Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Daniel Pope’s novel Go Help Yourself is an endearing debut, the Pacific Northwest slacker novel of the year!

John Keene wrote of the book:

“Corbin Taylor Moore, the Seattle-based anti-hero narrator of Daniel Pope’s rollicking debut, is a weed-smoking, pill-popping, self-critiquing twenty-something experiencing something of a mid-life crisis. It doesn’t help that his mother, a famous self-help author, barely understands him, that he struggles to connect with his coworkers or soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, or that a crow hauntingly appears the day of his crash-out, followed by a murder of crows as events progress. A brilliant send-up of our contemporary late neoliberal moment, Go Help Yourself captures the vicissitudes of Millennial life today and brings a vibrant new literary voice to readers.”

In his own words, here is Daniel Pope’s Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel Go Help Yourself:

Life Signs by Water From Your Eyes

Rachel Brown’s deadpan delivery combined with Nate Amos’s chaotic and unrelenting guitar lines in the verse mirrors the contrast of ironic distance/inner emotional volatility that characterizes my protagonist, Corbin. Corbin hates his body; he thinks he’s too fat, ugly, etc.; he thinks that if he were beautiful, it would solve all his problems. He keeps all these torrential feelings at an ironic distance, and that’s why he can’t see himself clearly. But he can’t avoid himself. Nor can he avoid the murder of angry crows, which keeps returning at random points to attack him. Why? I like a book that keeps you guessing, and a song that does the same. It makes the moments of clarity so beautiful. Like in the chorus, when the chaotic patchwork clicks into a startling sudden order, and the song just soars. And that guitar solo! If someday someone decided to produce a TV show out of my novel I’d beg the reptilian TV execs to get Water From Your Eyes to write the theme song.

Ugly by Sugar High

Corbin could have written the lyrics for this song. There couldn’t be a more direct way of defining his problem, or what he thinks his problem is: I’m so ugly. I think this is universal: everyone must have felt it at some point. No matter how many inspirational Instagram posts you read, when you feel you’re not in the club, it’s difficult to convince yourself that the “true beauty” is “within.” But in the examination of these ugly feelings, this song shows in them the pattern of something far more profound. As Corbin says, “I had wanted to be a writer because I’d thought that if I could put the right words in the right order, everyone would realize that I was beautiful inside. But I wasn’t beautiful inside.” The beauty of this song proves its singer wrong, and I hope my novel does the same.

Drunk II by Mannequin Pussy

The first draft of Go Help Yourself was written in a period of converging crises: on the one hand, I was going through a breakup; on the other, the whole world was going through a pandemic. While the novel lampoons the self-help genre—Corbin’s mother is a famous self-help guru, and he hates her—of course I couldn’t have survived these crises without some kind of healthy self-helping of my own. So I started running. And whenever this song, “Drunk II,” came up on my running playlist, it made me fly. It’s got that blurry, drunken, “fuck everything,” “let’s point this rocket ship into the fucking sun” mentality, that loving embrace of your own brokenness that feels, for some reason, so, so good. Which might be a very bad and immature thing, but it’s a feeling that Go Help Yourself’s protagonist, Corbin, knows all too well. And these lyrics! And do you remember the nights I called you up? / I was so fucked up, I forgot we were broken up / I still love you, you stupid fuck. I wish I’d written that.

Between Two Mysteries by Mt. Eerie

My novel is set in Seattle, so I had to get something by Phil Elverum in here, a Pacific Northwest legend. And what better for a PNW novel than a song that directly references Twin Peaks, both sonically (with that keyboard part) and lyrically? The town rests in the valley beneath Twin Peaks / Buried in space / What goes up there in the night / In that dark, blurry place? An ongoing theme of Go Help Yourself is the way that Seattle is changing in ways that are beyond the control of Seattleites, dictated from above by the corporate overlords; and yet, just as the body fights back against the mind, just as crows continue to flourish in the cracks of human society, so too will that essence of the PNW live on: And the songs fade, and the singers die / But my heart will not stop thumping / The shapes in the dark still look convincing / So here I am.

I Don’t Love by Have a Nice Life

I like a playlist that has a narrative shape. So here we are approaching the dark night of the soul: I don’t want to live like this anymore / I don’t want to live at all. Corbin’s masochistic/hedonistic embrace of his own misery—the drugs and the binge eating, on one hand, and the manic exercise/self-help regimen on the other—can only go in one direction, and that is toward oblivion. The haunting muddle of this song reflects a muddled mind seeking refuge in nothingness: the layered and indistinct synthesizers, the crunch and fuzz of the drums and bass, the muffled voices drifting like silhouettes in fog. Until suddenly, everything lines up into clear, soaring octaves and harmonies, and the floating voice sings I don’t love / I don’t feel anything / I don’t feel anything where this love should be. I don’t know about Dan Barrett (who sings these lyrics), but in Corbin’s case, the problem is not that he doesn’t love, but that he thinks he doesn’t deserve it.

Second Son of R. by Oathbreaker

Writing a novel is hard, and it should be. How do you expect to connect to your character’s struggle without struggling through the material? So consider this the crisis point for both Corbin and me: The crashing drums, the roaring guitar, the screaming, and then—in a moment of stillness, when everything dies out except the guitar—a slow moment of grief: Your empty house won’t comfort me. In the novel, Corbin’s anger at his mother is easier to feel than sadness, but the anger keeps the house empty, it keeps the plastic on the furniture; in the writing, my desire to produce a good novel, which is (at least in part) a desire to be known, runs up against my fear of being known and of knowing myself. In another breakdown toward the end of the song, the time signature shifts from 4/4 to 6/4, which means that the guitar has sped up while the song has slowed down. There’s an immense tension in this contradiction, the inner crisis only sharpened and focused by the glassy stillness holding it suspended, until finally comes the immense catharsis of total breakdown. I won’t spoil the novel, but in my case, this is the catharsis that came from finally tapping into the part of myself I was avoiding and putting it on the page and realizing that this was where the story was all along. God, what a relief!

Fishing Bird (Empty Gutted in the Evening Breeze) by Grouper

This song is wreathed in tape hiss, an analog warmth, an acknowledgement of music as a material process that includes both the musician and the listener. This intimacy frames the scene: the fishing bird, the fish in the water, the singer speaking directly to them—How long can you hold your breath? / Flash of silver moving away. There’s an intimation of the interconnectedness of things, but our part in it is ambiguous. So it is with Corbin: what’s going on with these crows? It seems they’re fishing for something. Maybe his eyeballs. But is he projecting? Is it his denial of the reality of the body that prevents him from seeing them clearly? He and the crows are involved in some total process; we are all part of the same web, and we ignore this at our peril.

Camargue by Malibu

Malibu is a favorite artist to write to. Her songs have little structure, only patterns left briefly in the sand before the tide comes in again. The best word to describe it, besides “oceanic,” is “sublime,” with all its beautiful and terrifying valences. The sublime allows us to understand something impossible by aesthetically experiencing the impossibility of understanding it. I believe that every novel aims at a moment like this: an understanding that cannot be represented in language but can be presented as the failure of language. So this is the revelation after the crisis, but it’s a revelation that you can’t approach directly. You have to let it envelop you.

Watchlar by Cocteau Twins

A good ending manages to be both an organic continuation of what came before and the beginning of a new cycle. Here, the dreamy singing, synths, and guitar demonstrate continuity, but the clinical electronic beat is a new vibe.

The best endings are like the ending of a concert where the musicians invite the audience onstage to dance: we’ve been enjoying this thing from a distance, but suddenly, there we are, included within its frame.

You could see my novel as a conflict between the body and the mind. Here, having passed through all the contradictions of the mind, we return to the body, as we always must. Hopefully this time with a bit more love for it and what it does for us.

I hope this song returns you to your body; I hope you feel the love. And I hope you enjoyed my playlist.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Daniel Pope is a writer and musician from Seattle. His work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, Gulf Coast Journal, and elsewhere. He currently lives in the UK, where he is a doctoral candidate at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Denise Rose Hansen’s novel Blue Sunset is a lyrical debut both atmospheric and immersive.

