Pulphead: Notes from the Other Side of America

(Paperback)

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Description

A sharp-eyed, uniquely humane tour of America's cultural landscape - from high to low to lower than low - by the award-winning young star of the literary world John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on a funhouse hall-of-mirrors ride through the other side of America - to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the straggling refugees of MTV's Real World; to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina - and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan - with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that's all his own - shows us how America really (no, really) lives now.

Reviews

The ghost of Mark Twain is evoked in this outstanding collection of essays * Sunday Times *
Pulphead is a big, fat, frequently exhilarating collection * Guardian *
Pulphead has a ramshackle loquacity, a down-home hyper-eloquence and an off-the-wallishness that is quite distinct - and highly addictive -- Goeff Dyer
The best, and most important collection of magazine writing since David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again * New York Times Book Review *
From prehistoric caves to Axl Rose's oxygen chamber, Sullivan's generous, witty voice lights up every page -- Joe Dunthorne

Author Bio

John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the southern editor of The Paris Review. He writes for GQ, Harper's Magazine, and Oxford American, and is the author of Blood Horses and Pulphead. Sullivan lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.