With the rise of blogs, tweets and short-blip news bytes, not to speak of newspaper closings coast to coast, it's a common assumption that journalism is dying. Who has the time for an article over 20 inches? Could it be the good old days of gonzo are going? We might have believed it once ourselves, but then we read Pulphead, the new collection of essays and article by John Jeremiah Sullivan, a writer for Harper's, GQ, The Oxford American, The Paris Review, and The New York Times Magazine.
Pulphead hearkens back to the days of New Journalism, when articles could be as rich and mysterious, as emotionally fulfilling and entertaining as great fiction. Like any good story, it's not the bald-face surface truth the writer is after but some glimmer of deeper truth that shows itself in flickers and traces, off-handed remarks and gestures, a series of events interpreted just shy of outright explanation. Observed from real life, these truths are, as the saying goes, often stranger and more resonant than imagined.
Sullivan finds his raw material on the fringes of pop culture, political movements, disasters both past and future (read "Violence of the Lambs" ... wow), and even, generously, through his own life experiences. He writes about his brother, nearly killed by a shock from a rock-n-roll microphone, and about his mentor, the famous Sewanee writer and intellectual Andrew Lytle. He even writes about his own family's experience renting out their home for the production of a popular TV teen melodrama and all its unexpected consequences. Sullivan imbues each piece with personal detail, insight and wit. He writes beautiful sentences and scenes and chains disparate ideas together that make a greater whole. The essays in Pulphead, happily bound in their dissimilarity, form their own grand portrait, a kind of autobiography through interesting excursions and experiences.
This is a seriously wonderful collection, and we feel honored to host Sullivan on book tour this Wednesday, November 2. We heartily encourage you to come out and hear him read one of these impressive essays.
