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Pulphead Paperback – 25 October 2011
by John Jeremiah Sullivan (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 276 ratings
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Named A Best Book of 2011 by the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Boston Globe and Entertainment Weekly
A sharp-eyed, uniquely humane tour of America's cultural landscape--from high to low to lower than low--by the award-winning young star of the literary nonfiction world.
In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us--with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that's all his own--how we really (no, really) live now.
- In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World.
- Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival;
- to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV's Real World, who've generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity;
- and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina--
- and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill.
Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we've never heard told this way. It's like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we've never imagined to be true. Of course we don't know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection--it's our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan's work.
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Pulphead
John Jeremiah Sullivan
4.3 out of 5 stars 276
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Pulphead
Pulphead
1. Upon this Rock
1:20:29
2. Feet in Smoke
21:14
3. Mr. Lytle: An Essay
51:17
4. At a Shelter (After Katrina)
16:31
5. Getting Down to What Is Really Real
36:39
6. Michael
37:14
7. The Final Comeback of Axl Rose
52:03
8. American Grotesque
58:15
9. La-hwi-ne-ski: Career of an Eccentric Naturalist
1:05:46
10. Unnamed Caves
1:20:09
11. Unknown Bards
50:28
12. The Last Wailer
57:36
13. Violence of the Lambs
1:05:09
=====
Product description
Review
"Sullivan seems able to do almost anything, to work in any register, and not just within a single piece but often in the span of a single paragraph...Pulphead is the best, and most important, collection of magazine writing since Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again...Sullivan's writing is a bizarrely coherent, novel, and generous pastiche of the biblical, the demotic, the regionally gusty and the erudite." --New York Times Book Review
"[Pulphead is] a big and sustaining pile of--as I've heard it put about certain people's fried chicken--crunchy goodness . . . What's impressive about Pulphead is the way these disparate essays cohere into a memoirlike whole. The putty that binds them together is Mr. Sullivan's steady and unhurried voice. Reading him, I felt the way Mr. Sullivan does while listening to a Bunny Wailer song called 'Let Him Go.' That is, I felt 'like a puck on an air-hockey table that's been switched on.' Like well-made songs, his essays don't just have strong verses and choruses but bridges, too, unexpected bits that make subtle harmonic connections . . . The book has its grotesques, for sure. But they are genuine and appear here in a way that put me in mind of one of Flannery O'Connor's indelible utterances. 'Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, ' O'Connor said, 'I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.'" --New York Times
"[Sullivan] seems to have in abundance the storyteller's gifts: he is a fierce noticer, is undauntedly curious, is porous to gossip, and has a memory of childlike tenacity . . . Unlike Tom Wolfe or Joan Didion, who bring their famous styles along with them like well-set, just-done hair, Sullivan lets his subjects muss and alter his prose; he works like a novelist." --James Wood, New Yorker
"Sullivan's essays have won two National Magazine Awards, and here his omnivorous intellect analyzes Michael Jackson, Christian rock, post-Katrina New Orleans, Axl Rose and the obscure 19th century naturalist Constantine Rafinesque. His compulsive honesty and wildly intelligent prose recall the work of American masters of New Journalism like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe." --Time
"Sullivan's essays stay with you, like good short stories--and like accomplished short fiction, they often will, over time, reveal a fuller meaning . . . Whether he ponders the legacy of a long-dead French scientist or the unlikely cultural trajectory of Christian rock, Sullivan imbues his narrative subjects with a broader urgency reminiscent of other great practitioners of the essay-profile, such as New Yorker writers Joseph Mitchell and A. J. Liebling or Gay Talese during his '60s Esquire heyday . . . [Pulphead] reinforces [Sullivan's] standing as among the best of his generation's essayists." --Bookforum
"One ascendant talent who deserves to be widely read and encouraged is John Jeremiah Sullivan . . . Pulpheadis one of the most involving collections of essays to appear in many a year." --Larry McMurtry, Harper's Magazine
