless pressing of analogy, allows both similarity and difference to appear. This book draws upon the earlier Levinas, Bataille, Alphonso Lingis, Deleuze, and Merleau-Ponty.