style and substance

by brooklyn

Posted to Utterances on 2001-03-26 08:14:00

Parent message is 8058
I don’t know about “great” (also I personally think the Velvet Underground was the greatest band ever, not Pavement — yes, opinion) but I did think it was a very worthwhile book. For one thing, it chronicled a very seminal moment in underground history — the founding of San Francisco psychedelic culture, basically, not to mention the birth of the Grateful Dead (which in my opinion was also not far from the greatest band ever).

Stylistically, the book was also important. He uses language very creatively in an attempt to mirror the trippiness of the crowd he was writing about, and I think this mostly works. For instance the description of the Beatles concert at Cow Palace (the Beatles, another greatest band ever, hmm) is just purely excellent writing. This book was definitely a milestone in the creation of a “new journalism” (the term often applied to Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, etc.).

— Levi