Mary Climbs In:
The Journeys of Bruce
Springsteen’s Women Fans
By Lorraine Mangione & Donna Luff
Rutgers University Press

With his many songs about working-class guys trying to weather tough economic times, or restless dudes and dreamers adrift on America’s highways, Bruce Springsteen might not be the first person you’d think of as an inspiration for female rock fans.

But in their book “Mary Climbs In,” Lorraine Mangione and Donna Luff – a professor of psychology and a sociologist, respectively – make the case that Springsteen’s music has deep appeal to women, speaking to them on a number of levels and about different subjects.

Based on two extensive surveys they did of female Springsteen fans, the authors suggest The Boss, now 73, can be a father figure, a brother, a friend, even a therapist – and someone who likes women for who they are, not for their looks, as he highlighted in a line from his anthemic “Thunder Road”: “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright / Oh, and that’s alright with me.”

Mangione, a Northampton resident who teaches at Antioch University in New Hampshire, and Luff, a researcher and program director at Boston Children’s Hospital, bring their own stories of fandom to their book as a means of introducing the surveys they conducted.

Mangione, for instance, says she was initially a Springsteen skeptic but then, in the late 1970s, went to one of his concerts when she was a graduate student in psychology and found herself deeply drawn to his songs.

“How could it be that his music so mirrored the theories, research, and clinical work (I) was studying?” she writes. “How did he understand so much of the human psyche?”

And Luff, who grew up in Great Britain, recalls hearing Springsteen’s 1980 hit “Hungry Heart” as a teenager while riding in her father’s car. “She asked her father to turn up the volume and her younger sister to quiet down… she understood she had a hungry heart, too.”

The two writers met some years back at “The Glory Days Springsteen Symposia” at Monmouth University in New Jersey, which reviewed studies, literature, and more on Bruce (who knew this happened?). They decided to work together to probe what they saw as the little-examined connection between Springsteen and his female fans.

The overall devotion of Springsteen’s fans is also worth noting, Mangione and Luff write: “Though the audience itself has grown, the intensity of the devotion has remained a consistent and noted feature, from old fans to new.”

Many of the first-person testimonials from fans in “Mary Climbs In” speak to the depth of this connection. One woman recalls being treated for severe depression in a hospital when Springsteen’s “Point Blank” from 1980 came on the radio, which includes the line “Shot between the eyes / point blank.”

“It said how I felt, non-existent, see-through, barely there, of no consequence to anyone,” the woman writes. “From that moment on, I used Bruce to heal me, no matter what the hurt. All these years later, I owe him my life.”

Another woman relates that after her husband lost his job, the tune “Jack of All Trades,” which Springsteen wrote during the recession in 2009, “felt like it was written for us personally and helped us to get through possibly the most difficult time of our marriage.”

Some of the respondents also defended Springsteen against others’ charges that he can be sexist, using the phrase “little girl” in some of his older songs.

“I have never once listened to his music and immediately felt objectified the way I do when I hear a lot of music nowadays,” wrote one.

Another said the women in Springsteen’s songs “are independent, smart, hard-working; admired and respected by men… (they) are strong enough to leave a situation they don’t like, tough enough to stick it out when they know they’re with the right person.”

In an afterword in which both writers talk about how their relationship to Springsteen’s music has evolved over the years, Luff notes that her interest in him as a British teenager in the early 1980s was considered decidedly uncool among her friends – maybe just a foolish infatuation with an older man (Springsteen was in his early 30s at the time).

Not so, writes Luff. If she was infatuated by anything, it was “the sense of someone singing for and to me, articulating what I felt within my own heart. I identified with the feelings in Springsteen’s music, and nowhere did I feel that identification more than when listening to ‘Thunder Road.’”

Lorraine Mangione and Donna Luff will discuss “Mary Climbs In” June 29 at 7 p.m. at The Parlor Room in Northampton, an event sponsored by Broadside Bookshop. Free.

 

The Babka Sisters
By Lesléa Newman
Illustrated by Tika and
Tata Bobokhidze
Kar-ben Publishing/
Lerner Publishing Group

 

Holyoke author Lesléa Newman maintains her busy publishing schedule with a new picture book for young readers, “The Babka Sisters,” a tale about two young siblings, Esther and Hester, who live next door to each other and have a great relationship – until they don’t.

The sisters, named for the sweet, braided bread that originated in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, are intrigued one summer evening to see that someone’s moved into a little cottage across the street from their own colorful homes.

“I’m going to bring them a babka for Shabbat,” they both say, before each one adds “After all, I bake the best babka in the world.” And so the great Babka Bake-Off gets underway.

The story offers some wonderful images of Esther and Hester in their respective kitchens as they mix their dough, then roll it out before baking it. Both are convinced their babka will make their new neighbor either “dance with delight” (Esther) or “jump with joy” (Hester).

But the girls get rather testy with one another as they march up to the neighbor’s door, flanked by their respective pets (Esther’s cat, Lester, and Hester’s dog, Chester, who scowl at each other). Who’s going to ring the bell if they both have their hands full?

The new neighbor is an elderly gentleman named Sylvester, and he’s perfectly willing to test the sisters’ babka. But which one, they ask him, is the best?

That puts Sylvester on the spot – but maybe he’ll find a way of making everyone happy.

“The Babka Sisters” also includes a recipe for the bread, and the story has an interesting footnote: Its two illustrators are sisters themselves who live in Georgia (the country, not the state) who have “a passion for drawing,” according to book notes.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

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