Three things I'm looking forward to

The first being a new memoir from Harry Crews that you can get a taste of in the current Georgia Review. They've published a chapter, "We Are All Of Us Passing Through," of which they've posted a few paragraphs online.

I have never cared what horse a man was riding, only how he rode him. Because that is the pretty and human thing. I got out of the Marine Corps in 1956, and went to the University of Florida and found it full of granite men riding granite horses. Deliver me from men who are without doubt. Doubt makes a man decent. My most steadfast conviction is that every man ought to doubt everything he holds dearest. Not all the time, but now and then. Sometime. With rare exceptions, though, professors treat their disciplines as closed subjects, as though nothing had been written or discovered or reevaluated about their disciplines since the day they were awarded their PhDs. Consequently, universities have become communities of men with answers instead of—as they should be—communities of men with questions.

The rest.

When I started Satan Is Real, Neil Strauss told me the only thing he wanted me to do by way of research was to read great books. Nothing else. And, obviously, one of the books I chose was Harry Crews' A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. If you haven't had the pleasure, it's one of the finest memoirs ever written.

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The second thing I'm looking forward to is Bruce Springsteen's new album, Wrecking Ball. I've been listening to Springsteen since I was twelve years old. At the time I was living with my mother and we were as broke as you can get, but somehow she scraped together a little money for my birthday and gave me a choice between a used bicycle or a copy of Born in the USA. Obviously I picked the Springsteen album, and I've never looked back.

This is the first single, "We Take Care Of Our Own." It's a good bit of rabble-rousing, and I particularly like the play on the word "flown," which besides the obvious meaning with the word "flag," can also indicate the past tense of "flee." Which is pretty damn apt, to my mind.

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The third thing is a lot more personal, and a lot more imminent. That'd be my first Noir at the Bar, to be taking place on Tuesday evening in St. Louis, at the Meshuggah Cafe, 7PM.

I'm very excited about this one, and hope anybody in the neighborhood can make it.