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Top of the pile
76
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
77/100Critics
75/100Scholars
Author:
Will Hermes
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
October 3, 2023
The new complete biography of the rock master Lou Reed, whose stature grows every year.
What The Reviewers Say
Very fine.
Hermes' captivating new biography, fires on all cylinders: It's exhaustively researched and opinionated, with a swagger that evokes its volatile subject. For most of the book there's precious little of Reed's later domesticity.
The achievement of Will Hermes’s book King of New York is, first, in how thoughtfully it contains Reed. It affixes Reed to his central muse: New York City. And, in doing so, it considers Reed through a very specific frame.
Many of the details in the book have been reported elsewhere before by people who were actually friends with Reed...but Hermes invokes them with a current tone that’s favorable toward, but not overly forgiving of, the notoriously prickly Reed..
