A longtime Wilmington writer has landed on a prestigious list of the best books written this century.
John Jeremiah Sullivan, who has lived in Wilmington since the mid-2000s, comes in at No. 81 with "Pulphead," his 2005 collection of essays and journalism, on the New York Times' "100 Best Books of the 21st Century," which began publishing its list in 20-book segments Monday.
Making the list is no mean feat. The Times surveyed "503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers" to compile its list, along with "a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review." The panel included such famous writers as Stephen King (himself no stranger to Wilmington, as many movie and TV versions of his books have been filmed here), James Patterson, Sarah Jessica Parker (probably better known as an actress, but she has written books) and Jonathan Lethem.
Sullivan has written for magazines for many years, including the New Yorker, GQ and the New York Times Magazine, and most if not all of "Pulphead" consists of work originally published in magazine form.
The book includes a piece about Sullivan's visit to the Christian Creation rock festival; a profile of Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose, which Sullivan wrote despite not being able to interview Rose; and an essay about living in the house that portrayed the home of actress Hilarie Burton's character Peyton in the Wilmington-shot drama "One Tree Hill."
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The Times writes that Sullivan "brings to his subjects not just depth, but an open-hearted curiosity. Indeed, if this book feels as if it’s from a different time, perhaps that’s because of its generous receptivity to other ways of being, which offers both reader and subject a kind of grace."
Ben Steelman's review of "Pulphead" for the StarNews in 2011 called Sullivan's book "some of the best participatory journalism this side of Susan Orlean."
Book review:John Jeremiah Sullivan's ‘Pulphead,' hits all over
A native of Kentucky, Sullivan's other books include 2004's "Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son," and 2019's "The Prime Minister of Paradise: Christian Gottlieb Priber and the Search for the Lost American Enlightenment."
"It’s moving anytime you hear that a book you worked hard to write has affected people, or that it means something to readers," Sullivan wrote in a text message. "Mainly what I take away from it is encouragement and motivation, to write the next one better, to justify the faith that people have placed in you. Of course my brain immediately goes to all of the writers and books that won’t be included but are as good as me and mine,or better, and maybe better than anything on the whole list, because that’s the way literary history really works, the best stuff is often very obscure in its own time. Nobody had Kafka on any lists."
Sullivan went on to say that "I am proud of 'Pulphead.' It certainly outperformed expectations, which were essentially zero. One thing not many people tend to mention about it is how many different kinds of essays it contains. There are the music profiles and gonzo pieces that got the most attention at the time, but also memoir, history and politics, science, reportage, even a little buried fiction (in “The Violence of the Lambs” story). Everything hangs together, somehow, in ways I didn’t even understand at the time."
In Wilmington, Sullivan has become known as a co-founder of the Third Person Project, which in 2021 helped find the lost grave of and organize a memorial service for Joshua Halsey, one of the victims of Wilmington's 1898 massacre and coup.
The Third Person Project also worked with local schoolchildren to reconstruct copies of the Daily Record, Wilmington's main Black newspaper in 1898, after almost all known original copies were destroyed in the wake of the deadly violence of 1898.
In fact, much of Sullivan's work has been Wilmington-centric, including a profile of musician Rhiannon Giddens that looked into the influence of 19th century Wilmington fiddler Frank Johnson, and a story last year for the Oxford American about Arthur Eugene Nixon, a Wilmington native and composer who went on to have a long music career in New York City.
Sullivan is also a songwriter, and in 2015 released the album "So How We Seem" under the moniker Life of Saturdays.