"[The essays in Pulphead are] among the liveliest magazine features written by anyone in the past 10 years . . . What they have in common, though, whether low or high of brow, is their author's essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects' and his own foibles . . . a collection that shows why Sullivan might be the best magazine writer around." --NPR
"Each beautifully crafted essay in John Jeremiah Sullivan's collection Pulphead is a self-contained world...Sullivan's masterful essays invite an honest confrontation with reality, especially when considered in light of one another....Pulphead compels its readers to consider each as an equal sum in the bizarre arithmetic of American identity . . . [Sullivan is] as red-hot a writer as they come." --BookPage
"The age-old strangeness of American pop culture gets dissected with hilarious and revelatory precision...Sullivan writes an extraordinary prose that's stuffed with off-beat insight gleaned from rapt, appalled observations and suffused with a hang-dog charm. The result is an arresting take on the American imagination." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
About the Author
John Jeremiah Sullivan isa contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the southern editor of The Paris Review. He writes for GQ, Harper's Magazine, and Oxford American, and is the author of Blood Horses and Pulphead. Sullivan lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Product details
Publisher : Fsg Originals (25 October 2011)
Language : English
Paperback : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 0374532907
ISBN-13 : 978-0374532901
Dimensions : 12.83 x 2.54 x 19.05 cmBest Sellers Rank: 835,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)5,015 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
5,270 in Essays
6,498 in U.S. State & Local HistoryCustomer Reviews:
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 276 ratings
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John Jeremiah Sullivan
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F. Tyler B. Brown
5.0 out of 5 stars What Is, Is NaturalReviewed in the United States on 2 January 2012
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====
In "Unknown Bards", Sullivan's essay about American Blues music, we get this quote from Dean Blackwood of Revenant Records, "...I have always felt like there wasn't enough of a case being made for [blues musicians'] greatness. You've got to have their stuff together to understand the potency of their work." The same can be said about John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Until now, Sullivan's essays have entered the public sphere only piecemeal through periodicals like GQ, Harper's Magazine, and The Paris Review. With "Pulphead", we get the first compilation of Sullivan's essays, and only the second book of his ever published. What emerges from this collection, more so than if one were to read these essays on their own, is a uniquely talented American writer and voice.
Sullivan's prose is humble and emotional, while never self-centered or overbearing.
His prose is opposite that of a political pundit's, a sophist sportscaster, or "expert" social media consultant. Our society is quick to confuse wisdom with declarative opinions. From Sullivan, don't look for grandiose reformations of opinions into facts. Words like guarantee, definitely, undoubtedly are as foreign to Sullivan as pretentious qualifiers like, "My twenty years of successful leadership on the Hill..." Or, "I have been saying all along, and I will say it again, John Doe is the best athlete since..."
Sullivan deals in grey. In his essays, he even takes self-deprecating swipes at his own credibility as a writer: "I don't know. I had no pseudo-anthropological moxie left." Or, "Ordinarily, one is tense about interrogating strangers, worried about freezing or forgetting to ask what'll turn out to be the only important question." Or about Axl Rose, who the entire essay "The Final Comeback of Axl Rose" was supposed to be about, "I don't know him at all."
Such self-deprecation is uncommon from writers, and requires immense self-confidence. These swipes, in their humanity, though, have a way of increasing Sullivan's credibility. Such subtleties are the touch of a confident Velazquez at the height of his technical mastery.
Sullivan's technical mastery of his craft, his tantalizing, crackling prose, is what allows the reader to learn not only more about the subject of the Sullivan's eye, but also about Sullivan himself.
Whether John Jeremiah Sullivan is writing about pop culture, youth movements, religion, music, or geology, there is always reverberating just beneath the surface of the lead story the narrative of Sullivan's own life.
The story of Sullivan's life has a way of turning the reader inward. The reader becomes a reader of his or her own story.
