What Gubar does is relate the history of the idea of Judas Iscariot, and since there is very little information extant about his life (do we even really know he was a living, breathing person?), she can't write a biography. The idea of reading a book about the idea of Judas is interesting, and I did learn here that, like Jesus or Lincoln or Ebenezer Scrooge, the figure of Judas is complex and has been "read" culturally in a variety of ways over the years: as a Satanic betrayer, as a fighter for justice who thought he was helping further Jesus's political agenda, as a man who was pulled unwillingly into God's overarching plan for human salvation, as a anti-Semitic symbol. Jesus Christ Superstar colored my perception of Judas, and I have usually seen him as a tragic figure, unwillingly chosen to play a necessary part in the Christian story of redemption.While there are some interesting observations made in the book, my second problem with it is the stiff academic style of the writing. Now, Gubar is an academic and has done important work for the academic community (I'm thinking of The Madwoman in the Attic, an highly influential work in feminist criticism which she co-authored). Maybe it's only because I'm no longer in academia and haven't read a seriously academic book in a few years that the style here bothers me (though I do read a lot of general-interest non-fiction). Long sentences and paragraphs per se don't bother me--I've been told I have a tendency toward those things myself. But she is guilty of what seems to be willful obfuscation, making what has been marketed as "popular" non-fiction by W.W. Norton, a serious but not necessarily academic publisher (Norton anthologies notwithstanding), an obscure and tangled read. Worse, she pads out the length of the book with passages in which she tells us what she's going to say, and later what she's said, inserting herself in the book a little too often. I finished the book but did a lot of skimming during the last half. I'd recommend reading an in-depth review of the book rather than the book.
The next book I read had the opposite problem. 1969: The Year Everything Changed, by Rob Kirkpatrick, held particular appeal to me as someone who almost literally came of age in 1969, which was the year I hit puberty, and the year I became interested in news and politics, and the year I immeresed myself in pop music, but all that is fodder for a Twitterface blog post. Kirkpatrick thinks that 1968 has always gotten more attention as a watershed year in American history, but that the fallout of that year's events which played out the next year makes '69 even more important.I'd like to believe that, I guess, but this book doesn't prove that point. Kirkpatrick covers all the basics, from Vietnam to Charles Manson to nudity and sexual content in pop culture to the moon landing to important musical firsts (Led Zeppelin, Neil Young & Crazy Horse), and, of course, Woodstock and Altamont. While it's fun to read about all these things (in roughly chronological order, with the book's chapters arranged by season), the author never makes an overarching point. Despite his title, he really has no thesis. This book could have used some of Gubar's academic rigor, if not her writing style.
The single most interesting point he makes is that Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" was "an unlikely hit, unlike anything ever played before on AM radio." Now that the song is a golden oldie, it doesn't seem so unusual, but it was a strikingly strange piece of music for mass consumption: blues riffs, sexual references like "backdoor man," and that crazy explosive middle section. I'm not sorry I read this book (and I admit I skipped the chapters about the Mets), but I wish it had actually made the argument its subtitle promises. And, like way too many professionally published titles these days, it has typos (it's Gram Parsons, not Graham, and the song "Strawberry Fields" has the word "Forever" in its title). Yes, I've come out as both a curmudgeon and a grammar bitch.
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