Any book calling itself a reader is not meant to be read in one sitting. One should read a chapter, two at the most, at one's leisure, then put it down for a day or more and come back to it sometime later. However, if one does read Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader in a single sitting, it becomes apparent that Johnny Cash is a man who can't keep his own legend straight. But with a legend as big as Cash's to manage, the Man in Black can hardly be blamed.

Edited by Michael Streissguth, Ring of Fire is a collection of interviews and articles, often excerpts, written by some of the country's well-known music journalists. The early accounts are sketchy and parable-like, up until the one about Cash's appearance at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas (written by former inmate Albert Nussbaum in West Virginia's Sunday Gazette Mail, 1973) and the piece regarding his first attempt at living a drug-free life (Peter McCabe and Jack Killion in Country Music, 1973). Up to this point, most of the material covers variations on the themes in Cash's life: his childhood, his relationship with Nashville, and his addictions. It's not until Nick Tosches' begrudging admiration becomes apparent in his 1995 article in The Journal of Country Music, after Cash became affiliated with Rick Rubin's American Recordings, that any of the articles really amount to much more than reporting and indulgent windbaggery.

There's something new to be learned about the same old story every time another journalist asks Cash to tell it (the years add certain flourishes), but it's the true analysis, which comes from years of trial and observance, that makes for good reading. Unfortunately, this pithy reward comes some 200 pages into Streissguth's collection.