In "Upon This Rock", Sullivan journeys to the Creation Christian Rock Festival. We learn that Sullivan began this journey with the mindset that his trip to Creation would be "a lark". Instead, Sullivan provides a vivid account of a humbling, human journey of self-exploration, "I went back to the trailer and had, as the ladies say where I'm from, a colossal go-to-pieces. I started to cry and then stopped myself for some reason. I felt nonsensically raw and lonely. What a d%ickhead I'd been, thinking that this trip would be a lark."
In this raw emotion, and through empathy for the people he is writing about, Sullivan achieves at Creation some clarity about his own life, and his own relationship with spirituality.
Sullivan's prose in "Upon This Rock" stands up to today's frenetic, digital, fragmented, and hyperlinked world. His prose is like a glorious mixed-media work of art: a orange yarn glued on top of a black and white photo, underneath and oil painting of an purple-pink evening sky.
Some critics are quick to draw parallels between Sullivan's style and that of David Foster Wallace: the patched together, disjointed brilliance. A more apt description of Sullivan is that he is a self-assured, humble, updated, and less egotistical Hunter S. Thompson.
In his journey to Kingston to meet the "Last Wailer," the influence of fellow Kentuckian Hunter S. Thompson is most apparent: "There was a big open-air bar. `Mind if we smoke?' Llewis asked...We rolled a two-sheeter under a giant sign that said NO GANJA SMOKING." Llewis is not the "Last Wailer". He is just a tour guide, helping Sullivan with the essay. The essay is about neither Llewis, nor Sullivan, but in a way it does become about them, and about something bigger than just Bunny Wailer.
Like with Thompson's writings, in Sullivan's essays, we are always presented the author's story. But Sullivan's first person narrative is far less "Gonzo" than Thompson's.
Sullivan strikes a tone that is more gently, lovingly irreverent than that of "The Decadent and The Depraved" (Thompson's brilliant essay about the Kentucky Derby). Sullivan replaces Thompson's vitriolic I'm-not-a-member-of-the-Country-Club-so everyone-who-is-is-a-small-minded-sycophant bitterness, with an even-though-a-Country-Club-can-be-a-culturally-empty-place-there-are-individuals-inside-of-it-that-I-am-sure-have-some-vulnerability-some-humanity-that-I-can-write-about empathy.
Sullivan opens his heart to his subjects. While his methods- for interviewing and writing alike- may not be ganja-free, and are unconventional- they are far from bitter, angry, or temperamental. A warm self-confidence, respect for mankind, self-deprecation, and desire to know pulsates through Sullivan's writing like a bubbling brook.
In "Peyton's Place" Sullivan has crafted a shrewd commentary on pop culture, parenthood, and of the way media in its many forms is blurring the lines between what is real and unreal, public and private. With a keen sense of humor, and a big heart, Sullivan has an adroit and playful way of mending his language to match his subject, "The brunet's question had given me a small, surprising tilt of nostalgia. Did we know that we used to be on a show? Did we know that?" One can almost hear the unwritten "OMG!!" at the end of that sentence.
Sullivan doesn't play with language in this way to be demeaning; rather, he uses it as a way to show empathy, and to self-reflect. "Brunet" is a carefully, brilliantly chosen word. This superficial identification is similar to the kinds of superficiality that occurs within the very sitcom being filmed in Sullivan's home- a show that Sullivan is neither admonishing nor praising, because he is both removed from the show, but also has an indirect hand in fostering its production.
Sullivan doesn't deal in absolutes. He is constantly exploring through his pen. He is trying to determine what is really real, who he really is, how he relates to another person, what it all means. His language will disarm you with humor, with a familiarity and modernity that carries his words- with a Trojan horse-like slippage- into your psyche for a long, long while. "Pulphead" is a collection of essays that proves Sullivan is a young and lively Southern writer not to be overlooked.
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therealus
5.0 out of 5 stars Everybody I've asked thinks this is great!Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 October 2012
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In amongst all the serious stuff about going on holiday, you have to mix in some fun, so when I saw this reviewed I thought it might make a suitable companion on my long-planned Deep South Musical Odyssey between Mobile and Austin. Specifically I thought it would be good for the flights between London and Houston, an antidote to all those government papers and intelligence briefings I usually carry with me.
