Newsday has said that Nick Tosches "casts brilliant black light." The San Diego Reader has said that "Tosches's best sentences uncoil like rattlesnakes and strike with a venom that spreads poison through all the little Sunday-school ideas you've held dear." And Rolling Stone has said that "Tosches can write like a wild rockabilly raveup. He can be elegant as a slow blues." The Nick Tosches Reader is the author's own selection of his best work over the past thirty years, including fiction, poetry, interviews, rock writing, investigative journalism, and criticism. First published in major magazines, obscure underground periodicals, and his own best-selling books, many of these selections deal with rock 'n' roll and cultural icons-but there are also pieces on everything from William Faulkner to organized crime to heavyweight boxing, including the Vanity Fair feature that gave rise to Tosches's major new book on Sonny Liston, published by Little, Brown. Here is "a unique and darkly impressionistic cultural history" of the last three decades as only Nick Tosches could write it.
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Review
"New York Times Book Review", 7/15/10
"If you want to learn about the power and dangers of rock 'n' roll, check out Mary Gaitskill's incomparable novel "Veronica "or Marianne Faithfull's cackling memoir or "The Nick Tosches Reader"."
About the Author
Nick Tosches is the author of" Hellfire, Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll, Power on Earth, Cut Numbers, Dino, "and "Trinities."
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By lexo1941
Format:Paperback
Nick Tosches has a hard voice to criticise, because it's based on a pose of having been to weirder places, seen weirder stuff and basically having lived a harder, darker and weirder life than the mere reader can possibly compete with. This is, in short, the voice of a true son of a certain and honourable school of journalism. It is not, however, the only way of talking about certain subjects. There are other ways, and other voices, some of them more persuasive than his.
For example: when Tosches was occasionally called upon by Rolling Stone to review records in the early 70s, he quite often regarded the assignment with such contempt that he didn't bother to listen to the record in question, but made up the review out of his own head. A case in point is his self-confessedly fictional review of Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid', one of the greatest albums in hard rock, but which Tosches couldn't be bothered to listen to because...well, because he was some kind of a cultural snob, plain and simple. His 'review' of it is included here, without even the merest hint of regret that he failed to spot how brilliant an album it is. I imagine that even now he regards it as beneath his notice.
Elsewhere, there is much writing that's high on octane but low on substance. There is little, in short, that lovers of music will want to reread, given Tosches' all-too-apparent but seldom openly stated contempt for the music he is mostly writing about. Much of the rest of the book is more or less entertaining, but little of it has the tragic depth of masterpieces such as his stunning Dean Martin biography 'Dino', or his equally scalding Sonny Liston bio 'Night Train', each of them heartbreaking chronicles of spiritual collapse.... Read more ›
For example: when Tosches was occasionally called upon by Rolling Stone to review records in the early 70s, he quite often regarded the assignment with such contempt that he didn't bother to listen to the record in question, but made up the review out of his own head. A case in point is his self-confessedly fictional review of Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid', one of the greatest albums in hard rock, but which Tosches couldn't be bothered to listen to because...well, because he was some kind of a cultural snob, plain and simple. His 'review' of it is included here, without even the merest hint of regret that he failed to spot how brilliant an album it is. I imagine that even now he regards it as beneath his notice.