Kirkus wrote of the book:

“Hansen’s controlled, poetic prose shines brighter and brighter as Maja’s life and past come fully into view. The quiet but moving climax occurs in a gorgeous, wrenching scene set at the British Library, illuminating a series of parallel motifs and connections between herself and, surprisingly, Percy and Mary Shelley. A lush, atmospheric novella brimming with poetry, pain, and desire.”

In her own words, here is Denise Rose Hansen’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Blue Sunset:

What is the sound of longing? Of taking a leap, which may look more like a fall? The music gathered here was playing in the background at some point when I wrote Blue Sunset. Much of it is instrumental, as too many words are too many words.

The set begins with È stata la mano di Dio by The Fulcanelli Dull Jazz Quartet, named after the Sorrentino film (and Maradona’s controversial handled goal against England in the 1986 World Cup). The nostalgia, the antique elevator energy, the synths, the layered simplicity – that’s quite like the kitsch and longing mood I wanted to condense in the book.

The guiding star here is the 1980s, which is pure melancholia for me, perhaps because I only spent four months in that decade. From the Irish band Operating Theatre – which really was set up as a hybrid theatre company in 1980 – to Yasuaki Shimizu’s perfect 1982 album Kakashi; from vintage-sounding Danish power punk by Iceage to absolutely essential Alice Coltrane, the session ends with the moody Peri Banu vid sjön by Swedish psychedelic ensemble Dungen. It opens their album Häxan, but I always hear it more as a closing.

1
È stata la mano di Dio
The Fulcanelli Dull Jazz Quartet

2
Spring Is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth
Operating Theatre

3
海の上から
Yasuaki Shimizu

4
Why Am I Alive Now?
Anohni

5
Blue Nile
Alice Coltrane

6
Spring Rounds from Rite of Spring
Alice Coltrane

7
Dear Saint Cecilia
Ice Age

8
Rio Babilônia
Jorge Ben Tor

9
No boca do sol
Arthur Verocai

10
Chala Vahi Des
Shye Ben Tzur

11
Orpheus
Ronald Langestraat

12
I’ll Take Care of You
Gil Scott-Heron and Makaya McCraven

13
Trois couleurs: Bleu: Song for the Unification of Europe
Zbigniew Preisner

14
Continuum 1
Nala Sinephro

15
Peri Banu vid sjön
Dungen

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Denise Rose Hansen is a Danish writer and editor who lives in London. The founder of Lolli Editions, she is now an editor at Penguin where she publishes the likes of Shahrnush Parsipur, Ágota Kristóf, and Anne Serre.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Ben Ehrenreich’s book Hold Still is a brilliant elegy to his mother, author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich, told through short stories and journal entries.

Kirkus wrote of the book:

“Ehrenreich is wrestling with the idea of story itself—what it takes to put a life in order, what’s sacrificed when you do so, and whether it’s possible or fair to try. . . . A meditative and wide-ranging response to loss.”

In his own words, here is Ben Ehrenreich’s Book Notes music playlist for his book Hold Still:

In the months following my mother’s death in the fall of 2022, I assigned myself the task of writing a story every day. I did it to keep myself anchored, without any thought of publishing, or even reading them again. I gave myself no further guidelines: it didn’t matter how long they were, whether they were “factual” or “fictional,” or whether they contained any of the narrative elements conventionally regarded as essential to a “story.” All of which opened up the question of what a story is. Hold Still, the book that I later compiled from these efforts, tracks my engagement with that question as much as it does my grief, or the passage of those days.

It helps that when I was writing these stories—often on the bus or on the subway or while walking to or from work—I was almost always listening to music. Most of the songs I’ve chosen here are ones that I was listening to then and that in one way or another informed the stories that I wrote.

1. Duke Ellington, “Single Petal of a Rose”

This track is the subject of a story in Hold Still called “Duke Ellington’s Left Hand.” It’s a short song, deceptively simple, and so gorgeous that it actually hurts to listen to. More than any piece of prose or verse, it helped me to understand how this book might be structured, how I might make things hold together—and even move—in the absence of any traditional narrative supports.

2. Love, “Everybody’s Gotta Live”

“Everybody’s gotta live,” sings Arthur Lee, “and everybody’s gonna die. Everybody’s gotta live, I think you know the reason why.” But I don’t know, Arthur, and I don’t believe that you did either. Probably worth asking nonetheless.

3. Philip Glass, “Metamorphosis I”

Just an immensely powerful piece of music. What do you become when you can no longer be what you always thought you were? What choice do you have but to find out?

4. Patrick Shiroishi, “If Only Heaven Would Give Me Another Ten Years”

For a while I couldn’t listen to anything with lyrics, at least not in any language I understood. The conventional chorus-verse-chorus structures of songs that I had once loved felt insipid and worse than false. I could only listen to songs that had been broken, or that somehow broke through. Like this one.

5. Archie Shepp, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”

I know, I know, this is a bit on the nose, but let the man sing. “Sometime I feel like I’m almost gone,” Shepp hollers, and then repeats an earlier refrain: “A long way from home.”

6. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, “Help, I’m a Rock”

You do what you can, but it happens sometimes that that you become a rock, in which case the only thing to do is scream for help. Except of course that as a rock you cannot scream in any way that will be heard by anyone who might be able to help. Which is how it goes. Don’t overthink it, just scream.

7. Pharoah Sanders “Love Will Find a Way”

Still, I have not yet encountered a darkness so dark that Pharoah Sanders can’t shine some light into. I hope to keep it that way. Enough triumphant love spilled out of his saxophone to save us all, if only we would listen.

8. Darondo, “Didn’t I”

There is always room for the agony of regret, which Darondo appears to have known better than almost anyone.

9. Don Cherry, “Hope”

Hope is a tired, old word, and worse than useless in most contexts, but Don Cherry blows enough ragged meaning into it to convince me we should maybe hold onto it for a little longer. Listen the whole album if you have time.

10. Michael White, “The Land of Spirit and Light (Part 2)”

An early draft of Hold Still included a story that referred explicitly to the music of the insufficiently celebrated jazz violinist Michael White, specifically to listening to it as I walked across the city, “the air suddenly alive with a lunatic autumn clarity.” This was the track I had in mind. The story didn’t make the final cut, but this should tell you all you need to know.

11. Shira Small, “Eternal Life”

Shira Small recorded one album while she was 17 and still in high school, not long after her mother’s death. She had 300 copies printed and then gave up singing and mainly forgot about it. The internet did not. “Ruled by human logic we sometimes confine ourselves to one plane of the universe,” she sings, and sings again, and again, and again. Sing along, it’s catchy.

12. Moondog, “High on a Rocky Ledge”

I don’t know what god of the streaming-service algorithm delivered Moondog to me when I most needed him, but I can repay the gift only by passing it on to you. You know how to thank me.

13. Frank Ocean, “Moon River”

This one gets the briefest of mentions in a story called “A Monster on a Hill.” Louis Armstrong sang it too, and Aretha, and Sarah Vaughan. Also Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra and Ben E. King and perhaps most famously Audrey Hepburn, but no one hit it as mournfully and perfectly as Mr. Frank Ocean.

14. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Ol’ Man River”

This track is also mentioned in the same story. It’s the only song I can remember my mother ever singing, always as a joke, her eyes shining wickedly as she sang it, waiting for you to beg her to stop. It’s really a dreadful song in every way, but Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ version is full-throated and insane and slyly campy enough to almost redeem it.

15. Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, “The Homeless Wanderer”

As a child, Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru was imprisoned by Mussolini’s troops on an otherwise uninhabited island off the coast of Sardinia. As a teenager, she played piano for the emperor of Ethiopia. She became a nun at 21, and died in Jerusalem almost 80 years later. The music she recorded in the meantime sounds like it must have traveled from another world—one containing at least one piano, ten fingers to play it with, entire oceans of melancholy, and a strange, spare beauty powerful enough to burst from one dimension to another.

16. Mohamed Mazouni, “Écoute-moi Camarade”

My mother would not have forgiven me if I did not include at least one song that she could dance to. This one would have made her laugh first, and only then get up out of her chair.

