Reviews

The reviews of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s new collection of essays vary by source. We were to read reviews form the New York Times, National Public Radio, and Amazon. Personally I’ve used Amazon reviews to help me decided on whether to buy something numerous times, so reading the Amazon reviews were more familiar to me than the other two.

The New York Times and NPR review were about the same in construction and content. Each of the two focused on Sullivan as a non-fiction writer and they both touched on previous works by him. The New York Times chose to give a bit of background info about Sullivan like a mini biography while NPR chose to dive right into Pulphead, the piece being reviewed.

Both the NYT and NPR reviews are pretty positive and they provide a general overview of the subject matter Sullivan addresses in his essays. They both mention Michael Jackson, Axl Rose, and Bunny Wailer, which must mean these folks have a particular significance in the essays. While neither of these two reviews were directly negative, they were written very matter of factly. I’m also sure the writers were professionals and this wasn’t the first go round at reviewing for them.

The Amazon reviews were a different category however. Like the other 2 many of the reviews left on the website were positive but then there were people who didn’t write the most glowing things. It also has an amateur flare to it since the people leaving reviews aren’t professionals and they’re just writing their personal opinion, not catering to any particular publication or audience. The Amazon reviews probably appeal to a wider variety of people than the New York Times and NPR reviews do.