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Pulphead: Essays

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For years, I've been reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's essays in GQ, the Paris Review, and other publications with pleasure and admiration. Now his pieces have been collected in one handy paperback, and re-reading them reminds me that he's simply one of the most wonderful writers working today, in any genre. His voice is funny and informed, but also warm and personal and empathetic. He sees his subjects with great compassion; one of the great surprises of his essays is the way that he goes deep below the surface when writing about pop phenomenon (such as Michael Jackson or the cast of The Real World) that the rest of us might be quick to dismiss. Sullivan is also a master of the short-form memoir. His essay "Mr. Lytle" is a heartbreaking portrait of a literary mentor that is also about intergenerational friendship, sexuality, the South, and so many other things. "Pulphead" is a delight.

This book has received a lot of notice in the past week from influential sources. Sullivan's name gets put into sentences with Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, and David Foster Wallace. However, I find those comparisons lacking. Sullivan's got something in his voice that sets him apart from those guys, something that might be a willingness to go vulnerable, and to mount a prodigious intellect on top of that willingness. True curiosity requires it. Wolfe, Thompson, and DFW didn't have it so much, as far as I can tell, although they did have tremendous merits. Bob Dylan, as great as he is, and as much as I love his work, doesn't have it. In 50 years since Dylan first appeared, has a female writer ever written anything of import about Dylan? In the terrific Bob Dylan Reader there's only one piece by a woman, a brief inconsequential piece by Joyce Carol Oates.

So much of the popularity of Wolfe, Thompson, DFW, and Dylan is male wish-fulfillment, and those four artists knew it. Sullivan may know it, but his work doesn't show it. I don't remember any strong, supportive pieces about Wolfe, Thompson, or DFW by women, either. I'm not a Sullivan scholar, but I check out most of the literary outlets fairly regularly and I know that the influential blogger Maud Newton is a vocal supporter of Sullivan's.

It will be interesting to see what Sullivan produces over the next twenty years. He could emerge as the most significant writer of the time, somebody I'd put in a sentence with Didion, Sebald, Berger, McPhee, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

A writer of such ghastly intelligence, my own brain feels almost palsied by comparison. I would mind, but anyone who can produce such a fierce, incisive wit while managing not to take cheap pot-shots at One Tree Hill deserves those National Magazine Awards. I've used these essays in the classroom, to get friends, to remind myself what how good writing can be.

In "Pulphead" John Jeremiah Sullivan has written the funniest book by Chuck Klosterman, the sunniest book by David Foster Wallace, and the literary follow-up to Bob Dylan's "The Basement Tapes." Does his sounding like other writers mean he has a less than unique voice of his own? Perhaps. But that is a byproduct of what Keats called "negative capability:" being more interested in the the subjects of one's essays than in oneself. There will be plenty of time for self-exploration in what I hope will be many other books. Right now, Sullivan values elegance over quirkiness, clarity over color. And each time he trains his Swarovzski-sniper-(in)sight at his targets, he shoots bullets of pure love, if anything reserving even more understanding and sympathy for the infamous. These essays are a demonstration of how the vinegar of genius when stirred into the milk of human kindness and aged in the dark cave of the soul yields an inexhaustible variety of tastes and textures. Each piece here surprises and one-ups its predecessor. And oh, the erudition. In these pages one reads that Auden said "all art results from humiliation" and also that elephants regularly rape rhinoceroses. Unless Sullivan is making this up. He might be: he is an ingenious, adroit, admitted liar. But even his lies reveal the truth. This book is a nexus where the soiled and tangled roots of American myth meet the unreality of our media culture with the contradictory braided reflectiveness of an Escher engraving. As a Southern epic-comic social critic, Sullivan has not yet scaled the heights of Twain or John Kennedy Toole, but has already far surpassed Tom Wolfe. Hurry up with that novel, but for God's sake, don't kill yourself over it. Even if you never equal this collection, it will be good enough.

You do not have to be Southern to appreciate how good Sullivan's writing is.

I'm not a GQ or Paris Review reader so I didn't know of Sullivan until I read a rave of this collection in the NYT Book Review. It was spot-on. The essays range from LOL funny (one about an MTV Real World "celebrity" milking his 15 minutes; one about trying to interview Axl Rose, but getting his childhood friend instead; and parts of the Bunny Wailer profile, esp about buying him great ganja) to jaw-dropping (animals are attacking humans like never before!) to tender (post-Katrina New Orleans interviews and observations; RIP Andrew Lytle and even... Michael Jackson).

I hope he sells so many books that he'll never have to rent his house to bad CW soaps again.

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.

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.

It's hard for me to read this because I just want to stop and stare at some of Sullivan's sentences and wonder how one person can write so perfectly. Folks, this is an excellent collection of entertaining and incredibly well-written essays that deserves a permanent spot on the nightstand. I'm getting one for everyone I know this holiday season.

I'm age 72 and a life-long reader, have a couple of Masters degrees, and used to belong to MENSA. This is as wonderful a book as I have read in a long time, maybe forever. The depth of the intellect shown here, the command of vocabulary, the naturalness of the writing, and the amazing detail is all just stupendous. I never knew I'd be interested in some of the subjects of the essays, but to my amazement, I was. Don't miss this book.

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.