Barney Hoskyns: Lowside of the Road – A Life of Tom Waits (Faber & Faber)

SELF-REVELATION has never come easily to the Los Angeleno songwriter, musician and occasional actor Tom Waits, which is presumably why he writes the kinds of songs he writes – and talks the kind of talk he talks. A Waits outburst is usually worth hearing, whether it comes in song form or in the form of the florid jive he shoots at those members of the press he is prepared to outburst to – but what it reveals of his private life is invariably either negligible or misdirecting and can usually be inscribed, fully punctuated, on the flap of a pack of Lucky Strikes.