A Good Man Found On The Edge Of Town

I stumbled across a very interesting association between my favorite fiction writer and my favorite musician. It's a connection I never supposed or suspected, so you can expect my surprise when I discovered that Bruce Springsteen has been heavily influenced by Flannery O'Connor.

I did some more digging, finding that he was most influenced shortly before the Nebraska album. Which, if you know the album, figures. The final line of title track borrows right from O'Connor, "Sir, I guess there's just meanness in the world." He even penned a song for the epic Tracks album in 1998 called "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and captured the essence of the story fantastically.

Springsteen says it's her characters that intrigue them the most. How they are broken, shattered, imperfect and ultimately redemptive. Listening to that album, Tom Joad and Devils and Dust, you see the same dirty and dusty and grotesque characters searching for their "own piece of the cross."

That the connection was obvious was not what floored me. What got me was the roots of the connection itself. The Mrs, not much of a Springsteen fan aside from The Rising and a couple of live tracks, was also surprised to learn of the connection. And, as always, she summed it up adeptly: "You shouldn't be surprised. It just shows you're consistent in what you like." I love O'Connor's work for the exact same reasons I love Springsteen's work: Rich imagery compounded by the actual facts of the world and an attempt to redeem a little piece of it.

Suffice to say I've gone back through the albums I have and listened to them again. Unfortunately, I don't have the entire Nebraska or Joad albums, but the tracks I have make me feel like I'm in Andalusia, sitting next to O'Connor, with Springsteen spewing out throaty melodies on an old guitar. Give Springsteen credit, he's not just a political mouthed musician who plays in a cool band with a cool name and had a few hits. He's a brilliant writer. And that he was affected by O'Connor and not merely effected rises up in his body of work.

Meanwhile, reading O'Connor and listening to Springsteen at once is not possible. It's like being in the exact same place at the exact same time and trying to do something entirely different.