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Bob Mould Looks Inward, Shines 'A Little Light'

Even as the book and music industries do battle on a field somewhere between media and reality for the title of Most Lost Cause, books by musicians have been doing very well — more specifically, books by rock stars of a certain age, with the likes of Steven Tyler, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, Nikki Sixx and Sammy Hagar scoring recent bestsellers. It's testimony to fans' connection to the music they love, and also to the power of a particular kind of story: classic rags-to-riches romance pumped up with the pleasure/pain, creator/destroyer extremes of the late 20th century rock star.

The latest addition to the genre comes from a less mainstream name, though Bob Mould remains one of the great heroes of American indie rock. The driving force behind the mightily influential 1980s punk band Husker Du (and the more commercially successful Sugar in the 1990s), Mould is not particularly interested in the cliches of rock excess. There certainly are sex and drugs in See a Little Light , but Mould's major subject is his own psyche, as he attempts to make sense of the relationships he struggles with as a musician and a gay man, his compulsions (for drink, speed, a partner or, most of all, work — "I'm not one for vacations," he notes early on in the book), and his escape from a life as a self-described "miserablist." The result is a remarkably candid and thorough account of an artist's life, told in order from start to present.