What no one else is reading at my gym

I’m finding myself in a particularly creative mood these days. 2025 has started out energized, optimistic, and hopeful, like never before.

One rule I want to remember in the month of resolutions is that creators engage other creations. Writers read. Artists are viewers.

Netflix currently has a biography in the works for release this year about Bruce Springsteen and the making of his Nebraska album. If you’re not familiar with it, it began as homemade demos on a four track tape recorder in his New Jersey bedroom in 1981. The songs are spare, dark, and hauntingly, beautiful. Jeremy Allen White is slated to star as Bruce Springsteen.

As demos, on a four track tape recorder, he was limited to guitar, harmonica, and vocals. And somewhere, as he began sharing this material with his band for a full album, he came to realize that that cassette tape was the whole album. Which was a journey itself.

"Nebraska" by Bruce Springsteen on Amazon Music.

Why am I sharing this? Well, I was curious about some of the inspirations that led to his album. For Springsteen, he was reading a lot of Flannery O’Connor short stories, along with Howard Zinn‘s A People’s History of the United States.

I have long been a fan of short story formats. Two of my favorite authors are Raymond Carver and Richard Ford, and Donald Hall’s From Willow Temple is a jewel of perfection. So this month, I’ve been averaging at least one short story a day from those sources, as well as the Best American annual short story collection.

It’s been a while since I’ve read Flannery O’Connor, probably going back to high school. So it’s been 3-4 a week this month from her.

Such a joy and a revelation. I understand the themes so much better than I did when I was a teenager. That said, I am 100% confident that no one else on the treadmill or the Stairmaster here is reading Flannery O’Connor. But I’d love to discover otherwise :-)

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