How a southern writer's power reverberates through acclaimed popular music

Irwin H. Streight is full professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication at the Royal Military College of Canada. He is coeditor of Flannery O—Connor: The Contemporary Reviews and Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen. He is cofounder and coeditor of an online journal devoted to Springsteen studies, BOSS.

Irwin H. Streight's profile page

This astute study by Streight, an English professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, traces Flannery O—Connor's influence on Bruce Springsteen, U2, Lucinda Williams, and other musicians. The connections that Streight unearths intrigue. . . . This will entrance music lovers with a literary bent.

Publishers Weekly

Flannery O—Connor was a great writer who lived a short life. Born with the proverbial tin ear, she knew nothing about music. So, it is more than ironic that the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Mary Gauthier, Kate Campbell, Sufjan Stevens, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, and others found inspiration and a sense of shared humanity in her Christ-haunted stories. In this compelling and endlessly fascinating exploration of O—Connor's oversized cultural impact on contemporary music and popular culture, Irwin H. Streight has written an important addition to the O—Connor canon, full of insightful critical commentary, making connections between stories and songs, and finding, as she did, the sacred within the profane.

June Skinner Sawyers, author of We Take Care of Our Own: Faith, Class, and Politics in the Art of Bruce Springsteen