John Jeremiah Sullivan’s off-beat collection of essays has something for just about everyone. Sullivan goes to a religious rock concert and comes up with some surprises. Sullivan’s brother gets electrocuted and nearly dies; an incident that becomes an episode on William Shatner’s Rescue 911. Then Sullivan visits post-Katrina Mississippi. Horrors abound. Sullivan writes about the recording of Michael Jackson’s best albums with Quincy Jones and legendary recording engineer Bruce Swedien. I had to break out my copies of Off the Wall to hear what Sullivan was writing about. In that vein, Sullivan’s searing “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose” (the Guns N’ Roses leader) brings Rose’s bizarre life into focus. There are essays on cave art and the teen soap opera, One Tree Hill. Sullivan’s range is impressive and so is his writing. GRADE: A-
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Upon This Rock
2. Feet In Smoke
3. Mr. Lytle: An Essay
4. At the Shelter (After Katrina)
5. Getting Down To What is Really Real
6. Michael
7. The Final Comeback of Axl Rose
8. American Grotesque
9. Lahwineski: Career of an Eccentric Naturalist
10. Unnamed Caves
11. Unknown Bards
12. The Last Wailer
13. Violence of the Lambs
14. Peyton’s Place
PULPHEAD: ESSAYS By John Jeremiah Sullivan
10 Replies
“Like Henry James on Viagra.” After reading that blurb on the back of the book jacket on History of a Pleasure Seeker I fell for the cunning marketing. It’s 1907 and Piet Barol, a talented but poor young man, is hired to be the tutor to a disturbed young son of a wealthy hotel tycoon in Amsterdam. The tycoon’s beautiful but neglected wife begins an affair with Piet. That, you would think, would be enough for the reader to concentrate on. But the author throws in the tycoon’s two flirtatious daughters, the mysterious mental problems of the son, the banking crisis that required J. P. Morgan to intervene, and flashbacks to Piet’s past. Piet isn’t so much a pleasure seeker as an ambitious young man on the make. History of a Pleasure Seeker is basically a Horatio Alger story with some sex thrown in. If you’re looking for pleasure, you’ll have to seek it elsewhere. GRADE: C
Agent 6 is the final book in Tom Rob Smith’s Soviet trilogy, but it can safely be read without reading the previous two books, Child 44 and The Secret Speech. Once again, Smith’s hero, Leo Demidov is tossing into a boil cauldron of violence and deceit. Leo is an adviser to the Soviet Army in their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Of course, Leo counsels against the invasion, but his advice is ignored. The brutality of the Soviet occupation is graphically presented. At the same time, Leo is also trying to get to America to solve a murder. The plot is deliciously convoluted. Tom Rob Smith captures the loopy Soviet group-think perfectly. The only book I can think of that comes close to the excellence of this Soviet trilogy is Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park. GRADE: B+ 
The Secret Speech refers to Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin as a ruthless tyrant. This sets off societal changes in the Soviet Union. Former Secret Police Officer Leo Demidov finds himself headed for a Siberian gulag to break a prisoner out. Tom Rob Smith’s description of life in the gulag is hair-raising. The plot also involves criminal gangs who operate on the margins of Soviet society. The winds of change kick up violence and murder. If you’re interested in a harrowing story of life in the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s, The Secret Speech will take you there. GRADE: B
