IN 1989, Walker Percy sent a letter to Bruce Springsteen. Percy was a not-exactly famous Southern Catholic writer. Springsteen was a rock megastar and cultural icon. Their correspondence, you can imagine, was unexpected.

Percy wrote his letter–the critic Eric Alterman explains in “It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive,” a 1999 bio-cum-hagiography of Springsteen–because he liked what he saw in an article about Springsteen that his nephew Will had shown him. In Percy’s note, hints of a deep respect emerge. “I’ve always been an admirer of yours, for your musicianship, and for being one of the few sane guys in your field,” Percy wrote. “The two of us are rarities in our professions.”