17. The Lijadu Sisters, “Come on Home”

Here’s another one, mama, a little slower, but we’re none of us young anymore.

also at Largehearted Boy:

Ben Ehrenreich’s playlist for his novel Ether

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Ben Ehrenreich is the author of four previous books, most recently, of the New York Times Notable Book, Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time. He has also published The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine, based on his years of reporting from the West Bank, as well as two novels, The Suitors and Ether, which was also published by City Lights.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Will Maclean’s Solace House melds a gothic novel with dark academia brilliantly.

Kirkus wrote of the book:

“Maclean proves to be a master at pacing, creating suspense with ease; nothing is predictable in this novel, least of all the shocking conclusion. His characters are beautifully drawn . . . While the mood is both psychedelic and gothic, with unmistakable Lovecraft-ian overtones, it’s very much anchored in the early 1990s, an era Maclean brings to life flawlessly. Brilliantly written and scary as hell, this is a masterwork of horror fiction. Original, mind-bending, terrifying fun.”

In his own words, here is Will Maclean’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Solace House:

Music is always a huge part of writing for me, and I mostly write with my headphones firmly on. Also, if I’m writing about a particular era, as I have done for both of my books so far, music is vital to accurately capturing the mood of that particular time. I always strive to listen to the music that people were actually listening to then, rather than the music popular memory insists we were all listening to. They’re usually two very different things.

And so, the music I listened to as I wrote my novel Solace House falls into two distinct camps: Music from 1993 and thereabouts, which sums up that time, and music that isn’t from 1993, but I love, and listen to as I write, or as part of my whole being-at-my-desk ritual. I’ve presented that mix of music here.

Solace House is narrated by Alex Lane, a first-year student who can’t go home for various reasons, and so finds himself spending his summer with a bunch of other students as they clear out some properties bought by the university, with the intention of turning them into halls of residence, which is where they discover Solace House and its many secrets.

Solace House is probably best described as a horror story, but if it is, I like to think of it as the kind of horror story that doesn’t stay on the tracks, veering off into other areas – mystery, nostalgia, the esoteric, the deep past, the far future, neolithic monuments, um, the band Queen – all with a side order of magic mushrooms.  You’ll see what I mean when you read it.

Jennie – “Like Jennie” (2025)

To start writing, I listen to something that’s current, exciting and as NOW as you can get, as it jolts me awake and makes me feel connected to the rest of the world. Currently, it’s this. In a month’s time it’ll be something else. I unashamedly love unserious, energetic pop music, and I always have. Don’t bore us, take us to the chorus. Haha! Magic.

The Orb – “Backside Of The Moon (Under Water Deep Space)” (1991)

As Solace House is set in a very specific time period, I needed music from the time that would transport me – and the reader – right back there. The sound of The Orb saturates the first third of Solace House, very much as it saturated that time – If you went out at all during the first few years of the 90s in the UK, you would hear The Orb – in clubs, at parties in people’s houses, at festivals. Clive, the post-grad stoner in Solace House, listens to The Orb constantly. Perhaps uniquely for this kind of thing, The Orb’s music isn’t turgid or boring – their stuff was always strange and playful and incredibly enjoyable. The album this track originates from – Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld – has that fusion of space travel, Englishness, and otherworldly vibes which perfectly encapsulates that era. It was perfect for that time, and perfect for Solace House.

The KLF – “Wichita Lineman Was a Song I Once Heard” (1990)

Another absolutely foundational record from the early 1990s is Chill Out by The KLF. As The KLF often made tongue-in-cheek music, I don’t think people quite appreciated the level of thought and heart and soul they put into things until they were no longer a going concern. Emblematic of all that effort is Chill Out, an album designed for ravers to listen to as they found themselves marooned in rural England after an illegal rave, coming down from whatever drugs they’d taken the night before, surrounded by sheep. It was released in 1990, but I remember that by summer 1993 it seemed everyone had a copy. It’s synonymous with that time in my head.

Ultramarine – “Weird Gear” (1992)

Ultramarine’s first album – Every Man and Woman is a Star – is also synonymous with summer 1993 for me, as my friends played this endlessly. I could have chosen just about any track on this album, but this one is particularly lovely – a spare, naked, beautiful little tune, sung by a man, too, which was a very early 90s thing – men making themselves vulnerable and opening up a bit, exploring their sensitive side. Sadly, that was not to last. All of the above three tracks appear on a fictional mixtape I made for Clive, one of the main characters in the book. I like to do that sort of thing for characters, if it’s important to them – it helps to colour their inner lives. This is especially important in stories which deal with dark subjects, I feel  – if something bad happens to the characters the reader has to feel that bad thing too, as much as possible, so I really like to make the characters as vivid and rich as possible. That way you miss them when they aren’t there anymore.

Woob – “Depart” (1995)

This is a fantastic ambient track that I use when I’m either stuck or I really need to concentrate. It’s a great, great piece of music, and like all the best music, it’s a different mood every time you hear it. Sometimes it sounds desperate and painfully sad, other times it sounds purposeful and driven and determined, like an unsettled spirit. It’s timeless. Paul Frankland, AKA Woob, is one of my favourite artists of all time, I think, and nowhere near as widely known as he should be.

Pye Corner Audio – “Stars Shine Like Eyes” (2016)

This track squarely hits a mood I often find myself looking for – the sound of something from a half-remembered past that’s still vital and unresolved. It sounds like something from the soundtrack to a mid-1970s BBC drama about the paranormal – clearly what they were going for, let’s be honest – and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a propulsive sense of drama to it, like something significant is unfolding. I listen to this sparingly as I don’t want to diminish its charge. This is on the Ghost Box label, who specialize in this kind of hauntological eeriness.

C-Land – “Gone with the Wind” (2021)

This whole album is just great, but this track is my favourite. I love that people are still making fascinating, atmospheric music which takes you to a place you didn’t know you wanted to go, despite people telling us over and over that this doesn’t happen anymore.  I’d argue that it happens now more than it ever used to. Contactee’s Journal is SUCH a great album title, too – a short story in two words. Despite setting two novels (to date!) in the past, I find nostalgia quite suffocating, weirdly, so I’m constantly looking for current, contemporary music I can write to. I love this.

Burial – “Beachfires” (2017)

This is a track like nothing else on earth – a wholly negative space of grey ash, jet-black shadow and absolute absence. A friend of mine said it’s like listening to the end of the world and I can’t really argue with that. I listened to this a lot as I put together the second half of the book, as it has such a disturbing tone, such a sense of tangible threat, but it’s simultaneously so abstract. It sounds like the ultimate state of something.

Queen – “The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke” (1974)

Here we have a track that’s integral to the book, one which the characters discuss and refer to. I was delighted, halfway through writing Solace House, to remember that Queen had done this track, as it was exactly what I was looking for, just absolutely perfect for my purposes within the text. Most of the lyrics are cribbed from the very long poem called “Elimination of a Picture” which Dadd wrote to accompany his painting – the same poem that was a distinct influence on Edwin Flayne’s poetry within the book – and it’s clearly a poem Freddy loved. I also love how absolutely bonkers this track is, how unashamedly artsy and absurd. Freddy Mercury was one of those people who just seemed to enjoy everything life had to offer, and here he is, enjoying Richard Dadd.

Charli XCX – “365” (2024)

This is just a proper banger, especially about one and half minutes in when it Just Absolutely Fucking Goes Off In Your Face. I loved brat, and I find Charli XCX really interesting as an artist. I liked that the whole brat project preserved that spirit of rave and dance which was so key to my formative years. Writing-wise, this – and tracks like it – are a handy defibrillator for when I find myself in a slump. You are overthinking things. Get out of your own way.

Half Man Half Biscuit – “Horror Clowns are Dickheads” (2025)

HMHB are a British institution, and they’re from the Wirral, where I’m from, so I first became aware of them at school, as they were (and still are) local heroes. They’ve morphed over time into a unique sort of 21^st century folk outfit, and their songs are usually a whimsical scourge against pretension, badly-thought-out art, and life’s many timewasters. Their targets are wide-ranging and deserved, and here they have a pop at contrived Scary Clowns, in their trademark way, which marries highbrow and lowbrow commentary, and is always hilarious. I love them and I always have. Tracks like this are a huge palate cleanser at the end of a working day, when you start to take yourself too seriously.

