Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy
Dave Hickey's twenty-three "love songs," which make upAir Guitar, fly off the page to offer the reader a vista beyond the wasteland. In Hickey's "vast, invisible underground empire" of pleasure--record stores, honky-tonks, hot-rod shops, art galleries, jazz clubs, cocktail lounges, surf shops and the like--joy abounds and truth speaks.   --The Nation, Margaret Juhae LeeFinally obliged to theorize his impolite tastes, judgments and ideas, Hickey lays his prejudices a  little barer than altogether becomes them. Even caught in that old trap, however, he's as good as it gets,  starting with his prose. Although his diction is often highfalutin (he was doing a doctoral thesis aboutFoucaultandDerridaway back in 1967), his  rhythms aren't, and he's more than fluent in colloquial English--I mean, the guy can flat-out write. --Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review,Robert Christgau