'Pulphead' shines light on dynamic music essayist

Ran across a very entertaining "Soundcheck" podcast and book preview from Southern writer John Jeremiah Sullivan. 

I've never heard of Sullivan but I like what I heard and read in this excerpt from his collection of magazine essays titled "Pulphead: Essays." Sullivan seems to tackle the predictable by taking unorthodox approaches to the topic at hand, hints of which surface in the podcast and the Pulphead excerpt (which unfortunately cuts off before Sullivan describes his own deeply evangelical experiences as a youth).

In some ways Sullivan's style returns us to the glory days of music journalism, when Nick Kent and Stanley Booth lived the ups and downs of their subjects. But there seems to be a nice twist in Sullivan's work. Perhaps it's less focus on the wreck and more on the train.