ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

 

The origins of this book go back to 1979, when I left art school in England to work at a camp in Michigan. That was my introduction to the United States. The following summer in Pennsylvania I met my first Springsteen fan, David
Gelman, as well as Matt Martin, later best man at my wedding to Nicki and a friend to this day. In upstate New York in 1985 Bill Heyen introduced me to the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Bill, who later spoke admiringly of “that haunting song,” “Streets of Philadelphia,” asked me the pointed question, “Why limit yourself?” That year I also met Marina Vanderput, and thank her, now, for decades of friendship, and her recent hospitality in Rio de Janeiro between drafts of the book. In connection with that, I thank Luisa Pereiro, Sarah-Jane Vokey, and Daniel Supervielle for their Uruguayan welcome to the University of Montevideo, where I learned, among many other things, of the work of Eduardo Galeano. In California in 1997 I met Susan Shillinglaw, who referred to “My Hometown” as her song. In 2002 Susan edited Beyond Boundaries: Rereading John Steinbeck. My contribution, “The Ghost of Tom Joad: Steinbeck’s Legacy in the Songs of Bruce Springsteen,” informs part of chapter 2. Between 2011 and 2013, Susan invited me to be a Steinbeck Festival speaker at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. Also speaking in 2013 were Dan Cavicchi and Bob Santelli, both of whom have been supportive of this project. I am especially grateful to Bob for finding time to chat about it on the Jersey Shore during a visit from Los Angeles. Material
from “Dead Man Walking: Nat Turner, William Styron, Bruce Springsteen, and the Death Penalty,” commissioned by Michael Lackey of the University of Minnesota and published in the Mississippi Quarterly, reappears in chapter 4. In chapter 8 I have adapted material from “Rome to Ravello with Set This House on Fire,” published in the Sewanee Review. I tried out ideas for the book in two papers at conferences in Romania: one on Springsteen and spirituality, at the University of Bucharest in 2015; the other on pragmatism and the uses of art, at the 2016 European Association for American Studies Conference in Constanţa. I thank participants of both conferences for their feedback.

Thank you to Margaret Lovecraft and her successor as acquisitions editor, James W. Long; to managing editor Lee Sioles, to copyeditor Stan Ivester, to designer Michelle Neustrom, and to all the staff at LSU Press, for their work here and on my previous books. I also appreciate the advice given by Mona Okada of Grubman Shire & Meiselas with regard to the use of lyrics. Bath Spa University provided funding toward the visit to Asbury Park and the Bruce Springsteen Special Collection at Monmouth University and to attend the Paris concerts. I thank Paul Meyer in particular for his support. Eileen Chapman was immensely helpful in facilitating my research work in the archives. I thank her, too, for showing me around Asbury Park and giving me an idea of how it used to be. BSU colleagues Tim Liardet and Lucy Sweetman read the manuscript and offered useful advice. Fiona Peters was responsible for the particular Berlin trip that features in chapter 8. Katie Rickard and Becky Atkins at BSU’s Corsham Court campus library have been very helpful. Former BSU colleague Richard Parfitt read the manuscript and introduced me to ideas incorporated here. The insights of David Masciotra and John Massaro proved useful early in the project. Christopher Phillips of Backstreets magazine has always been prompt and pertinent in replying to queries. Ken Womack, Jon Stauff, Joe Rapolla, and Michael Waters of Monmouth University all welcomed me to the Jersey Shore. Michael read the manuscript and provided specific information. I thank him for this and him and his partner, Mihaela Moscaliuc, for their hospitality. I thank Tessa and Steve Green for welcoming us to Milly-la Fôret over many years, and Tessa in particular for the fact that her fluent French secured the Paris tickets that helped round out the story in chapter 5. Tanya Tromble, an Alaskan friend now resident in Lascours, has also provided help with the language. Thank you, too, to Bruno and the staff of the Villa Del Bosco Hotel, Catania, Sicily, for a very pleasant stay during a final reading of the manuscript, and to Lanfranco, a bass player who knows all about volcanoes. As one member of the staff, Giuseppe, reminded me, Bruce Zirilli is Italy’s greatest rock musician.

I like to think that my brother, Bruce, and sister, Amelia, will find this book an interesting read both on Springsteen and in terms of who I was, who I am, and how I think. I also have in mind my godson, Hamish Grundy, who has studied American history, worked at summer camps, and might find much to identify with here. In Lougratte one summer another nephew, Bradley Walker, taught me how to play “Born to Run,” which wouldn’t exactly pass muster for live performance but showed me how the song looks on the fret board of my undeserved Fender Stratocaster. Likewise, thank you to former tennis partner, Nick Duff, for teaching me “The Star Spangled Banner,” which students subsequently endured at the end of too many semesters. A mention, as well, for my soccer teammates in Corsham, in particular Tim Bligh and Chris Smith, who have expressed interest in this project. But at the heart of everything, always, are three people: my wife, Nicki, who has endured my various obsessions for many decades; my mathematical daughter, Xenatasha, who is also a woman of the new renaissance—thinker, reader, sportswoman, and musician; and my optometrist daughter, Anastasia, a saxophonist of whom Clarence Clemons would be proud.