Podcast Corner: Sullivan's writings are the toast of New York
John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead made the New York Times’ list of the 100 best books of the 21st century so far. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)
How interesting to see John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead make the New York Times’ list of the 100 best books of the 21st century so far. As the accompanying blurb notes, “When this book of essays came out, it bookended a fading genre: collected pieces written on deadline by 'pulpheads', or magazine writers”.
It was released in 2011 and Sullivan has largely gone to ground since then, a couple of pieces for GQ here, a story for UnHerd there. How interesting that Sullivan is the final guest on the Longform podcast, which began in August 2012 and has racked up nearly 600 episodes in the intervening dozen years. It’s a simple concept - interviews with writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters about how they do their work. We covered it previously (https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-40792080.html) when the New Yorker writer Michael Schulman talked about the reaction to his viral feature on Succession actor Jeremy Strong.
Not every podcast gets to say goodbye in its own way. See the Around the NFL podcast, from the NFL itself, which had devout listeners and built up a cult following not just in the US but in Ireland, the UK, and, well, around the world. There had been no new episodes since May until two months later it was revealed that two of the hosts had been let go, the podcast was being renamed, and the thing you had gotten used to was no more. See also: Sex, Lies and DM Slides (https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-41000966.html). Maybe it’s best for a podcast just to call it a day when it knows its time is up.
That’s what Longform is doing. Co-host Evan Ratliff says that Sullivan has been one of the most requested interviews going back to the start of the show and so is a worthy way to go out. As he notes, it would have been a very different interview if done around 2012, with Pulphead on its way to becoming a word-of-mouth classic.
Early on, he talks about using ‘Jeremiah’ in his bylines to stand out from all the other John Sullivans in New York media. “It was my grandfather’s name and my great-great-grandfather’s name, going back to Cork county in Ireland. It’s funny, when I meet Irish people, a surprising number of times, they can pinpoint the part of Ireland I come from by that name, even though you wouldn’t think it’s that distinctive, but it’s just a very West Cork name. So it’s grown on me even though it’s kind of pretentious.”
We’re told Irish writing is in a golden age - maybe we can claim another one.