Elsewhere, there is much writing that's high on octane but low on substance. There is little, in short, that lovers of music will want to reread, given Tosches' all-too-apparent but seldom openly stated contempt for the music he is mostly writing about. Much of the rest of the book is more or less entertaining, but little of it has the tragic depth of masterpieces such as his stunning Dean Martin biography 'Dino', or his equally scalding Sonny Liston bio 'Night Train', each of them heartbreaking chronicles of spiritual collapse.... Read more ›
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars
7 reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE NICK OF TIME
12 Sep 2000
By Russ Tarby
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
From his groanings about girls who done him wrong to the great insights into the peccadilloes of his biographic subjects, Nick Tosches astonishes with his devil-may-care prose style. He can be gentle as a feather as demonstrated in several poems printed here or he can be brutal as a bloody machete as evidenced in the unflinching profiles of Dean Martin, Sonny Liston and Jerry Lee Lewis--but he's ALWAYS both honest and entertaining. That's not to say that he simply supplants the historical record with fancy literary devices. On the contrary, as a researcher Tosches' tentacles reach from the basements of dusty libraries to the boardrooms of entertainment executives to the social clubs that function as Mafia fronts. For anyone so sheltered that they haven't encountered Tosches' work elsewhere in the past two decades, this READER serves as an apt introduction to one of the most talented writers of our time.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
In the hand of Tosches
26 Aug 2004
By B. W. Fairbanks
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
If Humphrey Bogart (or the characters he usually played) had been a writer, he might have been Nick Tosches. Tough and funny with an iconoclasm even Bogie would have been hard-pressed to match, the author acknowledges his tough guy aspirations in the foreword to this collection of his early work: "I thought of myself as a tough guy. That is to say I pretended to be a tough guy." The cover photograph showing Tosches with cigarette in hand, a wiseguy look in his eyes, suggest he's still pretending. It may be an act but Tosches has the write stuff to pull it off.
That foreword may be one of the most honest self-portraits a writer has ever published. He admits what most of us who toil in the land of ink-stained wretchdom would probably deny but know to be true: we write because we're afraid to look someone in the eye and tell the honest, unvarnished truth about ourselves and others. But even confronting a blank piece of paper requires a courage many writers and aspiring writers lack. Tosches has courage in abundance. Anyone who subscribes to the foolishness of political correctness won't be able to endure more than a few pages of Tosches's writing. He's brutal in his honesty, and refuses to bow down and kiss the ring of popular fashion. Whether the subject is his own youth, Elvis (his ruminations on the King are a highlight), Miles Davis, fellow writer Lester Bangs, drugs, sex, rock and roll, or country music, Tosches, whose formal education never progressed beyond high-school, writes about it in an often erudite manner that is saved from pretension by the tough kick to the groin he frequently administers.
This collection was compiled from Tosches' writings through the years for publications large and small, and usually obscure and forgotten. His prose (and the several pages of poetry included) is shocking, funny, and damn good. This a collection to turn to again and again.
Brian W. Fairbanks
That foreword may be one of the most honest self-portraits a writer has ever published. He admits what most of us who toil in the land of ink-stained wretchdom would probably deny but know to be true: we write because we're afraid to look someone in the eye and tell the honest, unvarnished truth about ourselves and others. But even confronting a blank piece of paper requires a courage many writers and aspiring writers lack. Tosches has courage in abundance. Anyone who subscribes to the foolishness of political correctness won't be able to endure more than a few pages of Tosches's writing. He's brutal in his honesty, and refuses to bow down and kiss the ring of popular fashion. Whether the subject is his own youth, Elvis (his ruminations on the King are a highlight), Miles Davis, fellow writer Lester Bangs, drugs, sex, rock and roll, or country music, Tosches, whose formal education never progressed beyond high-school, writes about it in an often erudite manner that is saved from pretension by the tough kick to the groin he frequently administers.
This collection was compiled from Tosches' writings through the years for publications large and small, and usually obscure and forgotten. His prose (and the several pages of poetry included) is shocking, funny, and damn good. This a collection to turn to again and again.
Brian W. Fairbanks
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A unique voice that you gotta hear!
27 April 2000
By Patrick Wagner
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Nick Tosches has written reviews,journalism biography and novels. It isn't until you are deep into this collection,that you realize how Tosches has built his writing into a combination of all of these. It doesn't just contain magazine articles and old reviews,it also contins healthy hunks of his novels and full-length biographies. This is well-worth your time if you are familiar with his writing and want more, or if you are just getting interested in this unique writer. I have to go now; I want to read some of the selections ,again.
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4.4 out of 5 stars
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