Loud Reading
DOGHOUSE ROSES
(Houghton Mifflin)
If you're a songwriter who specializes in storytelling songs, or is at least good at them, it stands to reason that you harbor a secret desire to write actual bound, typed-up, on-the-page prose. Most songwriters either keep their efforts to themselves or channel their vision into their tunes, but occasionally an honest-to-Leonard Cohen book sneaks out onto the shelves. And sneaks is a good word for it—who noticed when Rosanne Cash and Graham Parker put out their collections of short fiction?
Steve Earle's Doghouse Roses (just wait for alt.country bands to start fighting over the name) is getting at least a bit more of a push from its publisher. He's been on a creative role the past half-dozen years, with his name constantly in the spotlight, at least amongst the cognoscenti, so there's a good chance people might actually read his book. Those that do will discover a batch of solid stories about drifters, drug-runners and itinerant musicians that revisits themes and characters from his music. Addiction, foreign wars, bad love, the death penalty and the difficulties of a life in music all make appearances here. He even adapts his chilling song "Taneytown" to prose.
Like his songs, Earle's tales don't get bogged down in poetic language or flowery descriptions. Earle prefers to get straight to the heart of the matter with anything he writes, and there's a clarity and scalpel-like precision to his prose that leaves little room for misunderstanding. While that makes him easy to read, it also sometimes takes away the joy of discovery. Too many of his pieces lay out the theme in stark terms instead of allowing the reader to come to it on his own. That doesn't damage the stories irreparably, of course, but it does keep them from making the step from entertaining to required reading. Fans will still enjoy this book, but they won't find it a substitute for his music. Michael Toland [buy it]
