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March 12, 2020
Joyce Hinnefeld's Playlist for Her Story Collection "The Beauty of Their Youth"
In the Book Notes series, 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, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Joyce Hinnefeld's collection The Beauty of Their Youth is filled with unforgettable characters contemplating their place in the world.
Alix Ohlin wrote of the book:
"In these sharp, smart, and surprising stories, Joyce Hinnefeld brings to life a range of remarkable characters—from a young girl straight out of Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding to a German tourist who finds an unexpected home in the swamplands of Florida. Reading this collection, I never knew what was going to happen next, and I loved the experience. This is a wonderful collection by a deeply gifted writer."
In her own words, here is Joyce Hinnefeld's Book Notes music playlist for her story collection The Beauty of Their Youth:
It’s been both a blessing and a curse to round out the second decade of the twenty-first century by revisiting the short stories chosen for my collection The Beauty of Their Youth, the next book in Wolfson Press’s New American Storytellers series. A blessing to look back on these five stories—which were written, and published, over the span of those two decades—but a bit of a curse, honestly, to realize how much I’ve forgotten about what was happening when I wrote them.
Such as: When did I actually start writing “Everglades City,” the earliest story in this collection? Was I living in Pennsylvania by then, or still in New York state? (Surely Pennsylvania, I tell myself, remembering a trip to a local gun store for research.)
Or: What made me decide to write a story in which Frankie from Carson McCullers’ A Member of the Wedding is a disillusioned college student, on a fateful car ride with her sister-in-law Janice? (Surely, I think now, that was the influence of all those Dada-loving metafictionists I was surrounded by at SUNY-Albany back in the 1990s. But I could be making that up.)
And finally: What music was I listening to when I wrote these stories? Or, what music would be fitting for the time and place of each story, or for the characters who inhabit each story’s time and place?
I can answer that last question, sort of, for three of the stories. For “Everglades City”: The Wallflowers’ “One Headlight” (which I can still hear playing on the outside speaker at a Florida convenience store). For the flannel-shirted young men playing guitars in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark in “Benedicta, or A Guide to the Artist’s Resume”: Joni Mitchell—particularly “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris.” And for college-age Fran in “The Beauty of Their Youth,” dancing poolside at the Greek resort where she works as a maid in the late 1980s: Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.”
When it comes to specificity, I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got. The truth is the 2000s and 2010s are a middle-aged blur for me—years of teaching, raising a daughter who’s now in college, working on novels, and experiencing the deaths of my mother-in-law and both of my parents. And, from time to time, getting the urge to write another short story.
What I can recall, from those pre-Spotify years, is listening over and over to certain CDs, usually in the car, often with my daughter in the back seat, singing along. (Except for Lauryn Hill. Lauryn Hill was what I played in the house on dreary winter evenings in late 2001 and early 2002, sitting on a yoga ball and bouncing our colicky daughter at dinner time. I’ve played The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill pretty much continuously since then—pausing only briefly when my daughter was around five years old and said, scolding me, “Mommy, she said the f-word.” We’re well past that point now. Now I sit in the passenger seat while my daughter drives and plays Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run” and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Big Ole Freak.”)
So, for lack of any more clarity, here are the CDs on heavy rotation in my Subaru during the first two decades of this century—each paired with the story whose creation corresponds most closely with the album’s release:
“Everglades City”
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Liz Phair’s Whitechocolatespaceegg (especially the songs “Big Tall Man,” “Polyester Bride,” and “Shitloads of Money”).
“A Better Law of Gravity”
David Byrne’s Look Into the Eyeball (especially the songs “The Revolution,” “The Great Intoxication,” and “Desconocido Soy”).
*And please—why, why, why is this album not on Spotify?
“Benedicta, or A Guide to the Artist’s Resume”
TV on the Radio’s Dear Science (especially the songs “Dancing Choose” and “Golden Age”).
“Polymorphous”
Esperanza Spalding’s Chamber Music Society (especially the songs “Knowledge of Good and Evil” and “What a Friend”).
“The Beauty of Their Youth”
This is music that actually comes later (later than the writing of this story, and later than the time—summer 2012—when it’s set), but I’m including it for the title story because it’s a perfect representation of a mother learning from her daughter, which happens on several occasions in this story:
Big Thief’s Capacity (especially the songs “Shark Smile” and “Mary”), UFOF (especially the songs “UFOF” and “Cattails”), and Two Hands (especially the songs “Forgotten Eyes” and “Not”).
Because my wise, now adult, daughter loves Big Thief more than anything, and now I love them too.
Joyce Hinnefeld is the Cohen Chair in English and Literature at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa. She is the author of a short story collection, Tell Me Everything and Other Stories (University Press of New England, 1998), which was awarded the 1997 Breadloaf Writer’s Conference Bakeless Prize in Fiction in 1997. Her first novel, In Hovering Flight, was a #1 Indie Next Pick.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for In Hovering Flight
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for Stranger Down Below
Support the Largehearted Boy website
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for Every Kiss A War
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for Whiskey & Ribbons
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)
Flash Dancers (authors pair original flash fiction with a song
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
