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ericfheiman's review
4.0
A literary success that is tough to qualify. Sullivan might be best described as the touchy-feely counterpart to the curmudgeonly Chuck Klosterman. There's a melancholy longing in all of these essays that run the topic gamut from Axl Rose to an obscure biologist of centuries past. The way Sullivan inserts himself into every one of these essays without overwhelming the original subject matter is an admirable, enviable skill. It's worth reading solely for the jaw-dropping piece about the recent uptick in animal attacks on humans.
barnesstorming's review
4.0
Fourteen essays from Sullivan's magazine-writing career, and I thought 11 of them were really strong. So that ain't bad. The book is mostly front-loaded, but you won't go wrong by reading them all. For the record, the ones that didn't do much for me were about the guy from "The Real World," the one about Sullivan's house used as a set for "One Tree Hill," and the one about animals' new trend in attacking humans -- in which he admits, at the end, that he made up a formative interviewee. What the hell, man? ... Best were the pieces on Axl Rose, Indian-mound raiders, the unknown blues artists, and the bio piece on Rafinesque. YMMV.
nightchough's review
4.0
I really enjoyed this book. I picked it up based on The New Yorker review by James Wood. Comparisons to David Foster Wallace are fair -- Reading this book made me miss Wallace. John Jeremiah Sullivan has his own voice though, steeped in his southern heritage.
stellarsphyr's review
5.0
It's always hard to write a review about a collection of stories or essays. Inevitably, the collection is wide-ranging on its topics, the feelings it evokes, or the skill with which its ideas are explored. There will be hits and there will be misses.
Pulphead is more hits than misses. While I may not go as far as one of the back cover reviewers to say that Sullivan's essays is the "most inspired" collection since Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, it is still a masterful work. I like to place a little star next to my favorite stories or chapters I find most important in books. I starred 5 of Sullivan's 14 essays. That's not to say that the other 9 are slouches, either. What it does say is that his quality of writing is superb and so accessible that any reader will be enthralled by a number of his essays.
You will be more than happy to spend dozens of pages reading about a Christian rock concert, forgotten blues musicians, and even the dirt burial mounds of ancient Indians. Sullivan infuses the mundane with mystique and the banal with beauty. That is where these essays lie -- shining a light where we wouldn't have thought to shine a light before.
Pulphead is more hits than misses. While I may not go as far as one of the back cover reviewers to say that Sullivan's essays is the "most inspired" collection since Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, it is still a masterful work. I like to place a little star next to my favorite stories or chapters I find most important in books. I starred 5 of Sullivan's 14 essays. That's not to say that the other 9 are slouches, either. What it does say is that his quality of writing is superb and so accessible that any reader will be enthralled by a number of his essays.
You will be more than happy to spend dozens of pages reading about a Christian rock concert, forgotten blues musicians, and even the dirt burial mounds of ancient Indians. Sullivan infuses the mundane with mystique and the banal with beauty. That is where these essays lie -- shining a light where we wouldn't have thought to shine a light before.
dianametzger's review
2.0
He's an incredibly talented style and he has this really unique non-fiction style of effortlessly infusing his journalistic stories with memoir-esque moments. It's pretty impressive, but most stories just felt way too slow and left me with no particular feeling.
multiplexer's review
4.0
Pulphead is more of a 3.5-3.75 star book than a 4 star, but the rating system will not allow me to award partial stars so I'm rounding up.
I found Pulphead on the Guardian's "Best Books of 2011" list and I was itching for something new to read. The review pimped it out as being analogous to David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again." To be fair, this pushed my expectations a little high because almost nothing except, perhaps, Hunter Thompson's "The Great Shark Hunt" comes close to the above essay about going to a huge commercial luxury cruise (no Mr. Pibb!) but I found essays to enjoy in Pulphead anyway.
No collection of essays is ever completely even or completely excellent. Here, we find three essays worth the price of admission:
- The Axl Rose retrospective about old, fat, no longer touring with Guns N Roses but pretending to tour with Guns N Roses Axl Rose and his original home town in Indiana. The essay is pure Fiasco RPG fodder. And hilarious while, at the same time, horrifying beyond words.
