“HE IS THE RARE man of sixty-two who is not shy about showing his ass—an ass finely sausaged into a pair of alarmingly tight black jeans—to twenty thousand paying customers.”

This panting observation about a rock star was committed by the editor of The New Yorker. David Remnick’s 75,000-word profile of Bruce Springsteen is another one of his contributions to the literature of fandom. Once again there is a derecho of detail and the conventional view of his protagonist, the official legend, is left undisturbed. It could have been written by the record company. The interminable thing is an inventory of Springsteen (and rock) platitudes, punctuated by the fleeting acknowledgment of a dissent about the deity, but much more interested in access than in judgment...

When Remnick turns from reporting to commentary, the earnestness becomes embarrassing, which is to say, fully the match of the earnestness of his subject: Springsteen’s new album, he patiently explains, is “shot through with a liberal insistence that American patriotism has less to do with the primacy of markets than with a Rooseveltian sense of fairness and a communal sense of belonging.” Just wrap your legs round these paperbacks.

And Remnick is not alone in his articulate swoon. In The Atlantic, in another one of his exercises in stenographic journalism, Jeffrey Goldberg accompanied Chris Christie to a Springsteen concert and recorded the boorish governor’s frenzy and its repercussions for contemporary conservatism.

“We are in a luxury suite at the Prudential Center—the Rock—in downtown Newark, the sort of suite accessible only to the American plutocracy.” The lucky Jew! Then Christie “loses himself.” “The fist-pumping governor seems uncontainable.” “Bringing him to a Springsteen concert is an exercise in volcano management.” It is an unpleasant thought, as Christie’s ass is not at all finely sausaged...

Remnick adores Springsteen for his “flagrant exertion,” which he finds deeply sensual, comparing him to James Brown, but Brown’s shocking intensity, his gaudy stamina, his sea of sweat, was about, well, @!$%#ing, whereas Springsteen “wants his audience to leave the arena, as he commands them, ‘with your hands hurting, your feet hurting, your back hurting, your voice sore, and your sexual organs stimulated!’ ”, which is how you talk dirty at Whole Foods.