Pulphead

John Jeremiah Sullivan's collection of magazine pieces, titled Pulphead, is a bit of a marvel. It is a kind of journalism that may bother some--in almost all instances, Sullivan is an "I" in the pieces--he takes an active part, whether he is writing about caves or pop stars. But as I write this blog in exactly the same way, I can't very well criticize him for it. I think this style works when the person writing is interesting, and Sullivan certainly is (whether I'm interesting I'll leave you, dear reader, to judge). How can anyone dislike someone who clarifies the pronunciation of the name "Jan" by distinguishing, "Jan as in Jan Van Eyck, not Jan as in Brady."

Sullivan was born in Louisville, and grew up in southern Indiana, which makes him a southerner, and thus his work bears that stamp. As he points out, the South has given birth to many geniuses, but it's not known for its sophistication. But his parents went to the vividly named Transylvania State College in Kentucky and he went to the University of the South, where he spent some time working for a local writing legend, then in his 90s, which is the topic of one of his essays. "The South...I loved it as only one who will always be outside it can. Merely to hear the word Faulkner at night brought gusty emotions."

Sullivan, for lack of a better word, is a pop culture critic. About half of his pieces are about music: a visit to a Christian rock festival, exegeses of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose, an interview with reggae star Bunny Wailer ("It had long been a dream of mine to meet Bunny Wailer--a pipe dream, sometimes a literal one in the sense that I dreamed it while holding a pipe") and old blues musicians. The opening essay is on the Christian rock festival, a mini-masterpiece that has him attending alone (first he tries to recruit kids on the Internet, and is mistaken for a perv) but meets some guys from West Virginia. I knew I was in capable hands early on, when he describes the RV he rented: "The interior smelled of spoiled vacations and amateur porn shoots wrapped in motel shower curtains left in the sun. I was physically halted at the threshold for a moment. Jesus had never been in this RV."

With these essays he at times turns a gimlet eye on his subject, but more at the culture in general. In an essay on Real World cast members, he writes, "People hate these shows, but their hatred smacks of denial. It's all there, all the old American grotesques, the test-tube babies of Whitman and Poe, a great gauntlet of doubtless eyes, big mouths spewing fantastic catchphrase fountains of impenetrable self-justification, muttering dark prayers, calling on God to strike down those who would fuck with their money, their cash, and always knowing, always preaching."

Other essays fly far afield. There's one about an oddball Kentucky naturalist who rubbed elbows with Audubon, Constantine Rafinesque. There's another about caves in Tennessee with glyphs on them created hundreds of years ago by Indians. Sullivan visits an evacuation center after Hurricane Katrina, and Tea Party rally.

He also writes personally. There's an essay about when his brother was nearly killed (technically, he was dead for a short time) by electrocution, and about when his family's house was rented for use by the TV show One Tree Hill (people still drive by and take pictures).

But the strangest essay, "The Violence of the Lambs," is one about the trending upwards of animal attacks. Sullivan notes that all kinds of species, from chimps to beavers to chickens, have increased their attacks on human beings. He notes the statistical anomaly of Steve Irwin being killed by sting ray's jab to his heart, which had never been known in human history before, only for it to happen again a few months later. This is the province of crackpots, so Sullivan pulls the rug out on us by creating an expert out of whole cloth, though he swears that all the animal attack incidents, such as chimps learning to use sticks as tools, are true. What's the explanation? It seems that evolution happens quicker when the Earth is warmer, another reason to despair against global warming.

"What this means is the we picked a bad time to have all the animals enraged at us, since just at the moment when their disposition might be expected to turn, they happen to be evolving like crazy." Wasn't this the plot of an M. Night Shamalyan movie?