Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson

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Overview

Paul Nelson was, according to Bob Dylan, "a folk-music scholar" who later wrote criticism at Rolling Stone as the last in a great tradition of record-review editors that included Jon Landau, Dave Marsh, and Greil Marcus. But in 1982, Nelson walked away from it all - Rolling Stone, his friends, and rock 'n' roll. By the time he died in his New York City apartment in 2006 at the age of 70, almost everything he'd written had been relegated to back issues of old music magazines. With Paul Nelson's posthumous blessing, Kevin Avery spent four years researching and writing Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writing of Paul Nelson. This unique anthology-biography compiles Nelson's best works (some of it previously
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Overview

Paul Nelson was, according to Bob Dylan, "a folk-music scholar" who later wrote criticism at Rolling Stone as the last in a great tradition of record-review editors that included Jon Landau, Dave Marsh, and Greil Marcus. But in 1982, Nelson walked away from it all - Rolling Stone, his friends, and rock 'n' roll. By the time he died in his New York City apartment in 2006 at the age of 70, almost everything he'd written had been relegated to back issues of old music magazines. With Paul Nelson's posthumous blessing, Kevin Avery spent four years researching and writing Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writing of Paul Nelson. This unique anthology-biography compiles Nelson's best works (some of it previously unpublished) while also providing a vivid account of his private and public lives. Avery interviewed almost 100 of Paul Nelson's friends, family, and colleagues, including several of the artists about whom he'd written.

Editorial Reviews

Sound Waves
“What is central to this magnificent book is that Avery, a fabulous writer in his own regard, is also clearly a big Paul Nelson fan. As such, he presents a critical, yet caring, picture of Nelson's professional and personal life, the latter a bit sad and wistful, pulling out all the stops in a moving tribute, warts and all. [Rating] 5 stars”
Library Journal
That there are pundits who have made careers out of pronouncing criticism dead would've deeply rankled the late Paul Nelson, whose dedication to film and music ran so deep that he routinely withheld copy if it didn't achieve his standard of emotional intelligence. As journalist Avery documents in this cohesive biography-cum-first anthology of the onetime Rolling Stone record review editor's oeuvre, Nelson was a gifted early practitioner of new journalism and, though a child of the Sixties folk and rock counterculture, one of its most vocal critics. Bob Dylan probably received from Nelson as many pointed reality checks as he did gushing valentines. Reading his inconceivably insightful profiles of Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon, and Rod Stewart helps make sense of a needlessly guilt- and disappointment-laden life—here was a hyper-romantic Midwesterner by birth but a New Yorker by necessity who thought he could transcend mundane cruelties by dedicating himself to the popular arts. VERDICT Seamlessly incorporating the perspectives of Nick Tosches, Robert Christgau, and Jann Wenner, Avery has crafted both a cautionary tale and a celebration of a noir-influenced writer who deserves a place alongside Lester Bangs for his ability to live, always, in the music. Devotees of folk, establishment rock 'n' roll, and pulp fiction will rue not having discovered Nelson sooner. [See also the Avery-edited Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979–1983, coming in October from Continuum.—Ed.]—Heather McCormack, Library Journal
More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A Paul Nelson (1936–2006) acolyte delivers a labor-of-love exhumation of the pioneering rock critic's legacy. Even among rock fanatics of the 1960s and '70s, Nelson never attained (nor seemed to strive for) the higher profile of Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau or Dave Marsh. Yet few were as beloved among his peers, his acolytes, even the artists he reviewed and perhaps too often befriended. This welcome volume spotlights the work of the critic who championed the young Bob Dylan's transition from topical songs to electric rock, who provided early support for Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon and who served a stint at Mercury Records during which he signed and championed the New York Dolls and became buddies with Rod Stewart. Says Jay Cocks, who became a successful screenwriter and was the film and music critic for Time during Nelson's most prolific years, "Paul was one who deserves the word critic; the rest of us were reviewers." Says Jann Wenner, whose Rolling Stone hired Nelson as review editor and then accepted his resignation as the magazine moved toward shorter reviews in a section that was more aligned with popular taste: "He had that authority and that level of gravitas that these other guys, [Jon] Landau and Greil (Marcus) had had before him. He was the last of that tradition. I guess that era of the independent fiefdom came to an end with Paul." Avery's book also serves as a memorial to a man who saw his career succumb to paralyzing writer's block as well as changing journalistic values, who clerked in a video store and became borderline destitute, who refused contact with former friends and colleagues and who died a week before his body was discovered. Reading Bruce Springsteen description of Nelson's "fan's enthusiasm…tempered by the incredible intelligence" recalls an era when the rock critic, and rock criticism, really mattered.
David Hajdu
[Nelson] was on to something legitimate when, in his 20s during the early '60s, he took the ambitions of the rapidly maturing music of the rock generation as a challenge to produce ambitious criticism. The fiery, literate pop-music writing he developed soon crystallized—and probably helped elevate—the standards of the work he wrote about, while raising the expectations of its audience…His significance as a maker of ardent and crafty (if parochial) rock writing is clear from the testimonies by critics and musicians in the biographical sections of Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, a quirky pastiche of biography and anthology…
—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781606994757
  • Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
  • Publication date: 11/21/2011
  • Pages: 512
  • Sales rank: 136,644
  • Product dimensions: 6.38 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.62 (d)

Meet the Author

Kevin Avery has published over 300 articles and short stories. His books include Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson and Conversations with Clint 1979-1983: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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