Pulphead

Look, I'm no stranger to hyperbole. I don't mean this as hyperbole, but this is the best book of essays I've read in years. Mostly because of the pop culture angle. I'll hold my hand up and say, that with two big essays, one about the early life of Michael Jackson the pre-weirdo prodigy and the other about the latest return of the horrible and horribly talented Axl Rose, I'm sold. I love pop culture. That's no secret. So, yes, hyperbole and all, this book is essential.

It's the way he tells them, you see? John Jeremiah Sullivan is not afraid to break the fourth wall, to offer his opinion, to let you see how he investigates and interviews. His turn of phrase, from the bewildered to the slick, to the slightly socially awkward, make him a bit like Ryan Gosling pretending to be Louis Theroux.

There's an article about Christian Rock and how it brings out the inner-jock in the pious, articles about his family - particularly moving is the one about his brother electrocuting himself nearly into the afterlife during a band rehearsal. There is the moving exploration of a post-Katrina homeless shelter. These truly are dispatches from the other side of America. We see the murky underbelly of the entertainment industry, we see the middle of the country, often forgotten in our vision of America as being New York and Los Angeles and we see our heroes, laid bare, with no pretentions. We get conflicted opinion - how to love Michael Jackson for his talent but appreciate he was a deeply troubled strange man. We get something else.

We get John Jeremiah Sullivan, writing with the ease of Hemingway, or S Thompson. We get a journalist and essayist for our times.