Pulphead

Essays and criticism

First published: 2011
Print length: 369 pagesFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011

Description

John Jeremiah Sullivan ranges across American culture in essays that treat famous performers, forgotten thinkers, mass entertainment, religion, and regional history as parts of the same unsettled landscape. He attends a Christian rock festival, revisits former Real World participants in Florida, follows blues traditions through the South, and investigates the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose. Elsewhere, Kentucky polymath Constantine Rafinesque and his fantastical prehistory of the New World open questions about scholarship, invention, and national myth. Sullivan also enters communities marked by Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. Investigative curiosity, humor, literary reflection, and a Southern sensibility unite these varied encounters into a portrait of American identity shaped by belief, celebrity, disaster, memory, and cultural neglect.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Essayistic · Journalistic · Lyrical · Witty

Pace

Variable

Tone

Cerebral · Earnest · Humorous · Reflective

Structure

Anthology · Episodic

Focus

Ideas · Information · Voice

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

Art and creativityIdentityKnowledge and truthMemoryNature and environmentReligion and faith

About John Jeremiah Sullivan

John Jeremiah Sullivan is an American essayist, editor, and teacher whose work moves between magazine reporting, personal narrative, cultural criticism, and historical research. Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, he brings a Southern attentiveness to place while ranging widely through popular culture and intellectual history. His essays often begin with immersion in a scene or subject, then widen through anecdote, research, and literary reflection. Pulphead collects substantially reworked magazine pieces on subjects including a Christian rock festival, Michael Jackson, Axl Rose, blues traditions, and the polymath Constantine Rafinesque. Comic observation and first-person presence give way to patient context, placing celebrity, belief, regional history, and disaster within the same American landscape.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Language: English
ISBN: 9780374532901

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