« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
January 14, 2020
Jason Brown' Playlist for His Story Collection "A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed"
In the Book Notes seriaes, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Individually, the linked stories in Jason Brown's collection A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed are compellingly told, but collectively they form a powerful, unforgettable narrative.
Marjorie Celona wrote of the book:
"Like the Patrick Melrose novels—but in miniature and in Maine—this wonderful and unusual novel-in-stories juxtaposes the downfall of the Howland family with the increasing disillusionment of one of its younger members, John. In laugh-out-loud prose, Jason Brown crucifies the esteemed Howlands, who consider themselves to be above all things (even life itself), as they struggle to understand their place in an increasingly unfamiliar world—one that is better for almost everyone except their family. What’s waiting in the wings, then, for John? A needle in the arm or a place at the table of the anointed? A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed is a staggering portrait of inheritance and identity from one of our very best writers."
In his own words, here is Jason Brown's Book Notes music playlist for his story collection A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed:
I wrote part of A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, where I frequently went to the Red Shoe Pub in Mabou—now owned by the Rankins, a well-known musical family from that area. I listened to people like Buddy MacMaster and Mairi Rankin play the fiddle and could listen to them forever and be happy. I grew up in Maine, not Cape Breton, but many of my Maine ancestors originally came from Scotland in the 1700s—chased off the land by the English and the new sheep lairds of Scotland. I imagined that the music and culture was somehow in my blood, though that was nonsense. I am a romantic, which is not generally cured by getting older.
Cape Breton is a place where people still know the language, the music and the step dances from the Highlands. The people there moved from the Highlands and the Hebrides to the small villages on the west coast of the island. During my first winter up there, my friend Paul introduced me to Scottish singer David Francey, whose albums Torn Screen Door and The Waking Hour I could listen to on repeat. Every Saturday night in the middle of the winter, people from all around got together and played and listened to music in the town hall. People played the fiddle, the spoons, the guitar, whatever they could play, and they drank, heavily. I didn’t drink or play music, but I was drunk on the music, and when I got home I could write. I had moved to Cape Breton because I was sick of America. I moved back to America because I couldn’t make a living in Cape Breton, but the place is still inside me.
Townes Van Zandt—“If I Needed You”
This was one of the songs I listened to when I was trying to find the right mood for A Faithful But Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed. I had listened to it so many times that I hardly listened to the words anymore, which is maybe why I can write to music with lyrics if I know the music very well. The words are not separate from the music—from the sound and the mood. The same is true for me in a short story I have read many times—often I’m not so much reading the story as listening to it again to find an emotional thread inside myself.
John Coltrane—A Love Supreme
I don’t understand jazz and I’ve never tried to. I’ve spent years trying to understand literature, and I am not sure it has helped my writing at all, so why would I try to understand a piece of music that feels right, that opens my chest and mesmerizes me? The intensity of the album sets the bar high for my own writing. When I sit down to write while listening to A Love Supreme, I feel that I have a guide to something that is true.
David Francey—“Torn Screen Door”
“Torn Screen Door” is all about nostalgia, and, if I am honest with myself, A Faithful but Melancholy Account is also all about nostalgia. Both my book and the song are about a particular kind of rural nostalgia that comes from a sense that the rural way of life is being lost. The characters in my book—especially the older characters—find the changes terrifying, and they don’t know how to respond. The melancholy captured in “Torn Screen Door” is one response. I think there is a temptation among urban Americans to denigrate this nostalgia, but the loss of livelihood, family, and community are real. When those things are gone, there is nothing left for people.
Townes Van Zandt—“Dirty Old Town”
Townes Van Zandt does my favorite version of “Dirty Old Town” (aside from my friend Paul in Cape Breton). This song is also about nostalgia, in this case for the tough industrial towns of America, Canada, England, and elsewhere. Nostalgia, not so much for a place that killed so many with soot, pollution, and labor, but for the families and culture that grew within the boundaries of such places.
Townes Van Zandt—“To Live Is to Fly”
This is a love song—probably the only one I like—and at a certain point I began to think of my book as a love song. A song to the complicated people like my grandparents who served as the basis for the grandparents in the book. I brought them to life as characters in part because I wanted to see them one more time. Now that the book is finished, they are gone again, at least for me.
Natalie MacMaster—Cape Breton fiddling
I could listen to Natalie play the fiddle for more hours on end than most Cape Bretoners. When she and her partner Donnell Leahy play, it doesn’t take long before heels tap the floor and one hears whooping from one of them or the crowd. Music like this is not the kind you sit back and listen to. Music of this kind, that comes from a long history, is a testament to the humor, grit and strength of the culture that created it.
Stan Rogers—“Barrett’s Privateers”
This is a song I sang with a bunch of neighbors in Iona, Cape Breton, as we stood around a campfire and they drank while I got drunk on the music. “I’m a broken man on a Halifax peer, the last of Barrett’s Privateers….” The song is a modern (1977) sea shanty—a work song sung on merchant ships to synchronize the deck work. When everyone around the fire went home and passed out, I went back to my falling-down farmhouse and wrote.
Jason Brown and A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed links:
the author's website
the author's Wikipedia entry
Fiction Writers Review interview with the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
Support the Largehearted Boy website
Book Notes (2015 - ) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2012 - 2014) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2005 - 2011) (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlist essays
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
guest book reviews
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Books of the Week (recommended new books, magazines, and comics)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Short Cuts (writers pair a song with their short story or essay)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
weekly music release lists