Lady Gaga – “Government Hooker” (2011)

Another palate cleanser for the end of a day. For me, there have only ever been two top-tier pop stars – Marc Bolan and Lady Gaga – and I love Gaga so much. She’s the antidote to unexceptional pop music, and she dresses like a pansexual cyborg chandelier from another dimension, which is precisely what I want from a pop star. And the music’s great too.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Will Maclean is a screenwriter whose first novel, The Apparition Phase, was shortlisted for The McKitterick Prize. Solace House is his American debut. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Lance Olsen’s reimagining of the life of artist Henry Darger, An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies, is at once both tragic and transcendent.

Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:

“Olsen (Absolute Away) gives voice to outsider artist Henry Darger, who died in 1973, in this admirable narrative…It’s an arresting portrait of a troubled figure.”

In his own words, here is Lance Olsen’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies:

Henry Darger (1892-1973) is one of those fascinating, secret-handshake, so-called outsider artists. I’m always startled and made glad how many small pockets of people know about him these days. I’m always startled and forlorn nobody knew about him when he was alive, saw a single one of his 350 unearthly collages, read a word of his extravagantly long novels (one measures 15,145 pages) until he was on his deathbed.

For decades Henry spent his days as a custodian mopping floors at various Chicago hospitals, his nights writing and making art that rendered the horrific adventures of the Vivian Girls, whose mission it was to rescue a smashed world filled with child slaves.

Because he left few traces behind besides his work, extraordinarily little is known for sure about his life, except that he existed hand to mouth for most of his 81 years in a cluttered 17.6-by-13.9 room at a boardinghouse, living as near to a solitary, repetitive existence as possible—except in his fiery imagination.

Henry simply wasn’t interested in attention, even less so in fame.

He created for no one save himself—and to save himself.

So how can you not want to write about somebody like that, spend a few years trying to speculate about and empathize with such a singular mind?

That curiosity and compulsion caught me when I stumbled across the first major comprehensive exhibition of his work at the American Folk Art Museum in New York in 1997. Twenty-seven years later I wrote the first line of my novel An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies: “Sometimes in the morning I remember thinking: it is the sorrow of leaving a place you’re not done loving yet.”

It’s a novel interested in exploring Henry’s radical interiority, his non-sequitur imagination, through an intensely subjective first-person point of view. At its heart beat questions about for whom we really create at the end of the day; about reading as problem; about the importance of serious art as a hospital for soothing hurt rather than a business privileging quantity over quality.

Thirteen chapters. A song around each:

“Lost Girls” (Tilly and the Wall, 2006)

Based on Henry’s Vivian Girls, this one provides one of the epigraphs for An Inventory—

And your eyes are like screaming
And since there is no end, and no beginning
You will run
You will run
You will run

—and collars the atrocity exhibition called Henry’s childhood, when his disabled father had his eight-year-old son institutionalized at the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children for masturbating too much.

One of the fun research corners for me was discovering how many songs have been written about him by everybody from Natalie Merchant (“The Ballad of Henry Darger,” 2001) and the German indie band Get Well Soon (“Just Like Henry Darger,” 2012) to the noise-rock Lungbutter (“Henry Darger,” 2019) and Philippe Cohen Solal and Mike Lindsay’s concept album, OUTSIDER (2021), whose lyrics are appropriated from Henry’s writing.

“Another Brick in the Wall” (Pink Floyd, 1979)

At the asylum, he suffered acute negligence, beatings, and quite possibly rape at the hands of both the staff and his fellow inmates. Because of Illinois’s overcrowded prison system, adult criminals were housed with the children. Once you were institutionalized, the thinking at the time went, you would never leave. They were all just bricks in the wall.

“Fast Car” (Tracy Chapman, 1988)

So almost from the minute he arrived, Henry, being Henry, began planning his escape. It took him six years and four attempts before he succeeded, at which point he walked the 165 miles back to Chicago, no fast cars in sight. Starting from zero, he had nothing to lose.

“Not Strong Enough” (boygenius, 2023)

It’s difficult to tell for certain from the shadows he left in his wake, but it’s possible Henry was autistic, certain he lived most of his life as an impoverished misanthrope, and probable he was gay in a culture whose erasure of such identities was very close to absolute—even as he attended Catholic mass several times a day to beat down the fiends inside him, packed his room with religious memorabilia, and carried on a lifelong wrestling match with his furious god, because he didn’t know why he was the way he was.

“I Want You (Fever)” (Momma, 2025)

A year or two after he returned to Chicago, Henry met a man named William Schloeder (whom Henry sometimes referred to in his writings as “Willie,” sometimes as “Whillie), a nightguard thirteen years older than he, and entered a several-decades-long relationship with him. It’s conceivable Schloeder and he were just friends. It’s likely they were lovers. Schloeder lived with his mother and sisters, and seems to have tried to distance himself geographically from Henry more and more, finally moving with one sister to San Antonio. Early on, Henry went so far as to look into the possibility of adopting a child that Schloeder and he could raise together.

“Baby” (Warpaint, 2010)

Although they never saw each other again after Schloeder left Chicago, Henry never stopped thinking about him, was crushed when Schloeder’s sister wrote him a brief postcard to let him know his friend/lover had died of the flu. Henry wrote Schloeder into his novels, into the elaborate mythology he created, so Schloeder could continue to live as a hero in the book of Henry’s fantasy.

“Lola” (The Kinks, 1970)

Sexuality in Henry’s work was mystery and polyphony. Although he calls his protagonists the Vivian Girls, constructs them by collaging cartoons of girls out of magazines, comic books, tracts about the Civil War, and so on, he also lovingly freehands a penis on each.

“Bookends” (Simon & Garfunkel, 1968)

Which is to say the Vivian Girls were also stand-ins for Henry, for the injuries he abided as a child, hermaphroditic projections of the Henry that wanted to emancipate the child slaves of the world, which is to say emancipate himself, over and over again, for he learned trauma never follows a neat linear narrative arc. Trauma is perpetual bramble, tangle, fright, and briefly won fights. Your memories—they’re all that’s left you.

“My Body is Falling Apart” (Daisy, 1992)

Having no access to health care, Henry’s body slowly, painfully undid itself. By the time he was in his forties, he had pulled most of his teeth. He faced chronic stomach distress, chronic leg misery, chronic eye misery, increasing senility. He was bedridden for months when hit by a car in 1969, only to recover long enough to slip on the ice at the bottom of his boardinghouse steps. His landlords, the Lerners, helped him move into a nearby Catholic nursing home operated by the Little Sisters of the Poor.

“When It’s Cold Outside I’d Like to Die” (Moby, sung by Jacob Lusk, 2026)

What I especially love about this song is Lusk’s voice, which captures the stunning, eerie altérité of pure Henryness. When his neighor, David Berglund, was cleaning out Henry’s apartment for the Lerners after he had been moved to the Little Sisters of the Poor, he stumbled across Henry’s collages and writing in a trunk and stacked here and there. On a visit to the nursing home the next day, David told Henry about his find. “Throw it all away,” Henry responded. “Too late now.” He died the day after his eighty-first birthday and was buried in a pauper’s grave. Now an artwork by him sells for upwards of $800,000.

“My Way” (Frank Sinatra, 1969)

In my eyes what’s beautiful and grievous about Henry was his unwillingness to bend. He was a recluse. He was a grouch. He was hurt terribly by the world. He was continuous ache and sorrow. He made his art for an audience of one—maybe two, if he showed any of it to William Schloeder. He had no use for the opinion of others. He followed his own rhythms. And it broke him. His isn’t the story of transcendence, recovery, resolution, except as Kafka might have imagined it.

“Heroes” (David Bowie, German version 1977)

Here let us pay homage to Henry’s ancestry. His father, a tailer, was a German immigrant from Meldorf, a town in western Schleswig-Holstein. His mother, who died giving birth when Henry was four, was born in Wisconsin. Henry always told people he had been born and raised in São Paulo because he thought that sounded more enigmatic and stylish. In his room late at night, he would sometimes sing to himself in a madeup version of Portuguese. He was a kind of a hero. Nur diesen Tag. But just for one day.

