Everything Is an Afterthought

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.