Powells.com Interviews – Pam Houston:

This is a great interview with a writer I’d never heard of. I’m on the Powell’s mailing list—their emails are lots of fun, and they very much share the feeling of a neighborhood bookstore—and this interview was encapsulated with a mention of Bruce Springsteen, so I had to read it. I’m so very glad I did.

This is the entire Springsteen section of the interview. There is so much of this that made me go “Yes!” From Kohr custard to beach tags to Backstreets to the lemonade place … I wasn’t there in the 70s like she was, but I was there. It has the ring of home. Anyway, read if you like.

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Dave: Bruce Springsteen makes a cameo in Sight Hound. Was that the bit of New Jersey that Pam brought west?

Houston: Probably. I’m still a pretty big Bruce fan. That is certainly a part of my upbringing that I won’t let go of. I’ve let go of a lot of my east coast stuff, but I’m not letting go of that.

I had an amazing experience this summer. I went back to the Jersey shore because I might write about it — this new book I’m sort of flirting with is about a young girl. I went back with a girlfriend from California who’d never seen the Jersey shore. It was my first time there in about twenty-five years.

The very first night we were there I went to Seaside Heights, which is where I went as a little kid. It’s about as crummy as it gets. We went to the boardwalk and there were all the rides and the Kohr Brothers Frozen Custard and everything else. The whole drive down from Boston, I’d been saying to Tammy, “The thing we should have brought was early Bruce.” I’d brought all these CDs, and I was saying, “I can’t believe we came to the Jersey shore and I brought The Rising.” Terrible choice. Should have brought Greetings from Asbury Park. I said, “We can probably just turn on the radio,” and of course it was all just hip-hop. There was no Bruce to be found.

So we get to the boardwalk, and I’m on total sensory overload: We’ve got to get a cheesesteak, and a here’s where they squeeze the lemonade… I can hardly even speak, I’m so overwhelmed with memory. And I’m paying the cheesesteak lady, and she says, “Are you a Springsteen fan?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “I thought you looked about the right age.” She said, “There’s a Springsteen cover band playing down at the end of the boardwalk tonight. You should check it out. Last week there was a Beatles cover band, and they were really good.”

Well, when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, every single night we went to Art Stock’s Playpen in Wildwood Crest to see this band called Backstreets play nothing but Springsteen all the time. We would get up in the morning and sleep on the beach until we had to be beach inspectors at ten — that was our job, to make sure everyone had their beach tags on. From ten to five, we’d walk the beach, then from five to eight we’d go to whatever happy hour had free food, and from eight until five in the morning we’d go to Art Stock’s Playpen again and dance to the same songs every night: “Jungleland,” “Rosalita,” “Growing Up,” “Blinded by the Light.”

Anyway, Tammy and I walk down to the end of the boardwalk. I hear “Jungleland,” and I swear to God I get chills all over my body. This is a band that’s playing at Seaside Heights; it doesn’t get any worse. There are all these people in lawn chairs out on the beach, the sun’s going down, the sky is all pretty, and here are these guys. I say to Tammy, “They’re old.”

She looks at a flyer they’re handing out, which includes weddings they’re playing, and the band is called B-Streets. Tammy, who’s much more up on teen culture than I am, says, “They had to change their name from Backstreets to B-streets because of the Backstreet Boys.” Well, it’s the same guys! Twenty-eight years later. On our first night — we had just arrived! It was amazing. I went up to them with my camera. I was like, “Art Stock’s Playpen? 1978?” They were all, “Yeah!”

That’s a long answer to a short question, but I’m a fan. I remain a fan. There’s an anthology coming out called Meeting across the River, which I contributed to. We all had to listen to the song, “Meeting across the River” and write a story from it.

Dave: Why that song?

Houston: It’s a weird choice. It’s a strange, quiet, little song. I don’t know why. But you know the line, “Cherry said she’s gonna walk ’cause she found out I took her radio and hocked it”? I wrote a story called “Cherry Looks Back.” I’m kind of excited about it.

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This is Elaine again.

“Meeting Across the River” is really a great song, about a local kid and his friend who are going to make a mistake, a bad choice, and you just listen to it hoping it works out and doesn’t break them. It’s on Born to Run, and it’s sandwiched between “She’s the One” (my favorite Springsteen song ever and the source of the title and quotations that appear on this blog), which is an attempt to stop thinking about the girl you can’t stop thinking about, and “Jungleland,” which is pure poetry centered around a young man who is too far past making that first mistake.

“Meeting Across the River” is the chapter before the book starts, the backstory, the prelude; like “Jungleland,” it’s part of the dark side of Born to Run and though it is simple and short, it (like “Highway Patrolman” on Nebraska) is one of the more emotionally riveting songs Bruce has ever written.

I’m really looking forward to reading a book of stories inspired by that song. I’ve known and loved everything on Born to Run for more than half my life, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and analyzing those songs and the people they’re about. I’m very curious to read other people doing the same thing.