“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” (Monty Python, sung by Eric Idle 1970)

Because only Eric Idle can be happy hanging on a cross.

also at Largehearted Boy:

Lance Olsen’s playlist for his novel Always Crashing in the Same Car

Lance Olsen’s playlist for his novel Skin Elegies

Lance Olsen’s playlist for his novel My Red Heaven

Lance Olsen’s playlist for his novel Dreamlives of Debris

Lance Olsen’s playlist for his book [[ there. ]]

Lance Olsen’s playlist for his novel Theories of Forgetting

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Lance Olsen is author of more than 30 books of and about innovative writing, including, most recently, the novels Absolute Away (Dzanc, 2024) and Always Crashing in the Same Car: A Novel After David Bowie (FC2, 2023). He is a Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency, two-time N.E.A. Fellowship, Connecticut Artistic Excellence Grant, and a Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a Fulbright Scholar.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Lee Bains’s poetry collection Work Lunch embeds the reader into the ever-evolving American South.

Kiese Laymon wrote of the book:

“Work Lunch is not simply the best of what poetry can be; it is proof that blues, soul and some god somewhere are real. This is what writing, witnessing with your senses, and giving a fuck can do. Lee Bains is one of them ones, y’all.”

In his own words, here is Lee Bains’s Book Notes music playlist for his poetry collection Work Lunch:

As somebody who has written songs for a long time, I’ve established the rule that, when I’m actively writing song lyrics, I very consciously stay away from listening to already existing music. I either listen to the piece of music that the lyrics will accompany, or just sit with silence. (For this reason, I’m usually way out of the loop with new albums by the time I finish whatever new album I’m working on!)

So, it’s kind of nice that, when I’m writing poetry or prose, I can listen to music! I love listening to music when I write, and the right piece or album can bring me to a much more inspired, connected, focused place. But, while writing, I largely stay away from any music with singing, and, when I do dip into sung music, it’s choral (and often in an unfamiliar language), so that I don’t register what they’re singing as words so much as sounds. I love all kinds of instrumental and choral music, and writing is usually the time I get to spend with it most.

Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 85-92
The mystery and murkiness of this record is captivating, the melodies truly beautiful, and the beats mesmerizing. I struggle to think of any music I’ve heard where the familiarly distorted, warbling, dark sounds of cheap recording equipment and gear is used to such masterful effect. The sound of it all erases the lines between lo-fi and hi-fi, art music and dance music.

Julianna Barwick – Healing Is a Miracle
This album fit like a blanket of grace during 2020, as America was suffering from the pandemic, austerity, unaccountable white-supremacy, state violence, and social polarization. I don’t think I could name a single word that Barwick sings on this album, but I can tell you what it sounds like: a return home, a washing of the wounds, a girding of the loins, and easing back out there to fight another day.

The Chieftains – IV
There’s a brooding, rumbling energy to this record that is hard to find elsewhere. These ancient tunes feel immediate and urgent. When it’s time to strap into this one, the writing is fixing to get very focused and very serious.

Miles Davis – In a Silent Way
I could make this whole list into nothing but Miles records, but I don’t think any album can settle me into night-time writing like this one. There is a quivering intensity to the record and the way the band softly leans together. You can hear them listening. Nobody will ever make funk whisper like Miles Davis.

Brian Eno – Music for Airports
A constant fount of inspiration, mystery and beauty. It’s funny to think about it playing over loudspeakers in airports, as he apparently intended, because it’s so tender, reflective, and artful. Even if I am in as frantic a place as a busy airport, though, listening to this on headphones can give me a sense of solitude and focus.

Charlie Haden & Hank Jones – Come Sunday
If The Word is an ebullient altar call in a pulsating Pentecostal congregation, this record is a slow quiet Methodist gathering to worship in a small town. You can hear the handshakes and hugged necks, the sun lazily peeking through stained glass.

J Dilla – Donuts
These tracks crackle with a life and depth that are endlessly inspiring. Much has been made of J Dilla’s way of instilling a deeply human rhythmic feel in his beats (“Dilla time”), but he was also a great artist in his layering of sounds and textures, creating evocative pastiches in every track.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Blacknuss
It’s hard to think of a musician who marries soul with technical brilliance and singularity of voice more than Rahsaan Roland Kirk. I think that shines through particularly brightly on this record, since so many of the tunes are deeply familiar to me, yet rendered here in a way that seems impossibly new.

Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis – Deface the Currency
I’ve been listening to the rhythm section of this band since I was a teenager, and Canty and Lally’s propulsive, writhing grooves are completely unmistakable. They are the unified heaving crowd underneath the streaming flares and billowing teargas of Lewis and Pirog’s flashing lines. It is the sound of front-line American democracy.

Aine O’Dwyer – Music For Church Cleaners
These recordings are so incredibly intimate, secret, stolen. The creaking organ bench, the muted sounds of what might be traffic or air-conditioning, the whispers of custodial workers, all blending with the haunting, ancient, contemporary drones of O’Dwyer’s organ. They beg reflection and noticing.

Scientist – Scientific Dub
This record drags back time and thrusts into the future, drills into the earth and rockets into the cosmos. What a mesmerizing, hard-grooving movement through space and time.

Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan – Ragas
There’s something so sprawling, deep and energetic about this album, and the two masters’ performances. For me, it can inspire a type of constant, fluid writing that feels like unspooling a thread.

William Tyler – Modern Country
This beautiful, meandering, textured album summons images of driving through the South, marrying the backseat experiences of an 80s/90s childhood with the contemporary experience of those rare blissful lazy sunny drives on tour.

Hildegard Von Bingen – Heavenly Revelations
The first line of the first song on this compilation of compositions by the genius Medieval Christian mystic, theologian, artist, and proto-feminist Hildegard Von Bingen, “O Euchari in leta via” is maybe the most immediately holy melody I’ve ever heard. Like it was sent down direct. When I’m in the right spot, it’s instant transportation.

The Word – The Word
This album has hummed in my spirit for over 25 years now, the pleading and exclaiming sounds of gospel music rendered without a single human voice. Truly a joyful noise.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Lee Bains is a poet and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama, who since 2012 has released four studio albums of what Rolling Stone calls “Southern gospel punk,” and will publish his debut poetry collection Work Lunch with Hub City Press in 2026 after several of the poems were first published by the New Yorker in 2021. A cult songwriter forged in independent scenes, his work has carried him all over the U.S. and Europe, has received acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, and has led him to be a supporting musician for other artists like Lonnie Holley, Moor Mother, and Algiers. Lee has lent his work to support striking coal miners, immigrants’ rights groups, abortion funds, and anti-racism organizations. He has performed and read at Emory University, the University of Mississippi, Tulane University, Auburn University, and The Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden). He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works between tours as a handyman.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

The stories in P.J. Blumenthal’s collection Self Portraits are wonderfully diverse and fascinating.

Elfriede Jelinek wrote of the book:

“When you book Blumenthal, your trip is fully guaranteed. Adventure galore in the unknown known: first-class entertainment, funny and serious-just as it should be. Book now!”

In his own words, here is P.J. Blumenthal’s Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Self Portraits:

Self Portraits is a collection of 23 stories, all quite diverse and strung together like a string of beads. The introductory piece is like the “guru” bead on a Buddhist mala, the “pappas” on a Greek komboloi, the “imame” on an Islamic tesbih or the “cruciform” bead on a Catholic rosary. It serves as a point of departure and unification for these diverse portraits, these portraits of selves.

During the act of writing, I never listen to music. External music is a distraction for me. My ears need to concentrate on an inner music: the music of language, of vowels and consonants which I struggle to fit together in my search for verbal harmonies and creative dissonance.

Four of my stories do however refer to music explicitly:

“Laura” – a reminiscence about a young woman whose name, Laura, is an homage to a song composed in 1944 by David Raksin for a film called…what else?: “Laura”. That melody is at the heart of my story, quietly haunting, and evoking painful longing.

In my story “The Murals”, a narrator relates what he experiences after stepping into a street mural and entering – how shall I put it? – a parallel reality. During his explorations of the city he has stumbled into, he hears music somewhere, but it is a music he has difficulty describing because it is very unlike the music we are familiar with on our side of the mural.

