Springsteen’s American Dream, Beautiful And Bleak

I fell in love with Bruce Springsteen for his swagger. It was ridiculous and offered so much hope. Here was a bony dude with the worst haircut ever, who wore T-shirts covered in holes — seriously, he looked like the fry cook at the amusement park where I worked as a counter girl in the summer — making music as big as the known universe.

Springsteen’s music laid a party-crasher’s claim to the rock canon the punk bands I loved were blowing apart. It invited me into a club that had previously seemed closed to newcomers after Woodstock. And the lyrics! I read them fastidiously, getting soda stains all over the gatefold sleeve of Born to Run, amazed to find ideas that I’d mostly confronted in arguments with my dad — about patriotism, the importance of family, the power of tradition — suddenly becoming irresistible.

Foremost among those ideas was Springsteen’s central obsession, the American dream. I defy any rock fan over age 35 to not hear Springsteen’s classic line from “Born To Run” when someone invokes that particular cliche: In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream. …