Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: Legendary Rock Critic's Work - Exploring Rock'n'Roll as Literature | Perfect for Music Scholars & Cultural Critics | Great for Book Clubs & Music History Studies

It's taken me a long time to get into the book. At first, I didn't like it. My sense was that the personal style that Lester Bangs pioneered wasn't very informative. I put the book down for a while and started reading some other things. Over the summer, I was struck by what exactly I was reading. Reading Bangs is not just reading about his opinions, some of which might seem trivial or unsophisticated by contemporary standards. Reading Bangs is reading history in the making. The music he talks about is only part of this. He was a pioneer in a way of talking about not just music, but also in talking about the world. He is the expression of a new kind of consciousness about criticism and rhetoric. After that, I couldn't read him without feeling that his work was genius. Parts of his writing are nothing short of beautiful. You can really feel the way that music was changing and becoming something different. This book is brilliant. I will probably read parts of it over and over again for years to come. Reading it is like reading classic literature. It's not for everyone, and some parts are hard to get through. But once you have that feeling, the world is different.