- The essay about Michael Jackson wanting to break away from the Jackson 5 and strike out on his own away from the controlling interests of Motown. Excellent focus on his relationship with his sister Janet and brother Randy, the winning of Grammys for Off the Wall, his obsession with his nose, and the NBC broadcast where Jackson first performed "Billie Jean" and did the Moonwalk.
- The tale of going to the Christian Rock festival and the hollowness of Christian Rock. Opens with a great story about renting an enormous RV (but just enormous enough), the weird tensions between different groups of Christian Fundamentalists, and the limpness of the music they all came to hear.
A few other essays, the one about renting his house out to a TV show on the CW, the story of the Rastafarians in Jamaica and story of the caves in Tennessee are all interesting but not as good as the above three. And like all other essay collections, the rest are mostly filler. Sullivan is at his best when he is writing about music, and decent when he is writing about something other than himself, but when he starts to inject himself into the narrative things tend to go a little off the tracks.
Pulphead is a good, enjoyable, breezy read. Except for the retrospective on Axl Rose, none of the essays really linger. They aren't thick, meaty longreads. These aren't the sort of essays you roll around in your head for days and pick apart and analyze and then go argue with people on the Internet. I don't put Pulphead anywhere near the same level as David Foster Wallace. They're good and fun but, for the most part, light reads.
I found Pulphead on the Guardian's "Best Books of 2011" list and I was itching for something new to read. The review pimped it out as being analogous to David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again." To be fair, this pushed my expectations a little high because almost nothing except, perhaps, Hunter Thompson's "The Great Shark Hunt" comes close to the above essay about going to a huge commercial luxury cruise (no Mr. Pibb!) but I found essays to enjoy in Pulphead anyway.
No collection of essays is ever completely even or completely excellent. Here, we find three essays worth the price of admission:
- The Axl Rose retrospective about old, fat, no longer touring with Guns N Roses but pretending to tour with Guns N Roses Axl Rose and his original home town in Indiana. The essay is pure Fiasco RPG fodder. And hilarious while, at the same time, horrifying beyond words.
- The essay about Michael Jackson wanting to break away from the Jackson 5 and strike out on his own away from the controlling interests of Motown. Excellent focus on his relationship with his sister Janet and brother Randy, the winning of Grammys for Off the Wall, his obsession with his nose, and the NBC broadcast where Jackson first performed "Billie Jean" and did the Moonwalk.
- The tale of going to the Christian Rock festival and the hollowness of Christian Rock. Opens with a great story about renting an enormous RV (but just enormous enough), the weird tensions between different groups of Christian Fundamentalists, and the limpness of the music they all came to hear.
A few other essays, the one about renting his house out to a TV show on the CW, the story of the Rastafarians in Jamaica and story of the caves in Tennessee are all interesting but not as good as the above three. And like all other essay collections, the rest are mostly filler. Sullivan is at his best when he is writing about music, and decent when he is writing about something other than himself, but when he starts to inject himself into the narrative things tend to go a little off the tracks.
Pulphead is a good, enjoyable, breezy read. Except for the retrospective on Axl Rose, none of the essays really linger. They aren't thick, meaty longreads. These aren't the sort of essays you roll around in your head for days and pick apart and analyze and then go argue with people on the Internet. I don't put Pulphead anywhere near the same level as David Foster Wallace. They're good and fun but, for the most part, light reads.
jdintr's review
4.0
As a writing teacher, I try to encourage my best high school writers to reach for Capital-T Truth. In the best of these essays, Sullivan provides readers with unique insights into evangelical Christianity and, yes, Michael Jackson.
I appreciated his unique, Southern focus on many of these topics. In many of the essays he found ways to include his family's story into the greater idea he was after. This made it personal--and for many Southern readers, it made it True.
I appreciated his unique, Southern focus on many of these topics. In many of the essays he found ways to include his family's story into the greater idea he was after. This made it personal--and for many Southern readers, it made it True.