Some of Pulphead was particularly apposite, given that I was finally bound for New Orleans, seven years after my original visit was postponed by Katrina, with a chapter about post-Katrina New Orleans: the dead animals, the new camaraderies, the stories of near death, and of how WWIII nearly breaks out in the queue for gas, an episode which prepared me well for the driving etiquette on I10.
What's really striking, and skilful, about much of Sullivan's writing is the way each article slips seamlessly and almost unnoticed away from its supposed subject. So the first chapter, supposedly about a Christian rock festival, is used as a vehicle (no pun intended) for a cautionary tale regarding the perils of driving oversize RVs. Here also is revealed the author's enviable ability to quote the scriptures, without believing a word, an ability which also comes in useful in a later chapter when he catches a Christian fundamentalist attributing to Marx a mantra actually originating in the Bible.
In previous times I have, despite his political leanings, enjoyed the writings of PJ O'Rourke (I have shamelessly stolen the joke he uses as epigraph to Republican Party Animal, and refer ad nauseam to Holidays In Hell, especially that teasing farm animals is the national sport of Spain, though I did find his explanation of The Wealth Of Nations rather dull). Sullivan, it transpires, I can enjoy guilt free, as in American Grotesque, for example, he manages to confirm for me all my prejudices about the Tea Partiers, with their dog-whistle racism, superstitious opposition to Obamacare and general antipathy to government, usually to their own detriment. (In fairness, I'd guess PJ himself would do a job on the TP, and possibly has.) But Sullivan is mostly quite subtle in his put-downs, applying the judo approach of using his targets' own numbskullery to tell its own story. Give `em enough rope...
Four of the standout chapters deal, one way or another, with the music industry. There's a touching chapter in defence of Michael Jackson, in which both barrels are levelled at those involved in the Martin Bashir-inspired witch-hunt against the singer. There's an amusing account of how the author succeeded in interviewing just about everybody ever involved in Axl Rose's life except Axl himself. The account of his interviews with Bunny Wailer is interesting for the insights into the story of reggae in Jamaica, especially those dealing with Bob Marley, and chilling for the insights it gives into the politics of the island. And he provides an impressive textual analysis of a blues country song as a lead-in to an essay on the blues industry as possibly invented by whites, which also gives a fresh look at Robert Johnson and his lyrics, in a chapter inviting comparisons with Amanda Petrusich's It Still Moves, a book examining Americana music which nevertheless manages to spend a whole chapter looking inside the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain.
Sullivan's Epilogue is set in Disney World, which is portrayed as little less dystopian than the theme park in Westworld, a movie in which Yul Brynner, playing a robot gunslinger, goes rogue and, somehow overriding the park's safety features, starts killing people. Just like, in fact, the world's animals will soon start doing if you believe the chapter Violence Of The Lambs. Hilarious.
I'd almost say there was something for everybody, but then I realise the everybody I've polled here is just me.
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2 people found this helpfulReport
Bradley Bevers
4.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, A Few Flaws - RecommendedReviewed in the United States on 21 December 2011
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This book was my introduction to Sullivan as a writer, and I was impressed. His writing is varied, thorough, and above all interesting. It is a great read, and has one of the coolest covers that I have seen on a book in a long time (the reason I bought it in the first place). As good as it is, there were some flaws that stop me from recommending it without reservation.
His first essay is on Christian rock music, viewed from the lens of a huge Christian rock festival. His analysis of Christian music is spot-on, and his critique of why most Christian rock is bad music is one of the best critiques I have read on the subject. However, I think he misses two things in this essay. First, his easy dismissal of Christians as the uninformed comes across as arrogant. His critique of the music is perfect, his critique of the religion is one sided. Also, while I agree 100% on the state of Christian music, I think that the larger picture is missed in the essay. The fact is that almost all modern music suffers the same fate these days, doomed to imitate instead of create. New country, alternative, and almost everything else on the radio is commercially driven . . . drivel.
