Bruce Springsteen has a gift for storytelling via music, often singing about characters and their struggle to make sense out of this crazy world.
The New York Times spoke with The Boss recently about some of his literary heroes and who he's been reading as of late. He enjoys reading about everything from cosmology and philosophy to the lives of rock stars and baseball greats.
"I just finished Moby-Dick, which scared me off for a long time due to the hype of its difficulty," Springsteen said about what's on his night stand. "I found it to be a beautiful boy's adventure story and not that difficult to read. Warning: You will learn more about whales than you have ever wished to know."
The Boss, who has been the subject of plenty of books, just finished his first picture book with Frank Caruso titled Outlaw Pete, which follows the same character from Springsteen's 2009 song of the same name. "Outlaw Pete is essentially the story of a man trying to outlive and outlast his sins," Springsteen wrote about the book. "He's challenging fate by trying to outrun his poisons, his toxicity. Of course, you can't do that. Where we go, they go. You can only learn to live with it."
As far as his favorite contemporary novelists, The Boss chose three big names: Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy and Richard Ford. Springsteen admits that McCarthy's 2006 book, The Road, was the last that made him shed a few tears.
In the realm of what might be surprising to see on the rock star's bookshelf, Springsteen said books about cosmology. "For cosmology, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos by Dennis Overbye, was one of my first favorites," he said. "I find men and women struggling to answer the deepest questions we can ask freeing. It also puts in scale whatever my small problems of the day might be."
