After the Race, A Playlist

I promised I’d post a playlist for those of you reading After the Race (or about to read it!).

Music is an integral part of writing for me. In fact, the weekend I finished writing the first draft of After the Race, I checked into the hotel section of the Indiana University student union building, found a 1980s station on Pandora, and let it play the entire time I was there. There are many times when a song encompasses all of the elements I want to convey in the scene.

 

In Chapter One, Alexandra and her friend Meg are preparing for the Little 500 race and John Cougar Mellencamp’s Jack and Diane plays. (Still one of my favorite videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h04CH9YZcpI)

         Three years from that date and 500 miles away from her mother, Alexandra stared into the lighted mirror considering Jane Ann’s educational objectives. Other than mascara, I don’t think I’ll need any of the First Lady training today. I’m about as far away from the White House as possible. The opening bars of Jack & Diane boomed from a radio down the hall, “Two American kids growing up in the heartland.” With that, all thoughts of her mother slid right out of Alex’s head.

            Slathering her upturned nose with zinc oxide, Meg Swenson turned from her own makeup mirror. “Don’t forget sunscreen,” Meg said. She pulled a blue and white Gamma Chi Omega sorority visor over her short, dark hair to screen her fair skin.

            “Meg, I am not going to the social event of the year with a white nose. I tan anyway, I don’t burn. It’s you Yankee girls that have to worry.”

            “Jane Ann isn’t opposed to tanning for First Ladies to-be?”

            “Men love seeing a healthy glow on a girl.” Alex imitated her mother’s sugary, Southern voice. “It makes them feel virile and virile means nuptial.”

        “I really think your mother could rival Phil Donahue with her own daytime talk show. Sort of a Southern etiquette-dating-fashion expert and Dear Abby all in one.”

          “She would adore that. You should offer to be her producer.”

      “I’m so sure.” Meg laughed.  “What team are you for today?”

      “Celts, I guess. You?”

     Meg nodded agreement. “The party will be definitely be more fun if the men of Chi Lambda Tau win.”

       Alex checked her teeth in the mirror then turned to approve the rear view of her new Girbaud jeans with the white tab on the fly, a GCO t-shirt and Reeboks. Good. She stuffed her college ID, the Little 500 ticket, and a five-dollar bill in her pocket. From outside Becky Boone’s room, they heard John Cougar ending the song and Alex joined in the refrain, “Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”

        “I never get that line,” Meg said.

      “Maybe Cougar himself’ll be at the race and you can ask him to explain it. Becks!”

      Becky emerged splashed with a cloud of Jean Nate, her hair falling in luxurious blonde Farrah Fawcett wings and curls. “Ready!” Becky’s voice rose an octave on the last word and the three left in a fit of giggles, hair spray, and perfume.

John Cougar Mellencamp’s music was ubiquitous on the campus of Indiana University in the mid-eighties and sightings of the singer happened frequently. In the book, the girls call him “Cougar,” because in the early part of his career, he performed under that name. He switched to John Cougar Mellencamp in 1983.

In one of the early interactions with her Washington, D.C. roommate, Alex overhears Dottie singing in the shower. I wanted Dottie’s penchant for malaprop singing to show her character’s personality.

A night of thundering rain dissipated the cloying humidity seeping up from the District’s marshy foundation. Alex woke to the rush of pink-blossomed morning air and car exhaust fumes and Dottie’s shower warbling what sounded like “every snake you shake.”

“Dottie, are you almost done?” Alex pressed the bathroom door open a crack and heard Dottie sing, “I’ll be washing you.”  She slammed the open window, girls with short hair had no concept of frizz.

“Hurry up.” Alex chose a rose-colored silk dress and black patent sling-back pumps. She lay back on the bed, the cooled air and Dottie’s singing washing over her enjoying the thought that another day in the nation’s Capital was about to begin.

After five more minutes of waiting, she returned to the bathroom door. “I need to get in the shower. Now!”

“OK, OK! I am out… NOW!” Dottie emerged naked, a viridian green towel turbaned around her spiky hair. “Whatcha got going that you’re in such a hurry?”

“Ugh.  This bathroom is disgusting. Could you at least rinse the sink out after you brush your teeth?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She sang, “Every fart you fake… “

“Poor Sting. If he only knew what you’ve done to his beautiful lyrics.”

“Don’t tell me those aren’t the right words?” Wide-eyed innocence.

The scene takes place in 1984, Every Breath You Take was released in 1983. https://youtu.be/OMOGaugKpzs. A year isn’t quite long enough for Dottie to learn the words.