The three other stand out essays cover Michael Jackson, Rafinesque, and animal violence. The Michael Jackson piece is fair, moving, and one of the best 10 page mini-bio's on anyone in print. The story of Rafinesque is fascinating, and I hope that the facts are not played with as fast and loose as one of the negative reviews on this book indicate. The story of animal violence is fascinating . . . but I think it suffers greatly because of the ending. I won't give anything away, but I will say I like it much better before I read the last two pages.
All in all, this is a book worth reading by a writer obviously at the top of his craft. You will laugh, learn, fear, and love, and for a collection of non-fiction essays that is an astounding accomplishment. Recommended.
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4 people found this helpfulReport
William Capodanno
5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves its place on the Ten Best non-fiction lists of 2011Reviewed in the United States on 30 December 2011
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I had yet to read any of John Jeremiah Sullivan's essays and after seeing this on quite a few Top 10 non-fiction list for 2011, I was eager to dig into this collection and see what all the fuss was about. Sullivan has a mighty fine command of the English language and puts it to great use in "Pulphead", an essay that runs the gamut from rock to religion to family and everything in between.
As I think about all the essays in this collections, there are certainly no duds and quite a few are top notch writing. Sullivan delivers probably the most thought-provoking and balanced essay I've read on Michael Jackson, forcing even the most cynical reader (me) to stop and think about things differently. Sullivan traverses the music landscape from Jackson to heavy metal (Axl Rose) to reggae and Bunny Wailer to an amazing essay on country blues. He even makes a stop into the land of Christian rock, attending a weekend festival and musing on why the terms Christian and rock seem to be oxymoronic. Lest one thinks that music is the only topic that Sullivan is adept writing about, he tackles the near death of his brother (electrocution from a microphone) to an obscure naturalist in 19th century America to whether animal attacks on human beings represent a growing trend and cause for concern by homo sapiens. Sullivan manages to bring interest to the long forgotten genesis of reality TV, "The Real World", and talk about the time his house was used over multiple seasons for the teen drama, "One Tree Hill". In addition to the Michael Jackson essay, the two other essays that shine above the rest are one where he explores the suicide (or murder) of US census worker Bill Sparkman and the other where he writes about his experience living with writer Andrew Lytle.
Sullivan certainly entertains and provokes in this amazingly rich body of work that should keep just about anyone entertained. While I read it sequentially, one can certainly pick it up and read one essay and come back at a later time and choose anything that suits their mood. Now that I've "discovered" Sullivan, I'm certain to seek out his writing without waiting for his next published set of essays.
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4 people found this helpfulReport
SueKich
4.0 out of 5 stars Watch this space...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 August 2012
Verified Purchase
The brilliant writer Edward Docx raved about this book in the weekend press and I ordered it from Amazon straightaway.
I am only 11 pages in and I can tell just from the quality of the writing that this is going to be a great read.
Watch this space...
Update 1:
Pulphead is a series of essays by American journalist John Jeremiah Sullivan. In the first essay, "Upon This Rock", Sullivan travels 500 in a 29ft camper van (the journey is hilarious) to cover a Christian rock gathering called Creation. There is a certain style of writing that is unique to America: writing that wears its intelligence lightly and is therefore full of charm. And funny. Did I mention that? Very, very funny.
Update 2:
This is a short essay about a terrible accident that happens to the author's half-brother. It manages to be hugely touching without being remotely maudlin. No mean achievement.
Update 3:
Having now finished Pulphead, I felt that I had to reduce my rating to 4* because I thought that the subject matter of some of JJS's essays were a little esoteric for a UK audience, or to be more precise, for this reader. Having said that, I do think this guy's a great writer and even if you skip a couple of the essays, as I did, you'll still find plenty in it to enjoy.
