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Black Sabbath's Master of Reality: 33 1/3 | 
 enlarge | Author: John Darnielle
Publisher: Continuum
Category: Book
List Price: $10.95
Buy New: $8.75
You Save: $2.20 (20%)
New (9) from $8.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 162056
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 101
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 6.3 x 4.6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0826428991
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.421660922
EAN: 9780826428998
ASIN: 0826428991
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
John Darnielle describes Master of Reality in the voice of a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric center in southern California in 1985. The narrator explains Black Sabbath like an emissary from an alien race describing his culture to his captors: passionately, patiently, and lovingly. This album has a genuinely remarkable historical status: as a touchstone for the directionless, and as a common coin for young men and women who felt shut out of the broader cultural economy.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 John Darnielle Needs To Master Reality! October 9, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Good god this is an atrocity and not worthy of inclusion into the 33 1/3 series. The usually terrific 33 1/3 series serves as a concise history regarding a seminal album. I'm not sure what this "fictional" account of John Painter a 15-year-old hospitalized mental patient has to do with Black Sabbath's "Master Of Reality." Darnielle weaves a fictional tale of a troubled boy's diaries during his mental incarceration interspersed with a tenuous connection to "Master Of Reality" and Black Sabbath. What's missing is any and all historical and biographical information related to the making of this album - which is the entire point of the poignant 33 1/3 series.
I suppose Darnielle was attempting to show how a disaffected, alienated youth would latch on to the Sabbath and heavy metal ethos but to waste the majority of this book on this premise is absurd.
When I pick up a 33 1/3 book I want a brief glimpse into a seminal work - not a bloviating foray into experimental fiction with a ridiculous, self-indulgent author.
DRIVEL - DOESN'T BELONG IN THIS SERIES September 28, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Having read other books in this series, i.e., "Aqualung", "Led Zeppeliin IV", "Aja", I expected an intelligent review or analysis of the titular recording's music in this book, not a self-indulgent fantasy.
What Darnielle writes isn't brilliant, it's absolute garbage. Plus, the illiterate point of view of his character isn't endearing or charming, it's downright annoying.
I don't care what this guy's puported street cred is insofar as his band and other writings elsewhere--if he wanted to publish a novel, it simply should not have been under the guise of Continuum Books' "33-1/3" series.
When I was a teenager, and coming home from high school, and listening--as a catharsis--to mix tapes of Black Sabbath I'd made, my Dad was amazed that I could fall asleep to the likes of "Symptom of the Universe", "Lord of This World", "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", etc. For years, I had to argue with people that Black Sabbath was not a band that espoused Devil-worship, but like all great art, they simply had the Devil appearing in their work--as an element of conflict.
Metal is not just for disaffected, middle-class youth. It is a very empowering music, and when done right, it doesn't have to be nihilistic, depressive or evil - any more than Edgar Allen Poe was a murderous closet-psycho, or Bela Lugosi actually drank people's blood off-camera.
There is so much more that should have been--but wasn't--said, about Black Sabbath's work on this album because Darnielle felt compelled to write this implicitly drug-induced flow-of-consciousness drivel.
 read the fine print August 7, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
yes, he's pretty great. john darnielle, master of words. oh, the book was good too.
Short and sweet. July 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I feel like I should start out by saying that I am an intensely dedicated fan of Darnielle's many outlets, whether it be his LPTJ blog, The Mountain Goats, The Extra Glenns, his contributions to Decibel, etc. etc. Let me say also that I am pretty sure most of the reviewers (though I haven't read them all) giving this a five star rating are similar in their positions.
I cannot blindly give this book a five, as much as I adore Mr. Darnielle. It was not perfect, as much as a enjoyed it. There were stumbles, in my opinion, where Roger became a little too repetitive, or where some things just seemed oversimplified. But as a whole, especially as his first book, I really enjoyed the book, and it was a quick read. I appreciated it even though I am not a well-versed fan of metal or anything. The character of Roger seemed to cover his bases enough that I could still understand what he was saying about the music--I think this is mostly in part not to his descriptions of the music itself, but to his feelings about it. Darnielle successfully creates emotional attachments which allowed me, as a reader, to sympathize, despite never having been locked up in a mental institution.
I think anyone who had even a remotely rough time in their adolescence and who turned to music to make their way through their troubles will thoroughly enjoy this book and be able to, in some extent, relate to Roger's troubles.
 Falls flat June 30, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
While John Darnielle's rigid personal enforcement of guileless-ness elevates many of his 3-minute songs to a state of genius, that same straight-shooting methodology just doesn't work in the context of a short novel. As a reader, I felt compassion for the unjustly incarcerated teenage narrator Roger Painter (and his mid-twenties incarnation as a restaurant manager), but the connection between his story and Sabbath's "Master of Reality" seemed tenuous at best -- I mean, the same story could have been spun around "Blizzard of Ozz" or the first Whitesnake album or the Misfits' "Walk Among Us" or any of the (many, many) other likely candidates. In the end, as a book, it fell flat for me -- but I bet it would have made a great Mountain Goats song.
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