[via: The Paris Review]
He is from nowhere. I realize that sounds coyly rhetorical—in this day and age, it's even a boast, right? Socioeconomic code for I went to a second-tier school and had no connections and made all this money myself.
Yeah, I don't mean it that way. I mean he is from nowhere. Given the relevant maps and a pointer, I think I could convince even the most exacting minds that when the vast and blood-soaked jigsaw puzzle that is this country's regional scheme coalesced into more or less its present configuration after the Civil War, somebody dropped a piece, which left a void, and they called the void Central Indiana. I'm not trying to say there's no there there. I'm trying to say there's no there. Think about it; let's get systematic on it. What's the most nowhere part of America? The Midwest, right? But once you get into the Midwest, you find that each of the different nowherenesses has laid claim to its own somewhereness. There are the lonely plains in Iowa. In Michigan there is a Gordon Lightfoot song. And Ohio has its very blandness and averageness, faintly comical, to cling to. All of them have something. And now I invite you to close your eyes, and when I say "Indiana"…blue screen, no? And we are speaking only of Indiana generally, which includes Southern Indiana, where I grew up, and Northern Indiana, which touches a Great Lake. We have not even narrowed it down to Central Indiana. Central Indiana? That's like, "Where are you?" "I'm nowhere." "Go there." And when I asked Jeff Strange, a morning-rock deejay in Lafayette, how he thought about this part of the world—for instance, did he think of it as the South? After all, it's a Klan hot spot (which I am inclined to read as a somewhat desperate affectation); or did he think of it as the Midwest or what—you know what he told me? He goes, "Some people here would call it 'the region.'"
That's where he's from.
William Bruce Rose Jr.; William Bruce Bailey; Bill Bailey; William Rose; Axl Rose; W. Axl Rose.
That's where he's from. Bear that in mind.
John Jeremiah Sullivan, from "The Final Comeback of Axl Rose" (GQ, September 2006).
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