“The Other Side of the River” – here the narrator, after crossing a bridge over a river, describes a part of town tourists rarely visit. There, to his surprise, he encounters old friends – and someone who seems to be an old lover. In the flat of this – nearly forgotten – lover, the narrator finds a musical instrument leaning against an easy chair he has sat down on. It resembles a mandolin but is somehow different. Moreover, the tuning is unknown to him. He picks it up and begins playing. Soon, the narrator and his old lover are singing together – in a language unrelated to the one the narrator had been using before he crossed the river. For the reader’s sake, the narrator translates the lyrics into English.

“The Museum of Victimology” – In this story, the Curator of the Museum of Victimology guides a visitor through the rooms of the museum. From time to time, the Curator’s explanations and descriptions are interrupted by music which here has the function of delineating an entr’acte before the action continues. We are never informed about the nature of this music. We only know that it is an integral part of the narration and the museum.

My Playlist

“Laura” – theme of the film of the same name (see above). “Everybody’s talking about Laura” was the sales blurb in 1944 when this Otto Preminger film hit the theaters. It’s a thriller, a film noir. Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews, is investigating the murder of the attractive young advertising executive, Laura Hunt. McPherson’s investigation brings him in contact with various people who have known – and loved – Laura Hunt. That wistful, haunting melody, composed by David Raksin is heard continually as a Leitmotif and adds to the suspenseful ending…

“Ten Cents a Dance” – sung by Ruth Etting tells the sad story of a “lady teacher” who needs to earn extra money as a for-purchase dance partner in a dance hall in 1930 (at the beginning of the Depression). Her melancholy fate carried through this sad song echoes in my inner ear frequently and finds its way into stories.

“Casta Diva”, an aria from Bellini’s Norma – sung by Maria Callas – In this scene the priestess Norma is praying to the moon goddess, a chaste goddess, in the hopes of averting a war between Celts and Romans. Her voice is powerful, her yearning fervent and convincing, the melody passionately lyric. This is a state similar to one I experience when I enter that realm where new words are born.

“Waltz in C# minor” Frédéric Chopin – a light and contemplative piece by one of my favorite composers. Eliot thought Chopin should be reborn in intimate company. This complex mixture of pensiveness and playful scampering is also a part of my mood when I write. I am sure I have listened to this waltz hundreds of times.

“Someone to watch over me” – George and Ira Gershwin – from the musical “Oh Kay” from 1926. I’ve never heard Gertrude Lawrence’s version from the original Broadway production, but I’m sure it was hypnotic. She was a great performer. The song evokes a mood that frequently sweeps through me – a part of the yearning that accompanies the writing process.

“Ruhe sanft mein holdes Leben“ – sung by Beverly Sills and the London Symphony Orchestra – from Mozart’s unfinished opera “Zaide”, composed when he was 23. The melody is transcendent and has accompanied me many years of my life. Sometimes I catch myself singing that melody and sometimes I play it from memory on the flute, the mandolin and the chromatic harmonica.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

P.J. Blumenthal is an American writer living in Munich, Germany. He is the author of a nonfiction book on feral man, Kaspar Hausers Geschwister (Kaspar Hauser’s Siblings), as well as a German-language blog, “Der Sprachbloggeur.” Three volumes of his poetry have appeared in the USA so far: A Lusty Romance, Poems for Readers and Slow Train to Cincinnati.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

The stories in Mallory Smart’s collection Book of David masterfully unearth the darknesses found in the American Midwest.

Eric Larocca wrote of the book:

“Every reader who peers into the pitch-black maw of Book of David unwittingly surrenders and bears witness to a gospel of cruelty engraved in viciousness, darkness, and unrelenting rot. Bewildering and utterly breathtaking…”

In her own words, here is Mallory Smart’s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Book of David:

I’ve been calling Book of David Midwest rot instead of Midwest horror. There are basements, highways, dead friends, old technology, local legends, bad weather, and people who stick around longer than they probably should. There’s also Dave. He keeps showing up.

This isn’t exactly a soundtrack to the book. Some of these songs were around while I was writing it. Some feel like the Midwest I know. Some remind me of people I haven’t seen in years. Some just sound like something bad is about to happen.

Defiance, Ohio — “You Are Loved”

Defiance, Ohio sounds like basements to me. Not creepy basements. The basements where you ended up when you were young because nobody had enough money to go anywhere and there was usually an old couch down there.

There are people you spend so much time with growing up that you don’t realize you’re developing rituals. You sit in the same places. Tell the same stories. Nobody schedules any of this. It just happens.

Then you get older and keeping those people in your life becomes actual work. Somebody moves. Somebody gets married. Somebody has a kid. Suddenly you’re picking a Saturday three weeks from now for something that used to happen because it was Saturday and everyone was around.

“You Are Loved” gets at the sadness of that without making it completely depressing.

Broken Social Scene — “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl”

There are people I knew as teenagers who are still teenagers when I think about them. I know they’re somewhere being adults now, but that isn’t the person who lives in my head.

“Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” has always felt a little unsettling to me for that reason. Nostalgia gets strange when you stay inside it too long. Eventually you’re remembering your memory of someone.

Steve Miller Band — “The Joker”

“The Joker” matters inside Book of David. I don’t really want to say why.

I’m fascinated by the way a song can stop belonging to the person who made it and start belonging to somebody you knew. Music is particularly good at haunting people because you don’t get much say in when you hear it. You can throw away an object. You can stop going somewhere. You have very little control over what starts playing while you’re standing in a Walgreens.

Smashing Pumpkins — “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, so Smashing Pumpkins was inevitable.

I thought about picking “1979,” but that feels almost too easy. “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” feels closer to the Midwest I actually know.

My Midwest isn’t endless cornfields. It’s strip malls and subdivisions and parking lots and highways. It’s being close enough to Chicago that Chicago is always there, but far enough away that you’re still going home at the end of the night.

When I was younger, there was always this idea that something more interesting was happening somewhere else. Sometimes that somewhere else was only twenty miles away. You could drive there. You could move there. You could become whatever version of yourself you imagined existed there.

The suburbs are strange because they’re designed around movement. Roads everywhere. Highways everywhere. Cars everywhere. Everyone can theoretically leave.

Then you grow up and realize how many people stayed.

That contradiction feels like the Midwest to me. Restlessness mixed with an incredible ability to remain exactly where you are.

Sufjan Stevens — “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”

I grew up around Chicago, where John Wayne Gacy is part of the cultural memory whether you want him to be or not.

What has always disturbed me most is how ordinary everything around him looked. A suburban house. A neighborhood. People next door.

Sufjan Stevens makes the song quiet when the subject seems like it should demand noise. I think that makes it worse.

I’ve never needed horror to happen somewhere gothic. Give me a normal house with something wrong inside it.

Frank Turner — “Polaroid Picture”

A photograph is a strange attempt at preservation. Here is proof everyone stood together once. Here is what you looked like before you knew what happened next.

I have a strange attachment to dead technology and physical things that outlive whatever they were supposed to preserve.

Sometimes the object survives the relationship.

Sometimes it survives the person.

Echo & the Bunnymen — “The Killing Moon”

Some songs already sound haunted.

“The Killing Moon” has this sense that whatever is going to happen has already been decided and everyone else is just catching up. I like horror that works that way too. Nothing has happened yet, but you already know the night isn’t going to end the way everyone expected.

Morrissey — “Ouija Board, Ouija Board”

One of my favorite things about ghost stories is how quickly the supernatural becomes inconvenient.

Everyone desperately wants proof of life after death until a dead person actually starts bothering them.

“Ouija Board, Ouija Board” is spooky, melodramatic and a little absurd. I assume the dead would still be annoying too.

Donovan — “Season of the Witch”

I like horror most before I know exactly what’s wrong.

The room looks the same. Everyone is acting normally. Something has shifted, but nobody can tell you what.

“Season of the Witch” lives in that moment. It doesn’t explain itself, and I don’t want it to.

Violent Femmes — “Country Death Song”

If someone asked me for one song that sounds like Midwest rot, I might give them “Country Death Song.”

The Violent Femmes are from Milwaukee, but it’s more than geography. The song feels like something somebody heard from somebody who heard it from somebody else. By the time it reaches you, everything terrible has already happened.

