MixedThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThe most appealing anecdotes of the book, for me, though, do not quite follow this didactic structure ... this book is primarily for those who are already invested in Kilgariff and Hardstark ... while Kilgariff and Hardstark’s voices do come through the page, the book often feels like two parallel monologues. The book format allows for focus and depth, but the charm — and also the power — of the podcast lies in the chemistry between the two hosts. The relationship between Kilgariff and Hardstark, their shared vulnerabilities, and their ability to laugh at each other and themselves: this is what is most compelling about the podcast and most missing in the book. In the medium of the book, their voices and humor often fall flat ... there is very little reflection on the podcast ... Throughout the book, Kilgariff and Hardstark are quite aware of the concerns of their private lives but not nearly cognizant enough of the concerns that their sensational podcast raises. As a murderino, I would have liked to read more about how they understand and engage with their work ... I am sorry that the authors missed the opportunity to engage with their ... an often funny, sometimes sweet, and occasionally wise memoir of Kilgariff and Hardstark’s lives and particularly their spotty youths.
Tommy Pico
RaveThe Los Angeles Review of Books\"...throughout the book, Pico’s tone is casual and intimate. Reading Junk often feels like receiving a long text message from Pico, the kind of message your friend texts you from a bathroom at a party to share news of something illicit, or strange, or wonderful ... So much of Pico’s verse recalls the work of midcentury poet Frank O’Hara...It may seem uninspired to compare a queer male poet who lives in New York City to Frank O’Hara, but I can think of no other poet who manifests O’Hara’s nerve and verve without sounding like a weaker imitation ... Pico’s italicized lines, his abbreviations and text speak, his low diction, his rapid shifts between moods and tones: all belie a carefully composed line. And Pico’s imagery startles with its precision; the lips \'marbled\' by hickeys recall prime marbled red meat ... Pico’s poem is marked by energy and grace, silliness and variousness, and it elevates junk of all kinds; through Pico’s lens, nothing is not worth our attention.\
Michelle Dean
MixedThe Los Angeles Review of BooksShe is as interested in the lives of its [her book\'s] subjects as she is in their writing, and provides a useful introduction not just to her writers’ careers but to the legendary literary establishments and institutions of the 20th century that they worked within and against ... The downside to Dean’s focus on the lives of her subjects is that their writing sometimes takes a backseat to their lives. I would have appreciated more time devoted to careful readings of West’s journalism and less to her relationship with H. G. Wells, more analysis of McCarthy’s best-selling novel The Group and less of her marriage to Edmund Wilson. When Dean does get down in the weeds and engage with what these writers actually wrote, she often does it quite well, and the book’s strength is in its accounts of debates among public intellectuals ... But Sharp is, in many ways, a missed opportunity ... Dean acknowledges in her introduction that many of the women she writes about \'came from similar backgrounds: white, and often Jewish, and middle-class.\' Ultimately she is not very interested in investigating the way that these similarities affected and enabled their writing, and fair enough: the book is focused on gender rather than race, religion, or class. But the effect of this choice is that Dean repeats the same injustices she professes to despise ... Dean herself has the power to recognize [Zora Neale] Hurston — along with a number of other women writers of color — as part of this cohort, to write her into the canon from which she’s been excluded ... it is a shame that a book with so much potential and ambition, a book that seeks to define a century of American literary and intellectual history formed by women, is so narrow in its sense of that history.
