Lonesome Rangers: Homeless Minds, Promised Lands, Fugitive Cultures

by John D. Leonard

Book Overview

John Leonard, "the fastest wit in the East" (The New York Times Book Review), is back with the offbeat, wide-ranging style that earned his last book, When the Kissing Had to Stop, a place among the Voice Literary Supplement's "25 Favorites of 1999." Now, with an eye to the social and political experience of writers, Leonard adopts a broad definition of exile.

He addresses Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, where exile...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156584694X
• ISBN13: 9781565846944
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant despite his tendency toward cutesy-poo glibness

Included is Leonard's masterpiece-essay about Bob Dylan (ostensibly a review of 2 books about Dylan): "Given that I'm about to contribute to the literature of hyperventilation on the overwrought occasion of Dylan's sixtieth birthday, you ought to know where I stand. Because Joan Baez loved him a lot, I have to assume that he is not as much of a creep as he so often seems. But I'm entitled to doubts about anybody whose favorite Beatle was George. And don't tell me it's all about the music. The whole Dylan package has been marketed as attitude---wrapped in masks. Music is about music. Biographies are about behaviour. Caring about the music is what makes our interest in the behavior more than merely prurient." What Leonard says about Dylan is actually far more interesting than Dylan himself. Can you imagine the formidable masochism capacity of a Dylanologist like Clinton Heylin? Leonard himself has a pretty high threshold for literary pain-infliction. Not only is he willing to plow thru all those fics churned out by committed boremongers like Saul Bellow & Toni Morrison. Leonard actually likes the stuff.