MY PINUP: A PAEAN TO PRINCE - HILTON ALS

I went back and forth as to whether this counts as a whole book for the EVERY BOOK REVIEWED project. I suppose I have included novellas and other short forms before. This book can be read in an hour or so, it’s something of a long magazine article, and in some ways ghost of a book that could have been. I’m a huge fan of Als, he’s an amazing writer and I still think about his last book, a collection of essays that merge the personal and cultural, smothinger both in extremely sharp and original language, White Girls. As someone who writes so astutely about race and desire and popular culture it’s hard to imagine a better subject for him than Prince, a genius who is also obsessed with these topics. Als mets Prince in this book, to do an interview for a magazine piece and Prince is also struck by him. He thinks Als would be the perfect person to write a book with and offers him the chance to move to Paisley Park and work on a book. Als demures and delays and then Prince is dead. He died before we even got his full autobiography, which I’ve also reviewed on this site. A full Als/Prince books is the Jorodowsky’s Dune of pop culture books. Even what we have here gives one so much to think about. He writes amazingly about the way Prince’s sexuality is both threatening and liberating. He talks about what Prince means to Black, Queer men. As always, Als weaves in his own life and loves and writes about these with an elliptical beauty. I just wanted 300 pages of Als really taking apart the Prince discography and diving into each part of his career.