For Springsteen fanatics, this is a must-read. So what else is new? For most of the rest of us, it’s a bit of a mess.

The Boss’s just-released autobiography, “Born to Run,” is for those readers who love (pretty much) unvarnished, gritty tales of fighting through lean years, of dealing with bandmates, of handling personal success and strife, and of understanding he creative process.

It’s an untamed, put-it-all-out-there smorgasbord.

There’s nothing neat or tidy about the book.

“Born to Run,” all 500-plus pages of it, is decidedly rambling, occasionally repetitive, and definitely overlong. Just as a wildly creative musician benefits from a disciplined producer in the studio, “Born to Run” would have benefited from more editing input.

However, that clearly wasn’t on the table for the publisher. (No one is credited as the book’s editor in the acknowledgments; he apparently wrote this on his own over a seven-year period.) The negotiation seems to have gone down somewhat like this: You want to publish Bruce’s book? Here it is. Now print it. (And pay $10 million for it.)

But while “Born to Run” might not be a great book in a critical sense, its shambling nature has its charm.

Springsteen wasn’t going for literary rigor — which shouldn’t be a surprise for an artist whose concerts have broken records for their length, with recent shows topping four hours. There’s nothing neat or tidy about the book. It’s mostly chronological, but it also jumps forward and back in places almost randomly.

As early reviews have noted, Springsteen’s relationship with his late father and each man’s battles with depression are covered a lot, as are the musician’s takes on social and political issues and his complicated relationship with members of the E Street Band. The book doesn’t conclude so much as just end when Springsteen runs out of stuff to say.

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The rocker, who turned 67 last week, at least has put in the time (and then some) to legitimately write a sprawling autobiography. He’s earned the right to ramble. By way of comparison, Rihanna received MTV’s version of the lifetime achievement award this year. She’s 28.

Much like several of Springsteen’s albums, his autobiography has moments of great humor and energy — but taken as a whole, it’s dark. The Boss might not be the most concise writer — and his penchant for all caps is distracting, to say the least — but he doesn’t lack for honesty. He bares his soul and confesses his sins, rarely sparing himself when discussing mistakes he’s made along the way.

There’s no singular focus to “Born to Run.” But one aspect worth exploring further is the relevance of political and social issues to Springsteen’s life and career. He’s an avowed liberal, a fact that seems to create a paradox for some fans, although the characters in his songs give voice to a cross-section of cultural and political perspectives.

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His 1984 song “Born in the U.S.A.” was famously misinterpreted by many as unabashed patriotism, although the lyrics actually convey a more complex perspective on a Vietnam vet considering the trauma he’s endured and facing a questionable future.

Springsteen digs into those matters in several places, attempting to explain the nuances of being a proud American who feels the need to fight for America to do better.

Here are some excerpts on particular events and perspectives:

Springsteen wasn’t going for literary rigor — not a surprise for an artist whose concerts have broken records for their length, with recent shows topping four hours.

The Album ‘Born to Run’ (1975)
“I was a child of Vietnam-era America, of the Kennedy, King and Malcolm X assassinations. The country no longer felt like the innocent place it was said to be in the Eisenhower fifties. Political murder, economic injustice and institutionalized racism were all powerfully and brutally present.”

The Album ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ (1978)
“What were the social forces that held my parents’ lives in check? Why was it so hard? In my search I would blur the lines between the personal and psychological factors that made my father’s life so difficult and the political issues that kept a tight clamp on working-class lives across the United States.”

Visiting East Berlin in 1981
“Any print you had, newspapers, magazines, was confiscated by the East German border guards. It was a different society; you could feel the boot, the stasis in the streets, and you knew the oppression was real. It changed [guitarist Steven Van Zandt] permanently. After our European trip, the man who had preached that rock ‘n’ roll and politics should never mix became an activist, his own music turning defiantly political. The power of the wall that split the world in two, its blunt, ugly, mesmerizing realness, couldn’t be underestimated. It was an offense to humanity; there was something pornographic about it, and once viewed, it held a scent you couldn’t quite get off of you.”

The song ‘Born in the U.S.A.’
“‘Born in the USA’ remains one of my greatest and most misunderstood pieces of music. The combination of its ‘down’ blues verses and its ‘up’ declarative choruses, its demand for the right of a ‘critical’ patriotic voice along with pride of birth, was too seemingly conflicting (or just a bother!) for some of its more carefree, less discerning listeners. (This, my friend, is the way the pop political ball can often bounce.) Records are often auditory Rorschach tests; we hear what we want to hear.”

Dictatorships in 1988 South America
“The Amnesty International tour made me thankful to have been born in the USA, in my little, repressed, redneck, reactionary, one-fire-hydrant crap heap of a hometown that I loved, where despite the social pressure of the ignorant and intolerant, you could walk and speak freely without fear for life and limb (mostly).”

The 1992 L.A. Riots
“Fifty-three citizens died, thousands were injured, businesses were destroyed, lives were ruined. This is America. The prescriptions for many of our ills are in hand — child day care, jobs, education, health care — but it would take a societal effort on the scale of the Marshall Plan to break the generations-long chain of institutionalized destruction our social policies have wreaked. If we can spend trillions on Iraq and Afghanistan in nation building, if we can bail out Wall Street with billions of taxpayer dollars, why not here? Why not now?”