[...] Springsteen is a phenomenon that can be read, with equal conviction, in at least two diametrically opposed ways. His audiences seem to be made up of people from five to fifty, busily reading him in different ways. The symbols are deeply American—populist in their ambiguity; he’s both in the White House and On The Road. In the 1960s you had to be one or the other. Springsteen is somehow both at the same time. That’s what I mean by fragmentation.