When Alex and Billy go on their first official date to a piano bar in Georgetown, they unexpectedly bump into what will become “their song.”

So Bill led her toward a brick building with a narrow M Street doorway that led to a piano bar overlooking C&O Canal. Within minutes, they each held a frigid fishbowl of beer and were sitting in front of a pianist silking jazz from the keyboard. The golden, buttery perfume of steamed clams suffused the air. Bill slipped a dollar bill in the performer’s tip jar, then rested his arm on the back of Alex’s chair.

“Do you want to hear anything special?” The musician ran his fingers up the scale waiting for a response.

“Play ‘Misty’ for me,” she said, playacting a sultry voice.

“I love that movie.” Bill squeezed her shoulder as the first three notes rang down the keys.

“I’ve never actually seen it. But I do like the song.”

Couples wandered hand in hand down the towpath outside their window, pollen spun gold by the setting sun settling into their hair. Bill, his skin tan and smile warm, drew Alex closer and she relaxed against him, swaying slightly to the music. The burble of conversation from other tables grew louder.

Although Johnny Mathis’ Misty was released in 1959, Alex and Billy would’ve been familiar with it. https://youtu.be/DkC9bCuahC8

Here’s the rest of my list, though there may be song references I’ve omitted. I hope you’ll enjoy reading After the Race even more with its own soundtrack. And if your book club chooses After the Race, you will be able to surprise them with all the music for the night.

After the Race is available from rabbithousepress.com, Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578618346/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_4ZewEbCWT807Q),

In Lexington, Kentucky at

Mulberry & Lime, https://www.facebook.com/MulberryandLime/, and

Black Swan Books, https://www.facebook.com/Black-Swan-Books-174020642630246/.

In Bloomington, Indiana, at The Book Corner: https://www.facebook.com/btownbookcorner/

On Sanibel, Island, at MacIntosh Books & Paper: https://www.facebook.com/MacIntoshBooks1/

If you don’t find After the Race in your local bookstore, please ask them to order it.

PLAYLIST

Always on My Mind, Willy Nelson

Stardust, Hoagy Carmichael

Here I Am, Air Supply

Jack & Diane, John Cougar Mellencamp

American Pie, Don McLean

Waiting for a Girl Like You, Foreigner

It’s Getting Better All The Time, The Beatles

Bad Boys, Wham

Little Red Corvette, Prince

Every Breath You Take, The Police

Misty, Johnny Mathis

Wonderful Tonight, Eric Clapton

Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys, Waylon & Willie

Lucky Star, Madonna

Electric Slide, Marcia Griffiths

What a Feeling, Irene Cara

Dixieland Delight, Alabama

She Works Hard for the Money, Donna Summer

Beat It, Michael Jackson

Hurt So Good, John Cougar Mellencamp

Double Trouble, George Jones & Johnny Paycheck

Happy Reading! And Singing along!

 

 

 

Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett ✎✎✎

When the National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists for Fiction were announced, I’d read only one of the books: Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, https://daeandwrite.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/commonwealth-by-ann-patchett-✎✎✎✎/, and loved it. Since then, I’m through Moonglow by Michael Chabon, https://daeandwrite.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/moonglow-by-michael-chabon-✎✎✎/, and Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett. I have Zadie Smith’s Swing Time and Louis Erdrich’s LaRose in my near future.

On a idyllic day on the Maine water, Imagine Me Gone finds British venture capitalist John takes two of his three children boating. Celia is the second-oldest of the three; ultra-responsible and caring, if a bit of a bore. Alec, the youngest, is a whiny, clingy child wanting always to be held. Once they are on the water, John leans back into the boat, closes his eyes and pronounces to his children: “Imagine me gone, imagine it’s just the two of you. What do you do?” Celia wishes for her stronger older brother, or to be stronger, or at the very least for her father to quit play-acting and help them get to shore.

But John doesn’t help. Arguably, John has never helped his wife Margaret or their three children. His career, which brought them back to America from Margaret’s preferred life across the pond, has tanked. His relationship with Michael is ineffectual. He and Margaret fight loudly every night, frightening Alec into hiccups.

John has chronic, clinical depression. It is a condition that materially affects every member of his family, each of whom has a compelling authorial voice in Imagine Me Gone.

From Margaret:

“I’m the only one who doesn’t always want answers. John may never articulate his questions, but they are with him, a way of being. And the children want answers to everything all the time. What’s for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner? Where’s Kelsey? Where’s Dad? Why do we have to come in? Why do we have to go to bed? Some days the only words I speak to them are answers, and reasons I can’t answer, and instructions in place of the answers they want.”

