{"id":26705,"date":"2021-04-30T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=26705"},"modified":"2024-01-02T16:31:59","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T00:31:59","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-pittsburgh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/30\/roll-of-the-dice-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-pittsburgh\/","title":{"rendered":"Roll of the Dice: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was something in those stories of [Flannery O’Connor] that I felt captured a certain part of the American character that I was interested in writing about. They were a big, big revelation. She got to the heart of some part of meanness that she never spelled out, because if she spelled it out you wouldn’t be getting it. It was always at the core of every one of her stories–the way that she’d left that hole there, that hole that’s inside of everybody.\u00a0 <\/span>–Bruce Springsteen to Will Percy, DoubleTake, Spring 1998<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s easy to overlook a song like “A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh).”<\/p>\n

It’s quiet, contemplative, and on first listen what stands out the most are the familiar Springsteenian tropes: the Michigan line, the meanness in this world, not waiting for Romeos or Casanovas. Heck, even Brian Hiatt forgot to include it in his The Stories Behind the Songs<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But “A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)”–let’s just call it “Good Man” for readability–is a song that rewards a close listen. To borrow a phrase Bruce frequently employed to describe\u00a0Western Stars<\/em>, “Good Man” is a jewel box of a song.<\/p>\n