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4 people found this helpfulReport
therealus
5.0 out of 5 stars Everybody I've asked thinks this is great!Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 October 2012
Verified Purchase
In amongst all the serious stuff about going on holiday, you have to mix in some fun, so when I saw this reviewed I thought it might make a suitable companion on my long-planned Deep South Musical Odyssey between Mobile and Austin. Specifically I thought it would be good for the flights between London and Houston, an antidote to all those government papers and intelligence briefings I usually carry with me.
Some of Pulphead was particularly apposite, given that I was finally bound for New Orleans, seven years after my original visit was postponed by Katrina, with a chapter about post-Katrina New Orleans: the dead animals, the new camaraderies, the stories of near death, and of how WWIII nearly breaks out in the queue for gas, an episode which prepared me well for the driving etiquette on I10.
What's really striking, and skilful, about much of Sullivan's writing is the way each article slips seamlessly and almost unnoticed away from its supposed subject. So the first chapter, supposedly about a Christian rock festival, is used as a vehicle (no pun intended) for a cautionary tale regarding the perils of driving oversize RVs. Here also is revealed the author's enviable ability to quote the scriptures, without believing a word, an ability which also comes in useful in a later chapter when he catches a Christian fundamentalist attributing to Marx a mantra actually originating in the Bible.
In previous times I have, despite his political leanings, enjoyed the writings of PJ O'Rourke (I have shamelessly stolen the joke he uses as epigraph to Republican Party Animal, and refer ad nauseam to Holidays In Hell, especially that teasing farm animals is the national sport of Spain, though I did find his explanation of The Wealth Of Nations rather dull). Sullivan, it transpires, I can enjoy guilt free, as in American Grotesque, for example, he manages to confirm for me all my prejudices about the Tea Partiers, with their dog-whistle racism, superstitious opposition to Obamacare and general antipathy to government, usually to their own detriment. (In fairness, I'd guess PJ himself would do a job on the TP, and possibly has.) But Sullivan is mostly quite subtle in his put-downs, applying the judo approach of using his targets' own numbskullery to tell its own story. Give `em enough rope...
Four of the standout chapters deal, one way or another, with the music industry. There's a touching chapter in defence of Michael Jackson, in which both barrels are levelled at those involved in the Martin Bashir-inspired witch-hunt against the singer. There's an amusing account of how the author succeeded in interviewing just about everybody ever involved in Axl Rose's life except Axl himself. The account of his interviews with Bunny Wailer is interesting for the insights into the story of reggae in Jamaica, especially those dealing with Bob Marley, and chilling for the insights it gives into the politics of the island. And he provides an impressive textual analysis of a blues country song as a lead-in to an essay on the blues industry as possibly invented by whites, which also gives a fresh look at Robert Johnson and his lyrics, in a chapter inviting comparisons with Amanda Petrusich's It Still Moves, a book examining Americana music which nevertheless manages to spend a whole chapter looking inside the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain.
Sullivan's Epilogue is set in Disney World, which is portrayed as little less dystopian than the theme park in Westworld, a movie in which Yul Brynner, playing a robot gunslinger, goes rogue and, somehow overriding the park's safety features, starts killing people. Just like, in fact, the world's animals will soon start doing if you believe the chapter Violence Of The Lambs. Hilarious.
I'd almost say there was something for everybody, but then I realise the everybody I've polled here is just me.
Read less
2 people found this helpfulReport
Bradley Bevers
4.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, A Few Flaws - RecommendedReviewed in the United States on 21 December 2011
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This book was my introduction to Sullivan as a writer, and I was impressed. His writing is varied, thorough, and above all interesting. It is a great read, and has one of the coolest covers that I have seen on a book in a long time (the reason I bought it in the first place). As good as it is, there were some flaws that stop me from recommending it without reservation.
His first essay is on Christian rock music, viewed from the lens of a huge Christian rock festival. His analysis of Christian music is spot-on, and his critique of why most Christian rock is bad music is one of the best critiques I have read on the subject. However, I think he misses two things in this essay. First, his easy dismissal of Christians as the uninformed comes across as arrogant. His critique of the music is perfect, his critique of the religion is one sided. Also, while I agree 100% on the state of Christian music, I think that the larger picture is missed in the essay. The fact is that almost all modern music suffers the same fate these days, doomed to imitate instead of create. New country, alternative, and almost everything else on the radio is commercially driven . . . drivel.