That’s how local legends worked when I was growing up. A road had a story. A bridge had a story. A house had a story. Somebody knew somebody who knew what happened there.

The details changed depending on who told it.

That was part of the fun.

I’m interested in the life a story develops after the actual event is over. Maybe there was a real person at the center once. For a while people remember the person. Then they remember what happened to them. Eventually people who never knew them are telling the story too.

The Midwest is particularly good at this. There are places where you can drive past an ordinary patch of road and somebody in the car will tell you not to stop there. Ask why and suddenly you’re hearing about something that supposedly happened thirty years ago.

Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way.

The story survived either way.

Lana Del Rey — “Tulsa Jesus Freak”

I’ve always been interested in the point where devotion to an idea turns into devotion to a person. America is particularly good at blurring those lines. Religion becomes celebrity. Celebrity becomes mythology. A person becomes a symbol people can use for whatever they need.

“Tulsa Jesus Freak” has that strange combination of devotion, desire and American geography.

Even the title sounds like somebody you’ve heard stories about but never actually met.

Vera Sola — “The Cage”

This is the song I keep playing now.

I started listening to it constantly around the time Book of David stopped feeling like something I’d been working on and started feeling like something that was actually going to exist outside my computer. I don’t know why this became the song. It just did.

Most of the songs on this playlist remind me of something that already happened. “The Cage” is different. Whatever memory I’m eventually going to associate with it is happening right now.

Ten years from now, I’ll probably hear it and remember this period of my life.

I have no idea what part.

Ramshackle Glory — “Bitter Old Man”

Everybody knows some version of the guy in “Bitter Old Man.”

He’s somebody’s friend. Somebody’s ex. Somebody you used to see constantly and now only hear about when something happens.

I like characters who’ve had enough time to disappoint themselves. Book of David has a few.

Johnny Cash — “The Man Comes Around”

This had to be last.

“The Man Comes Around” sounds like an ending before it even starts. Cash pulls from Revelation and doesn’t have to do much to make it frightening. Horsemen. Judgment. Death. The end of everything.

I love the distance between apocalyptic imagery and the way people actually experience catastrophe. The world might be ending, but somebody still needs gas. Somebody’s phone is dying. Somebody is pissed off about something that stopped mattering an hour ago. People don’t suddenly understand the significance of the moment just because it’s significant.

Book of David starts with small things too. Friends. Roads. Basements. Old objects. Stories people tell each other.

Then things get worse.

Johnny Cash can take it from there.

also at Largehearted Boy:

Mallory Smart’s playlist for her novel I Keep My Visions to Myself

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Mallory Smart is a Chicago-based writer, editor-in-chief of Maudlin House, and podcast host.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Adam Wilson’s Fail Sons is one of the year’s funniest and heartfelt novels, the brotherly road trip story (accompanied by their cryonically-preserved (and thawing) father you didn’t know you have to read.

Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:

“Wilson hits all the right notes in this dynamic dark comedy about grief and hope. Readers will enjoy the ride.”

In his own words, here is Adam Wilson’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Fail Sons:

Scott Platt, the narrator of Fail Sons, is an unemployed forty-year-old Brooklynite who spent fifteen years editing the culture section at a glossy magazine before the decline of print journalism ended his career. In other words, he’s a man with opinions about music. You will find those opinions scattered throughout the novel—Scott opines on Pavement, Taylor Swift, and all points in between. He wonders why Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler” would play in a casino since it encourages prudence, and he makes a case for Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” being the greatest pop song of the twenty-first century. He worries that recommendation algorithms have made guys like him obsolete (his wife reassures him he was already obsolete.) 

As Scott’s takes on these songs appear in the book, I thought I’d use this space to discuss some that don’t, but that do feel relevant to it, both personally and thematically. Fail Sons is a book about aging and mortality; fathers, sons, and brothers; failure and grief. These songs have guided my understanding of these subjects as I’ve dealt with them in both my writing and my life.

Drive-By Truckers – “Outfit”

I didn’t cry for roughly a decade. Then I switched from Prozac to Wellbutrin, and proceeded to weep at every father/son scene in every movie ever made. A particular one that gets me is Alec Baldwin teaching his son, Dildo, to tie a tie in the Farrelly Brothers classic, Outside Providence.

Listening to music can be a very emotional for me, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t make me tear up like films do. There are exactly two exceptions, and “Outfit” is one of them. Actually, there are three exceptions if you count Bruce Springsteen’s spoken intro to “The River” on Live 1975-85, an anecdote about Bruce, his dad, and the Vietnam War that I sometimes listen to while walking the Prospect Park loop; if you see a middle-aged bald man crying into his hands as he stumbles down the track, wave hello! (that live version of “The River” is pretty great too.)

Jason Isbell wrote “Outfit” at twenty-two after being invited to join Drive-by Truckers. In it, he sings from the perspective of his own dad—a house painter—giving advice to his son before he heads out on tour. The empathy with which Isbell inhabits his father’s perspective elevates what might feel like a gimmick into something profoundly moving, the rust belt response to Springsteen’s “Independence Day” we didn’t we know we needed. The narrator counsels young Jason to use common sense (“steer clear of the needle”) and remember his roots (“don’t sing with a fake British accent.”) He describes his own abandoned dreams of economic mobility, underlined by his hopes for a bigger life for his son. The kicker cues the waterworks: “Don’t tell them you’re bigger than Jesus…don’t give it away.”

Bruce Springsteen – “Highway Patrolman”

I still haven’t watched that Springsteen biopic with the guy from The Bear, and Nebraska is not even in my top five Bruce records, but I did read Warren Zanes’ fantastic book that inspired the movie, and I do love some songs from that album. My favorite is “Highway Patrolman,” a devastating ballad about siblings and mercy. A guy kills someone in a bar fight, and his brother—a cop—chases him to the Canadian border, only to let him go. The song ends with the narrator watching his brother’s taillights recede into darkness. It reminds me of Andre Dubus’s short story, “A Father’s Story,” in which a devout Catholic helps his daughter dispose of a body, an act the narrator justifies to God by explaining that since God never had a daughter, only a son, He has no right to judge.

Michael Ian Cummings – “Oldest Troubles”

I’ve been listening to Michael’s music since we were teenagers in suburban Massachusetts, and this title track from his first solo EP is my favorite thing he’s ever done. What the singer’s “oldest troubles” are is never specified—all we know is that he must face them—and the lack of specificity makes the song feel universal. Like Fail Sons, its theme is early onset middle-age (In Fail Sons, Scott prefers to call it “the slow denouement of youth”) and how alienating it can be when the rest of your cohort seems to have advanced in their lives and careers in ways that you haven’t. “Work is hard if you hate it,” may be one of the great opening lines of all-time. 

Joni Mitchell – “Little Green”

There’s a moment in every music fan’s life when they must face the fact that everyone loves Blue—it is not yours alone—and that, in fact, everyone else’s favorite song on itis “A Case of You” too.  But you know what else is a perfect song? Well, all of them, but especially “Little Green.” The line “child with a child pretending” used to repeat in my head when I’d push my older son’s stroller around Brooklyn. I was thirty-six when he was born, and like Scott in Fail Sons, I was emerging from a rather protracted adolescence. In the old days, a man might have been to war and back by that age! In some sense, Fail Sons is a book about Millennials having to accept that we’re no longer children pretending to be adults—we’re just adults now, full stop.  

Pinegrove – “Old Friends”

Apparently the theme of this playlist is songs that destroy me. “Old Friends” does it in a single line: “I saw Leah on the bus a few months ago/I saw some old friends at her funeral.” What an incredible distillation of the swiftness and brutality of time!

The years I spent writing Fail Sons involved a not insignificant measure of grief, including the sudden and unexpected passing of my dear friend, Bret. I always associate this band with him because of a photo in which he and I are jamming out a different Pinegrove song, “Angelina,” at a dingy practice space in Gowanus. I’m on guitar, Bret is on drums, and I can tell what we’re playing because there’s a capo on the sixth fret and my fingers are formed in a C add 9 chord. That photo hung framed above my desk while I was writing the book.

