It was very exciting this week to go down the signing line at our John Hodgman event and see copies of Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan in people’s hands. The book has been moving off the shelf at a quick and steady pace as word gets around about Sullivan’s talent. We’re big, big fans of this collection of essays, which explores a variety of aspects of American culture, from Axl Rose to Michael Jackson to a Christian rock festival to Hurricane Katrina. We’ve been praising the book to anyone who will listen, and we’re not alone. Here are some examples of what critics and reviewers are saying about Pulphead:
“JJS, as I have come to think of him, may be the best essayist of his generation . . . There are other writers (not many) who are as funny as JJS, and others (even fewer) as smart, but those writers tend to use humor and smarts as defenses. JJS pairs them with an emotional nakedness and vulnerability unlike anything else I’m aware of in what writing workshops call ‘creative non-fiction.’” —Lev Grossman, Time
“One ascendant talent who deserves to be widely read and encouraged is John Jeremiah Sullivan…Pulphead is one of the most involving collections of essays to appear in many a year.” —Larry McMurtry, Harper’s Magazine
“Sullivan seems able to do almost anything, to work in any register, and not just within a single piece but often in the span of a single paragraph…Pulphead is the best, and most important, collection of magazine writing since Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again…Sullivan’s writing is a bizarrely coherent, novel, and generous pastiche of the biblical, the demotic, the regionally gusty and the erudite.” —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New York Times Book Review
“The age-old strangeness of American pop culture gets dissected with hilarious and revelatory precision in these scintillating essays…Sullivan writes an extraordinary prose that’s stuffed with off-beat insight gleaned from rapt, appalled observations and suffused with a hang-dog charm. The result is an arresting take on the American imagination.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)
Earlier this week we posted Kester’s Q&A with Sullivan. If you like Chuck Klosterman, David Foster Wallace, and just good writing in essay form (I’d also recommend this book to fans of short stories), then pick up a copy. It’s in paperback, so it won’t break the bank. You can also come on down and get a signed copy when Sullivan is here this Monday, November 14, 7p to read from Pulphead. We’re looking forward to it, and hope that you’ll also take notice of this talented writer and come out to support him.
BookPeople 