Bruce Springsteen was asked the question recently. His answer surprised me:
One would be difficult, but the short stories of Flannery O’Connor landed hard on me. You could feel within them the unknowability of God, the intangible mysteries of life that confounded her characters, and which I find by my side every day. They contained the dark Gothicness of my childhood and yet made me feel fortunate to sit at the center of this swirling black puzzle, stars reeling overhead, the earth barely beneath us.
He's apparently quite the reader. Check it out.
It's about time I read me some Flannery O'Connor.
