People Still Read Books: Steven Hyden

An interview with the author of “Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation”

I host the People Still Read Books podcast once a month, a podcast where I talk to authors about their books, their process, their fears, the excitement and terror of writing a book. (It’s also partly a way to help promote my upcoming novel The Time Has Come.) You can listen to the conversation on the podcast feed, but with each show, we’ll post an edited transcript of the podcast here.

This week’s guest is Steven Hyden, Cultural Critic at Uproxx and the author of five books, including the smart, probing book Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation. The book is about the band, but it’s really about the generation — how Pearl Jam and their fans both reflected and rejected the notorious “Generation X” label. As a proud Gen-Xer, I found the book endlessly entertaining and insightful … and I don’t even like Pearl Jam that much. We talked about Hyden’s process, Generation X and how he keeps his acknowledgements pages so short.

Leitch: One of the things that I think is really interesting about the way you write in your career is actually captured I think pretty well in the preface. “I am a music critic, which means I have the annoying though hopefully endearing arrogance…