Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon

As Carlin (Bruce) points out in this often tuneless critical biography, Paul Simon has been chasing his musical muse since his childhood, when he first heard the Crows’ “Gee” on the radio. Drawing on a wealth of research as well as interviews with some of Simon’s friends and fellow musicians, Carlin nimbly chronicles Simon’s life and music. The saga starts with Simon’s youth, which might have foreshadowed Simon’s lifelong curmudgeonly personality—“There was a sadness about the boy from the beginning”—and childhood, in which he took on his father’s willfulness and sarcastic nature. He and Art Garfunkel formed the duo Tom and Jerry. Following their ascent to the musical stratosphere as Simon & Garfunkel in the late 1960s, their relationship became contentious, but his solo career was mostly successful. Carlin provides colorful details of the events surrounding the recordings of many of Simon’s albums, such 1973’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, which he recorded in the famed Muscle Shoals studio where so many of his favorite soul songs had been recorded. The book is lackluster, painting a portrait of Simon with which fans are already familiar: a creative genius whose reticence is often mistaken for misanthropy, whose gleeful humor is often mistaken for sarcasm, and whose desire to discover the perfect lyric or chord or hook is insatiable. (Oct.)