June Skinner Sawyers

We Take care of Our Own: Faith, Class, and Politics in the Art of Bruce Springsteen, by June Skinner Sawyers, is an insightful look at the themes that run through Springsteen's oeuvre. While we do get some biographical information this is not meant to be a biography but a contextualization, an analysis, of what has made his body of work speak to so many for so long.

If you're mostly interested in whether you'll learn some new minutiae about Springsteen's life, you may be disappointed. If, however, you're looking to gain some understanding of why his music touches so many people and what in his life helped to enable him to create such music, you will be richly rewarded for taking the time to read this. For a relatively small time investment, this is a one-sitting or one-day read, you will walk away with ideas you will ponder well after reading.

About the act of reading this. I suggest reading straight through first, at whatever your regular pace is, then coming back to the sections that most speak to you. That allows you to get the big picture and the bulk of the nuance. After a couple days of thinking about things, come back to it and give it a deeper read, whether all of it or sections you want to dive into.

The thought I came away with has to do with groups and community. By nature a group or community is an inside/outside or us/them entity. But how w approach that is where the ideas can be positive or negative. In other words, it isn't simply "our community" and those "others," whomever they are. It is an inclusive sense of community, a dynamic community. Not one set in stone which always already excludes many people permanently, but a community that itself changes and evolves, inclusively embracing those who might enrich the community while the community also enriches those individual lives. In short, inclusive rather than exclusive, embracing rather than repelling.

I would certainly recommend this to Springsteen fans who want to understand but also those who simply want to understand how art can touch so many people at a deeply personal level while also creating a community on a more public level.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (more)

Devoted to "untangling the relationship between New York and Dylan."

The book gets its stars from the maps in the front, keyed to specific named locations, something I've wanted on several trips to New York, which is valuable. The bulk of the book, though, in its discussions of the various times Dylan spent in New York, is pretty much a retread of several biographies and the memoir, and doesn't really bring a lot new to the party. Those who don't know the biography probably won't get a lot out of this because it's pretty brief and doesn't go into much detail about the work; those who do know the biography will only see its shallowness.

One thing: the list of references to New York on Page 87 misses at least three lyric references to New York places, and there are maybe more. I'll leave those as an exercise for the reader.… (more)