Bowie is mad alright. He wears his brain right out on his lapel like a dazzling boutonniere. It flashes and beckons you to come right along on a brilliantly entertaining and self-serving expedition….

Once David was content with being a likeable schizophrenic with a lot of promise. Recently, though, he has smashed his personality and scattered it in so many directions you need a magnet to gather them back again. Fortunately, he provides that magnet, which is his musical genius and authority. If now he is "the twisted name on Garbo's eyes" and in ten seconds "living proof of Churchill's lies," those conditions obtain because Bowie has brought them around through his songs….

No one can accuse David of holding back. More than half of side two [of Hunky Dory] is taken up with admonitions, scoldings and bits of advice directed at Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan. Andy...