Pulphead
Fourteen magazine essays, most written for GQ, Harper's, and The Paris Review, in which Sullivan reports on subjects from a Christian rock festival to Michael Jackson and post-Katrina New Orleans to sketch a portrait of American culture at its stranger margins.
The case against Pulphead is arithmetic: fourteen essays, and by one three-star count “six essays that did nothing for me, including one essay that, after I'd finished the book and was looking back over the table of contents, I couldn't for the life of me remember reading.” The celebrity profiles carry much of the length, and a reader who still gave four stars conceded that “Sullivan's pieces on Axl Rose and on Michael Jackson seemed meandering, a little self-indulgent, with no obvious point,” which turns the book's center into a slog. Even a sympathetic reviewer admitted “There IS a desire to reach for a red pen and help John Jeremiah's prose find a quicker way to get at what John Jeremiah is trying to say,” and once the editing itch sets in, the padding shows: “There is a disappointing amount of material in Pulphead that seem stapled-in to boost the page count.” The famous pieces ran in GQ and The Paris Review; read those free and skip the filler.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
