Nick Tosches -- Classic or Dud? Search & Destroy

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Haven't read him. But his non-fiction looks cool. Is he full of shit? Or brilliant?

― Wooly Reaper, Tuesday, 11 March 2003 17:04 (twenty-three years ago)

both.
the dean martin & jerry lee lewis books are really good reads for the most part. gets a little bourbon-drenched and he-man woman-hater in some of the autobiographical stuff and essays.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 17:21 (twenty-three years ago)

C: Dino; Hellfire; Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll; Country; Cut Numbers

D: Hand of Dante; Trinities; Nick T. Reader; his Emmett Miller book.

Tosches has come under fire from guys like Johnny Whiteside, who writes for LA Weekly, about his supposed sloppiness in research. He's become very mannered and boring lately--he's rich.

― Jess Hill (jesshill), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 21:38 (twenty-three years ago)

He hangs out at Manitoba's here in NYC...

(Hellfire is one of my favorite books ever)

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 21:48 (twenty-three years ago)

He just wrote a really terrible novel!

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 21:49 (twenty-three years ago)

What didn't you guys like about Hand of Dante? I thought it was great! Maybe a little self-indulgent, but so what. Anyway, I think the long rant is in there because he's basically done after this, but it works into the story well enough. There is some really beautiful writing amidst the bluster.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 21:56 (twenty-three years ago)

The N. Tosches reader has some spectacular bits in it.

His Patti Smith interview is the favorite interview I've ever read with anyone by anyone. Erm.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 22:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Jess is OTM. Also C: The Devil and Sonny Liston.

― Nyuarlathotep, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 01:08 (twenty-three years ago)

He's become very mannered and boring

I'm not so sure about this either, considering he rips AOL/Time Warner (his publisher) apart in Dante.

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 01:17 (twenty-three years ago)

I loved 'Country', but I still haven't figured out who those 'interludes' are about, or if they're true, RFI?

― dave q, Wednesday, 12 March 2003 10:52 (twenty-three years ago)

is 'unsung heroes of r&r' worth tracking down?

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 14:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe a little self-indulgent
the art of understatement.
Dante was one long jerk.
What I don't get is that he'd been talking about for years, but it felt like he'd just thrown together scraps from all of his other books.
It's like he bought in to his own myth, which is always detrimental (see also: EP, JC (either one), OS)
That said, The D & SL is awesome. Dino, right on. Hellfire, kicks ass over all else ever written on rock/roll.
Country & Unsung are both largely bullshit, but great tall tales.
NT Reader, I dunno. Has its moments. Shows that some of his self-indulgent stuff is pretty good.
Where Dead Voices Gather...it's only good if you go out and get Emmett Miller's music.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 14:59 (twenty-three years ago)

is 'unsung heroes of r&r' worth tracking down?
-- Fritz Wollner

Yes. Very funny stuff; along with "Hellfire," his best prose.

There are some good things in the Reader. His profile of George Jones is very fine. Overall, though, he comes across as very limited in that particular collection.

The Miller book is full of facts, but I don't get the idea he really was all that interested in Emmett Miller by the time he got around to writing it. The little interludes in "Country" are all about Miller, I believe.

I just found a nice remaindered first ed. of "Devil and Sonny Liston" and haven't gotten around to finishing it yet. His tactic of seizing upon someone previously denigrated and comparing him to the more famous practitioner of the same art--Dean vs. Frank, Liston vs. Ali, Wynonie Harris vs. Elvis--is a bit wearisome, I think. I got "Hand of Dante" for birthday last year, and I've found it just about completely unreadable...and it was weird to see that novel on the supermarket racks alongside Grisham and "Chicken Soup"--the publisher really pushed it, but I bet it didn't sell all that well anyway.

― Jess Hill (jesshill), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 16:13 (twenty-three years ago)

If you skip all the Dante bull-hooey, In The Hand Of... is an okay crime story. Oh skip all the part where Tosches is talking about how great he is too.
I don't know, the part about the guy who found the manuscript in the Vatican was the most interesting part of the whole book.
I love Cut Numbers though. It's a small book, in that it deals with life-as-dealt, life-as-lived whereas Dante just tries to be some sort of universal cockstroke.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 12 March 2003 16:22 (twenty-three years ago)

eight years pass...

OK, read Where Dead Voices Gather back when it came out and was impressed enough to get hold of the Emmett Miller CD on CBS/ Legacy and so on: thought it was pretty exceptional in fact....

So ten years later I pick it up again, and read the introduction where he lays into academic writing on minstrelsy in general - Eric Lott et al - and tries to back up his case by saying blackface minstrels came initially from the northern cities where racial articulation was different, and that anyway, it was popular in England 'where there were almost no black people'. Except there were, probably more in London in the pre-civil war years than in NY, and more established. And if he'd read any of the academic stuff on the Black Atlantic, he'd have known that.

Which makes you wonder can you trust any of the rest?

― I'm Street but I Know my Roots (sonofstan), Wednesday, 1 February 2012 19:39 (fourteen years ago)

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