“In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us
on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely
forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S.
Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a
laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really)
live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan
introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius
who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New
World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a
Christian rock festival; to Florida
to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World, who’ve
generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all
across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us 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. Gradually, a unifying
narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this
way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are
in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don’t know whether to
laugh or cry when faced with this reflection—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws
that attest to the power of Sullivan’s work.”
