WHITE NOISE: The Eminem Collection

As if to balance the muted hagiography of most recent biographies of the rapper, Als and Turner have compiled a comprehensive, provocative and fascinating look at the varied critical reception given to Eminem and his music by more than 25 prominent writers, including Frank Rich, Richard Goldstein, Robert Christgau, Zadie Smith, Elvis Mitchell and Armond White, plus two revealing interviews with Eminem. The result is a solid look at the complexities presented by "a white boy bursting with lewd boasts and menacing taunts in the nastiest gangsta style." Defenders of Eminem's art such as Christgau ("Because he can be such a jerk, he can also be such a genius") and Paul Slansky ("the most compelling figure to have emerged from popular music since the holy trinity of Dylan, Lennon and Jagger") do their best to explain the value of Eminem's mix of innovative beats with homophobic, misogynist lyrics. But the strongest voices belong to the nay-sayers. These include Hank Steuver's look at "the bizarro-world Eminem logic" posited by critics who say that "Eminem doesn't really mean those awful things he says about people"; Roy Grundman's exposé of how Eminem's semiautobiographical film 8 Mile is contrived to show "one big orgy of black hands patting a white back"; and most notably Goldstein's view of Eminem's critical ascension as "a glaring example of the herd reflex passing for rebellion" whose danger "isn't the fantasies Eminem generates but the refusal to see them as anything more than that." (Jan.)