Saturday, June 26, 2010

ON A RATTLESNAKE SPEEDWAY


Some kids race around a Utah speedway. They dream of getting away someday, but the cards are stacked against them.

You can hardly blame them. Utah is a terrible place full of scorpions and uppity polygamists. My grandfather mined coal there in Carbon County back in the 1920s. I was thrown in jail there for hitchhiking in the 1970s. Other than some beautiful canyons and rugged mountains, and a lake that is too salty, there is nothing to recommend this godforsaken scrubland.

Bruce Springsteen is a master storyteller. He maps the hidden world, the working world, and makes heroes out of unlikely scrappers. He tells this story without the sentimental Hollywood crap and the false morality. His stories are rough and meaningful without the sappy strings, and because of that they ring true.

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