Contents

List of Illustrations

Prologue: The Only Thing Worse than Being Misunderstood

ACT ONE: WASTED AND WOUNDED

1. Some Ways about Me that Just Aren’t Right

2. Home I’ll Never Be

3. Understanding, Sympathy, and Encouragement

4. In Character

5. Knee-Deep in Grunge

6. Real Romantic Dreamers Stuck in the Wrong Time Zone

7. Ready to Scream

ACT TWO: BEHIND THE MULE

1. Trying to Arrive at Some Type of Cathartic Epiphany in Terms of My Bifocals

2. Wreck Collections

3. Something for All the Family

4. In a Suit When You Dream

5. Bones, Cemeteries, and Dirty Blood

6. The Crooked Tree and the Straight Tree

7. Rust Never Sleeps

8. He’s Not There

Coda: Take It with Me When I Go

Appendix 1: Waits’ Greatest Tracks: A Top 40 Countdown

Appendix 2: The Email Trail

Acknowledgements