The Curious Case of the Bootleg David Berman Literary Collection

pitchfork.com:

This past December, as my 28th birthday loomed, I did something slightly immature and dramatic: I posted contextless song lyrics on Twitter.

The lines in question—“In 27 years/I've drunk 50,000 beers/And they just wash against me/Like the sea into a pier”—came from the Silver Jews’ “Trains Across the Sea,” off 1994’s Starlite Walker.

Like many fans of Silver Jews leader David Berman, I’d found myself continuously returning to his work in the wake of his sudden death last August, not long after he re-emerged as Purple Mountains.

Berman fans have a way of spying each other across a crowded digital room—perhaps it has something to do with the precise humor and melancholy of his writing.