The three other stand out essays cover Michael Jackson, Rafinesque, and animal violence. The Michael Jackson piece is fair, moving, and one of the best 10 page mini-bio's on anyone in print. The story of Rafinesque is fascinating, and I hope that the facts are not played with as fast and loose as one of the negative reviews on this book indicate. The story of animal violence is fascinating . . . but I think it suffers greatly because of the ending. I won't give anything away, but I will say I like it much better before I read the last two pages.
All in all, this is a book worth reading by a writer obviously at the top of his craft. You will laugh, learn, fear, and love, and for a collection of non-fiction essays that is an astounding accomplishment. Recommended.
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4 people found this helpfulReport
William Capodanno
5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves its place on the Ten Best non-fiction lists of 2011Reviewed in the United States on 30 December 2011
Verified Purchase
I had yet to read any of John Jeremiah Sullivan's essays and after seeing this on quite a few Top 10 non-fiction list for 2011, I was eager to dig into this collection and see what all the fuss was about. Sullivan has a mighty fine command of the English language and puts it to great use in "Pulphead", an essay that runs the gamut from rock to religion to family and everything in between.
As I think about all the essays in this collections, there are certainly no duds and quite a few are top notch writing. Sullivan delivers probably the most thought-provoking and balanced essay I've read on Michael Jackson, forcing even the most cynical reader (me) to stop and think about things differently. Sullivan traverses the music landscape from Jackson to heavy metal (Axl Rose) to reggae and Bunny Wailer to an amazing essay on country blues. He even makes a stop into the land of Christian rock, attending a weekend festival and musing on why the terms Christian and rock seem to be oxymoronic. Lest one thinks that music is the only topic that Sullivan is adept writing about, he tackles the near death of his brother (electrocution from a microphone) to an obscure naturalist in 19th century America to whether animal attacks on human beings represent a growing trend and cause for concern by homo sapiens. Sullivan manages to bring interest to the long forgotten genesis of reality TV, "The Real World", and talk about the time his house was used over multiple seasons for the teen drama, "One Tree Hill". In addition to the Michael Jackson essay, the two other essays that shine above the rest are one where he explores the suicide (or murder) of US census worker Bill Sparkman and the other where he writes about his experience living with writer Andrew Lytle.
Sullivan certainly entertains and provokes in this amazingly rich body of work that should keep just about anyone entertained. While I read it sequentially, one can certainly pick it up and read one essay and come back at a later time and choose anything that suits their mood. Now that I've "discovered" Sullivan, I'm certain to seek out his writing without waiting for his next published set of essays.
Read less
4 people found this helpfulReport
SueKich
4.0 out of 5 stars Watch this space...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 August 2012
Verified Purchase
The brilliant writer Edward Docx raved about this book in the weekend press and I ordered it from Amazon straightaway.
I am only 11 pages in and I can tell just from the quality of the writing that this is going to be a great read.
Watch this space...
Update 1:
Pulphead is a series of essays by American journalist John Jeremiah Sullivan. In the first essay, "Upon This Rock", Sullivan travels 500 in a 29ft camper van (the journey is hilarious) to cover a Christian rock gathering called Creation. There is a certain style of writing that is unique to America: writing that wears its intelligence lightly and is therefore full of charm. And funny. Did I mention that? Very, very funny.
Update 2:
This is a short essay about a terrible accident that happens to the author's half-brother. It manages to be hugely touching without being remotely maudlin. No mean achievement.
Update 3:
Having now finished Pulphead, I felt that I had to reduce my rating to 4* because I thought that the subject matter of some of JJS's essays were a little esoteric for a UK audience, or to be more precise, for this reader. Having said that, I do think this guy's a great writer and even if you skip a couple of the essays, as I did, you'll still find plenty in it to enjoy.
Read less
4 people found this helpfulReport
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