What’s Head Butler? Who is Jesse Kornbluth?

Welcome.

I’m Jesse Kornbluth, and I’d like to be your Head Butler — your cultural concierge.

If you feel like you’re drowning in media…well, you are. There are just too many books and movies, there’s just too much music. You can’t keep up. And you can’t catch up.

There are two typical responses to Too Much.

One is to turn off — to pay no attention to New Stuff and endlessly recycle your Greatest Hits in books, movies and music.

The other is to throw up your hands and consume the culture that everyone around you is buying.

Either way, you miss a lot of books, movies and music you might like but never hear about.

Or you could have a trusted cultural adviser.

I’m no snootball, looking down my nose at everything that’s popular. And I’m not a professional critic; if I don’t like something, I’d rather pretend it doesn’t exist than tell you why it sucks. I see myself as an advocate for New Stuff that’s actually exciting and Great Stuff that’s been overlooked.

Why listen to me? Because I’ve been tracking down and writing about quality culture for decades. I think I know what great books, movies and music are. For those who like to see a track record, here’s my bio, in brief:

As a magazine journalist, I’ve been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, New York, Architectural Digest, Reader’s Digest, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and Departures, and a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, etc.

As an author, my books include Airborne: The Triumph and Struggle of Michael Jordan, Highly Confident: The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken, Pre-Pop Warhol, and The Other Guy Blinked (with Roger Enrico). I helped Twyla Tharp on The Collaborative Habit and Frank Bennack, the legendary former CEO of Hearst, on Leave Something on the Table. My novel: Married Sex. My play, The Color of Light, had its Equity premiere in 2019.

On the Internet, I co-founded Bookreporter.com, now the hub of the Internet’s most successful non-commercial book network. From 1997 to 2002, I was Editorial Director of America Online. In 2004, I launched HeadButler.com.

My mission: to guide smart, busy people through the thicket of mediocre New Stuff and into the clearing of Great Stuff. My bet is that this Great Old Stuff — plus the Great New Stuff I love — is what bright, curious people really want. So I’ll let everyone else tell you about thrillers that look like video games and high school comedies that could have been written by high schoolers. I’ll skip the over-hyped new releases you read about five minutes ago and won’t care about five minutes from now. Instead, I’ll tell you about books, films and music you might cherish for the rest of your life.

Here’s what you can expect from Head Butler:

– Four days a week, I’ll share a favorite from the best of the new or from the backlist: books I’ve read (and re-read), music that stays in the rotation for me, movies I can watch again and again.
– Gift recommendations for any occasion for even the hard-to-please.
– The occasional recommendation of a product, short takes, and more.

If you’ll spend some time with the books, movies, music and the occasional product that I recommend, I think you’ll save time and money — and, very quickly, you’ll find you’re the smartest, most wide-awake person on your block. And in return? Your thanks will suffice. Really. And perhaps a few weeks of holiday in August and another at Christmas. But enough of me talking about myself. Time to help you. I hope the service will be satisfactory.

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FTC DISCLAIMER

A few of the recently released books, CDs, movies and products I write about on this website come to me because I have requested complimentary copies from publishers, producers, writers and manufacturers. Most books, CDs and movies — and all older books, CDs and movies — are, almost invariably, from my library. No one — ever — pays for coverage here.