'Tom Waits' overshadowed by format

Editor and biographer Paul Maher Jr. has commendably followed the impulse to reveal a person in his own words as he culled this collection of profiles, reviews and other tidbits on singer-songwriter Tom Waits.

When that person is as successful at guarding his privacy and his image — however countercultural, or at least counterintuitive — as Waits, it is all a fan wants. And when that person is as renowned and quirky a performer as Waits, there may be no better option in writing a short piece or even a magazine feature than to convey as many of his pearls as possible, with minimal editing.

Fans of folk and jazz as well as experimental and industrial-style music revere Waits for his lyrics and compositions, for the beauty he wrings from his gravelly voice, and for his tendency to draw in nearly every song from a unique compendium of genres. Before going sober in the 1980s after he married, he wrote and spoke often about drinking and the seediest of streets where he got his start. He's a person that talk-show host Mike Douglas apparently mistook for a homeless person as he sat in the waiting room before appearing on Douglas' show.

At the same time, Waits' songs have been covered by the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen and Scarlett Johansson, he's fathered three children and lives on a farm in Northern California. And his major influences run an endearing gamut from musicians Howlin' Wolf and Louis Armstrong to writer Charles Bukowski and his father, an itinerant Spanish teacher. Besides more than a dozen albums and some top-selling singles, Waits' credits include roles in “Mystery Men,” “Down by Law” and “Bram Stoker's Dracula,” among many other movies.

Much of that comes through, eventually, along with wisps of insight in “Tom Waits on Tom Waits.” But this is a volume of almost 500 pages, and almost every chapter picks up Waits' story from the beginning. Many of the interviews were conducted by journalists in small and alternative newspapers and most were based on, at most, a few hours of research. Writing in the moment or in the era, these journalists didn't have the perspective that Maher enjoyed and that other Waits biographers have employed. So their aggregate product, through no fault of theirs, ends up sounding like a meeting of Amnesiacs Anonymous.

Maher notes that he winnowed the 50 selections from 10 times more that were available. And, certainly, Waits is often as brilliant a conversationalist as he is a lyricist and poet, so even his random and deliberately absurd comments are usually worth hearing. But readers deserve far more guidance in assembling a narrative about Waits and his work than Maher seems interested in providing. Maher's rambling introduction suggests that we “read this tome like a Farmer's Almanac; he likens the book to a file cabinet.

It's tempting to say “Tom Waits on Tom Waits” is worth picking up just to read the final chapter, an “interview” Waits conducted with himself and issued as an “anti-press release” in 2008; it's hilarious. In answering a request to compare guitarists Marc Ribot and Smokey Hormel, both longtime collaborators with Waits, the “interviewee” launches into an informative discourse on giant squid, with no mention of guitars or their players.

But, alas, like much of the book, this chapter is easy to find online. And it's more interesting to read there, with links to a blog and reader responses, more recent coverage and a wealth of other material that goes much further in revealing and celebrating this American treasure.

“Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters”

Edited by Paul Maher Jr.

Chicago Review Press, 480 pages, $19.95