Prince – “Little Red Corvette”

When children are very young they have to listen to the music you choose. Later, they develop their own tastes, and car rides become occasions for the Encanto and K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtracks. I was in a big Prince phase when my older son was a toddler, and he loved this song. We spent some long mornings listening to it on repeat, and I’ll forever associate it with the specific joy of watching someone who has only just learned to walk try to dance. Fail Sons is a death-haunted book—it’s literally about two guys driving around with their dad’s corpse—but it is also, I hope, a book that comes down on the side of life. Nothing brings both the fragility and beauty of human existence into stark relief like having children does, and few things feel more emblematic of that dichotomy than watching a toddler dance to an 80s pop song about the fleeting thrill of a one-night stand while trying not to fall on his diaper-cushioned butt. 

Pen Pal – “All the Lights” & “Here With You”

Before he passed, Bret and I, along with my wife, Sarah, made an album together. This was during the pandemic, and the way we recorded it is that Sarah and I would send tracks back and forth with Bret from our respective lockdowns. The project became a lifeline during those bleak months. As a musician, I’m a hobbyist at best, and I was lucky to make music with this much more talented and accomplished duo. These are the last two songs on the record, and my favorites. “All the Lights” is a composition of Bret’s to which I added lyrics—it’s about returning to New York after being gone. “Here With You”  is a love song I wrote for Sarah, and that she sings beautifully, a song about reaching a point in life when staying home to eat pad thai and watch Top Chef with the person you love is more enjoyable than partying. If Scott learns anything in Fail Sons, he learns this.   

Silver Jews – “The Wild Kindness”

A few years ago, I got the lyrics “shine out in the wild kindness” tattooed on my thigh in memory of Bret, who was a huge Silver Jews fan. I gave Scott, in Fail Sons, the same tattoo. David Berman’s lyrics can be elliptical, and I’m not totally sure what he means by the line. But I like the idea of a wild kindness; I imagine that, like wild blueberries, it is more fibrous and intense than the cultivated kind.

Paul Simon – “St. Judy’s Comet” & “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War”

When my second son couldn’t sleep at night, I’d sing two songs to him in his crib: The Grateful Dead’s “Ripple” and Paul Simon’s “St. Judy’s Comet,” which, itself, is a song about singing to a child at bedtime: “If I can’t sing my boy to sleep, well it makes your famous daddy look so dumb.” Fail Sons is, in part, about becoming a father, and the challenge of adjusting to that new life role. I learned this song from my old roommate, Jordan, who used to play and sing a gorgeous cover of it when we lived together in Austin in our early twenties. This summer, Jordan and I went to see Paul Simon play at Forrest Hills Stadium in Queens, where Simon grew up—a full circle moment for both him and us. Simon did not play “St Judy’s Comet”, but he played another favorite deep cut from Hearts and Bones, “Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War,” a crushingly beautiful song about the painter and his wife dancing naked in a hotel room to 1950s doo-wop. Another full circle moment: Jordan told me that he now sings “St. Judy’s Comet” at bedtime to his own young son.

Island Boy – “Ashes”

I met Jordan and another friend, Jes, during my junior year abroad in Australia. They both went to Columbia, and I’m not sure I would have ended up in New York if I hadn’t visited them there the following year and fallen in love with the city. On that visit I met Richard Hunter Rivera, who was Jes’s boyfriend at the time, and is now her husband. In 2014, he released a reverb-soaked Caribbean dream pop record called Basic Instincts under the moniker Island Boy that I’ve had in heavy rotation for more than a decade—Richard even performed songs from it at my wedding. There’s something very calming to me about his music, and I like to listen to it when I’m overstimulated, which was pretty much all the time while I was trying to write Fail Sons in a New York apartment as two energetic boys bounced off the furniture. I recommend playing it after one gin and tonic and half of a 5mg THC gummy, which is my ideal combination of substances these days.

Yo La Tengo – “Everyday”

I never used to write to music, but while working on Fail Sons I made an effort to wake before sunrise and work for a bit before my kids got up. I wasn’t always successful at getting myself to do this, but on the days that I did, I always put on Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out to set the mood. To me this album is the sound of pre-dawn, a specific shade of darkness that I wanted to capture. It’s the sound of two guys in a car on an empty highway in the dead of night.

Rilo Kiley – “A Better Son/Daughter”  

This is the other song that makes me cry, though by the end of it I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, ready to take on the world. It’s the song I listen to when I’m low, the song I reach for to feel less alone. It is a song about depression, and also about fighting your way out of depression, and I can’t think of another piece of art that so deeply resonates with my own experience of these subjects. Sarah and I saw the Rilo Kiley reunion tour when they came through New York last summer, and the catharsis of screaming along to this song with an entire crowd of aging Millennials was unparalleled.  

also at Largehearted Boy:

Adam Wilson’s playlist for his novel Sensation Machines

Adam Wilson’s playlist for his short story collection What’s Important Is Feeling

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Adam Wilson is the author of four books: the novel SENSATION MACHINES (Soho 2020), the novel FLATSCREEN (Harper Perennial 2012) the collection of short stories WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS FEELING (Harper Perennial 2014), and the novel FAIL SONS (Soho 2026).

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.

Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

Jocelyn Cullity’s novel The Nurse at Baker Hospital is a compelling historical literary mystery.

Kirkus wrote of the book:

“An engrossing story that exposes past medical fraud at an astonishing level.”

In her own words, here is Jocelyn Cullity’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Nurse at Baker Hospital:

Set in 1939 and based on a true story, The Nurse at Baker Hospital follows a young nurse who takes a job at Norman Baker’s infamous cancer hospital in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Although I didn’t listen to Billie Holiday while writing the novel, her music haunted my imagination throughout the process. As I researched the era, Holiday’s voice embodied the contradictions at the heart of the story—hope and despair, glamour and hardship, intimacy and loneliness. Her songs became intertwined with my characters, especially Della, a working-class nurse from Kansas City, and Celia Washington, a wealthy New Yorker seeking a cure that might have been too good to be true. These songs belong to the emotional landscape of the novel and to the lives of the two women at its center.

“Easy Living”

While researching Kansas City’s jazz scene in the late 1930s, I learned about the tea pads—after-hours joints where musicians gathered to listen to music, smoke marijuana, and escape the constraints of everyday life. Imagining Della in the tea pads helped me understand her longing for community months before she arrived at Baker Hospital.

Della first meets Celia Washington while Billie Holiday’s “Easy Living” plays in Celia’s private hospital room. One of the sickest patients at Baker Hospital, Celia has traveled from New York City seeking Norman Baker’s cure. She’s brought her Victrola, packed in a portable leather suitcase, along with a collection of Holiday records. The song immediately carries Della back to the tea pads she frequented in Kansas City, places where she could go alone and still feel welcome.

“Strange Fruit”

Celia and her husband have had the opportunity to hear Billie Holiday perform “Strange Fruit” at Cafe Society. Their wealth grants them access to the clubs and concert venues that Della could never afford. Instead, Della’s musical education comes from the tea pads of Kansas City, where musicians welcomed her in to dance until morning.

“Strange Fruit” also reminds me that while Norman Baker marketed miracle cures to desperate patients, America was confronting other forms of brutality and injustice. Holiday’s recording anchors the novel in a wider national story beyond the walls of Baker Hospital, and the Ozarks.

“A Fine Romance”

Often, after midnight, when Della sits beside the very ill Celia, Billie Holiday sings softly from the record player. The song reflects Della’s own romantic disappointments, but it also serves as a counterpoint to Celia’s marriage. In 1939 Arkansas, Celia’s interracial marriage is not recognized and may even place the couple in danger. Yet theirs is the most loving relationship in the novel.

The irony of “A Fine Romance” reaches beyond the characters’ personal lives. Its title could just as easily describe Norman Baker’s hospital itself—a beautiful promise that turns out to be something far less than advertised.

For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.

Jocelyn Cullity’ s historical novel, Amah & the Silk-Winged Pigeons (Winner, Best Book Awards, 2018), was published in English by Inanna Publications (Canada) and Rupa (India), and translated into French and Tamil. The Envy of Paradise (Finalist for Multicultural Fiction, International Book Awards, 2020), was also published by Inanna Publications. Cullity is the Director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.

If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.