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Let It Blurt The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic
PRESS QUOTES (FOR LINKS TO MORE FULL REVIEWS, SCROLL DOWN OR CLICK HERE)
Music journalist DeRogatis has done an exemplary job with his writing and his meticulous research. — Billboard
What’s more remarkable than this degree of cooperation [from his sources] is DeRogatis’s cogent synthesis. He achieves the assured, rhythmic voice of a composite confidante, someone who saw the best and worst of Ole Les. — Publisher’s Weekly
He tells the story cleanly and clearly, with wit, compassion, insight, and a sharp eye for the nuances of the time. — Charles Shaar-Murray, Revolver
In what has to have been a labor of love, DeRogatis manages to remain sober and levelheaded. — Ira Robbins, Salon
The final chapters of Blurt… are as riveting as the last third of Martin Scorsese’s Good Fellas. — Tom Sinclair, Entertainment Weekly
Eighteen years after his death, some still say that Bangs is the only music journalist that matters. With Let It Blurt, DeRogatis proves them right. — The Dallas Observer
DeRogatis proves to be an able chronicler of the Bangs rise and fall and an excellent historian with unique qualifications…. The book is alive with Bangs' encounters with artists… [but] DeRogatis doesn't ignore Bangs’ failings. — Dan Deluca, The Philadelphia Inquirer
He avoids the usual pitfalls that come with writing about a great stylist and personal hero. Many aficionados have a tendency—conscious or not—to simulate their subjects' distinctive art; DeRogatis instead sticks to a transparent prose… Bangs closed the door on a school of criticism that spawned writers as luminously weird as the scene they covered. And it's DeRogatis' fanlike love for that lost school, more than his tidy research, that makes Let It Blurt. — Neva Chonin, The San Francisco Chronicle
DeRogatis has written an exhaustively detailed account of the late, prolific rock critic and icon Lester Bangs. In the process, he does a superb job of capturing the hot-blooded, dirty, punk rock-nurturing lower Manhattan of the late '70s and early '80s. — Nelson George, Salon
A valuable book whose virtues are the exact opposite of its subject’s. — Howard Hampton, Book Forum
DeRogatis finds the right reasons to love Lester, for whom beauty was always inseparable from the beast within. — Esquire magazine
I recognize the Lester Bangs I knew in Jim DeRogatis’s biography (a superb piece of detective work), and see sides of him I didn't know were there. — James Wolcott, Vanity Fair
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LINKS TO FULL REVIEWS, WORLD |
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To date, Let It Blurt has been published in the U.K., France, Italy, and China. What follows is a small sample of reviews from around the world.
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