John:

“This is the thing: He isn’t calling about his exam. I don’t want to know that, but I do. He’s calling to be reassured about something he can’t put into words yet. I glimpsed it in him when he was young, but told myself, No, don’t imagine that. Children have stages; he’ll change. Then the words started running out of him in a torrent, and I knew they were being chased out by a force he couldn’t see. What was I supposed to say to Margaret? That I see it in him?”

Celia:

“When Paul drank more than a diabetic should or we argued about petty domestic things, I would employ a kind of preemptive nostalgia, filing the episodes away under the heading A Couple’s Early Years. This general retrospective of the present leaped ahead to forgive our moments of anger and doubt, and the occasional day when the frustration and recriminations between us became grinding. It helped alleviate my sense of having been duped into believing Paul would be the person to deliver me from my family, rather than imitate it. And really it was okay, and most often better than that, being the object of his desire, sensing he would never leave me. That we were safe.”

Alec:

As I stepped out of the cabin, whiteness blinded me. The snow-covered yard glistened under the full sun. Icicles lining the roof of the shed dripped with meltwater. The fir trees, which had stood motionless and black against the gray sky, appeared alive again, green and moist in the fresh light. The footprints that Michael and I had made on the snowy path were dissolving, fading into ovals on the flagstone. Beneath our tracks in the driveway I could see gravel for the first time since we’d arrived. For weeks it had been frigid cold, but now had come this December thaw. I wasn’t certain what day it was, or what time, only that it had to be well after noon already.

But perhaps it is Michael the reader hears most clearly, learns most deeply even through the mental illness that drives and disturbs him. We know of the path of devastation his love creates, his musical knowledge and reverence for Donna Summer, his humor, his lack of self-control. Even as he is annoying us with an exhaustive list, we are amused by him and wish him well. He’s trying to beat the beast, much more, we think, than his father ever did.

“I remember my first dose of Klonopin the way I imagine the elect recall their high school summer romances, bathed in the golden light of a perfect carelessness, untouched and untouchable by time’s predations or the foulness of any present pain. As Cat Stevens wrote, The first cut is the deepest, though I’ve always preferred Norma Fraser’s cover to the original (the legendary Studio One, Kingston, Jamaica, 1967). Stevens sings it like a pop song, but Fraser knows the line is true, that she’ll never love like that again. Her voice soars over the reverb like a bird in final flight. The first cut is the deepest. I’ve since learned all about GABA receptors and molecular binding, benzos and the dangers of tolerance, but back then I knew only that I had received an invisible and highly effective surgery to the mind, administered by a pale yellow tablet scored down the middle and no larger than an aspirin. There is so much drivel about psychoactive meds, so much corruptions, bad faith over- and underprescription, vagueness, profiteering, ignorance, and hope, that it’s easy to forget they sometimes work, alleviating real suffering, at least for a time. This was such a time.”

Adam Haslett

 

Imagine Me Gone was, for me, a strange book. Each of the five narrators is to a certain extent unreliable and the family picture comes together only when viewing all of the pieces together, like a work of pointillism. The writing is lovely as you can see from the pieces I’ve included here and the reviewers agree it’s a compelling work of fiction dealing sensitively with mental illness.

A review I read before I read the novel said this is a book about how far a family will go to help a family member with mental illness; how much of one’s own life is a person willing to cede to maintain some normalcy for another who could have little on his or her own. I suppose that’s true, but I thought it was more about family and expectations and loss and ultimately love.

MENU

I can’t cite a menu from the book because I listened to it on Audible. I do remember Alec and Michael eating doughnuts every morning and Margaret’s frustration at going out for an overly-expensive dinner when she would have rather cooked at home. Perhaps if you want to replicate a menu from the book, you can look for that scene, somewhere around 2/3 of the way through.

I would focus on the environment of Maine and serve a blueberry dessert; maybe pie or cobbler. I would also pull in Michael’s life in London and serve a shepherd’s pie or maybe roast beef with potatoes so that I could have leftovers for the week.

MUSIC

This is the easy part. Just play Donna Summer all night.

MOVIE CASTING

John        Jude Law/Ewan McGregor

Margaret       This is a total Grace Kelly role. I can see Gwyneth Paltrow maybe.

Michael          Andrew Garfield

Celia                Blake Lively

Alec                  John Gallagher, Jr.

Happy Reading!