Walk Like a Man Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen robert j. wiersema
A frank, funny, and inventive blend of biography, music criticism, and memoir told in thirteen tracks
A frank and inventive blend of biography, music criticism, and memoir
As he enters his sixties, Bruce Springsteen remains a paragon of all that is cool in the world of rock. He’s a genuine voice of the people, the bastard child of Woody Guthrie and James Brown, and an elder statesman who has inspired generations of bands. He’s won twenty Grammy Awards, an Oscar, and two Golden Globes and is a double hall-of-famer. There are dozens of books about the Boss. What’s left to say? Nothing objective, perhaps. But when it comes to music, objectivity is highly overrated. Robert Wiersema has been a Springsteen fan since he was a teenager, following tours to see multiple shows in a row, watching set lists develop in real time via the Internet, ordering bootlegs from shady vendors in Italy. His attachment is deeper than fandom, though: he’s grown up with Springsteen’s music as the soundtrack to his life, beginning with his youth in rural British Columbia and continuing on through dreams of escape, falling in love, and becoming a father. Walk Like a Man is the liner notes for a mix tape, a blend of biography,
Coming of Age with the Music of Bruce Springsteen
Walk like a Man
music criticism, and memoir. Like the best mix tapes, it balances joy and sorrow, laughter seasoning the dark-night-of-the-soul questions that haunt us all. Wiersema’s book is the story of a man becoming a man (despite
Robert J. Wiersema
getting a little lost along the way), and of the man and the music that have accompanied him on his journey. robert j. wiersema is an independent bookseller, a reviewer who
memoir · music
contributes regularly to several national newspapers, and the bestselling
September 2011
author of two novels, Before I Wake and Bedtime Story. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with his wife, Cori Dusmann, and their son, Xander.
Trade paper 978-1-55365-845- 0 Ebook isbn 978-1-55365-8 4 6-7 cdn $21.95 5½” x 8½” · 24 0 pages Rights held: World English, German and Spanish languages
greystone books Fall 2011 | 3