Bruce Springsteen's America
The People Listening, a Poet Singing
-
- € 4,99
-
- € 4,99
Beschrijving uitgever
In this compelling book, Robert Coles, the celebrated Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize–winning author, turns his attention to popular music legend Bruce Springsteen, and to the powerful impact Springsteen’s work has had both on the lives of his audience and on this country’s literary tradition. Coles places Springsteen in the pantheon of American artists—Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Percy, among others—who understood and were inspired by their “traveling companions in time,” the ordinary people of their eras.
With wisdom and a unique personal perspective, Coles explores Springsteen’s words as contemporary American poetry, and offers firsthand accounts of how people interact with them: A trucker listens to “Blinded by the Light” during long, lonely nights and reminisces about his mother; a schoolteacher is astonished when a usually silent student offers a comparison between “Nebraska” and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; a policeman responds to “American Skin (41 Shots),” reflecting on his own role in his family and community. As these people, and others, candidly discuss the meaning Springsteen’s words have in their lives, Coles listens and, with the special insight and compassion that are the trademarks of his art, sheds new light on “The Boss,” removing the legendary American rock musician from fan-filled stadiums and placing the poet in a greater social, cultural, and philosophical context. Coles sees Springsteen as a representative of a uniquely American documentary tradition—as a sing-ing and traveling poet who does not simply embody the culture of which he is a part but fully engages it, interacting with its people and creating a conversation that has helped to shape a distinct way of looking at, and living, American life today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The best part of this disappointing work is the dissection of Springsteen's lyrics but Coles's bid to highlight average Americans' interpretation of the Boss's songs falls short on several levels. Many of what are essentially oral interviews with about a dozen everyday Americans from truck drivers to lawyers are rambling and at times barely coherent. Curiously, many of the songs they discussed come from Springsteen's Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad, two of Springsteen's least popular albums. The focus on these solo albums may have been a conscious decision by Coles (The Moral Intelligence of Children; Children of Crisis) since they fit his attempt to portray Springsteen as a singer/poet in the manner of Arlo Guthrie, but it leaves out much of Springsteen's best material. And worst of all, the interviews, complete with short biographies of the people featured, generally offer little insight. The liveliest piece is one in which a teacher and her students discuss the messages in several Springsteen songs. Although fans may find themselves singing some of Springsteen's lyrics that appear in the book, the work is mostly full of flat notes.