It took me a while to be able to write this post, as it took me some time to be able to read more than a few pages at a time of Nick Tosches’ Where Dead Voices Gather, his biography of minstrel performer Emmett Miller.  While the story Tosches is telling is compelling and definitely of interest to a longtime student of American music such as myself (I’ve been unknowingly preparing for this class for well over a decade now), I have a very difficult time with Tosches’ own attitudes and opinions, which he liberally inserts into the text.  Particularly, his defense of the institution of minstrelsy, which constitutes much of the introductory portion of the book, reads in turns as hypocritical, tone-deaf (ironically for a man of such depth of musical knowledge–boy, does he never let you forget how much more than you he knows about music), and condescending.  On one hand, he condemns critics of minstrel singing of pretension, of not truly understanding what it was really about, and of couching their criticisms in academic language. On the other, Tosches himself possesses a grandiose vocabulary, and often uses a difficult word where a simple one would suffice.  More than once, I found myself rolling my eyes at the text, and even swearing at Tosches out loud.  In particular, the passage in which he lists the various black blues artists who got their start in minstrelsy, and even mentions that Frederick Douglass was known to enjoy a minstrel song or two–Douglass’ opinions on the institution of minstrelsy were much more nuanced and complex than that, a revelation Tosches conveniently saves for a later passage–reeks of the tired line “I’m not racist, some of my best friends are black!”  As the book begins to settle in to tell the story of Emmett Miller’s life, Tosches still cannot help but insert himself and his opinions into the text at length.  While his study of Miller’s life and music, his pursuit of the long-elusive facts of this influential yet enigmatic performer’s existence, and his command of the relevant knowledge and context are all impressive, not to mention that the story is a good story and one that begs to be told, Tosches comes off as an overly opinionated, self-important blowhard.  I can only hope that as the book progresses, Tosches finds less of a need to tell the reader what they should think about the story he’s telling, but I’m not optimistic.  Still, the story of Emmett Miller is one that is not only worth telling, but in the context of American music and culture, which apparently owes no small debt to Miller, needs to be told, and that’s enough to keep me reading.