My bookshelf·Index No. 0479

Pulphead: Essays

On My Shelf, Not Yet Read

Fourteen pieces and hardly a dud. Sullivan at a Christian rock festival in an RV with a group of West Virginia teenagers, at Disney World with the Real World cast, in the Ozarks with Axl Rose’s hometown. Also: The cave art of the American Southeast, Constantine Rafinesque the naturalist crank, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, a hurricane, and his own brother electrocuted by a microphone and brought back. He never sneers at anybody, which in this kind of magazine writing is close to unique, and the sentences are worth reading twice.

Pulphead: Essays
By John Jeremiah Sullivan. FSG Originals, 2011. 384 pages.