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March 11, 2020
Paul Lynch's Playlist for His Novel "Beyond the Sea"
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.
Paul Lynch's Beyond the Sea brilliantly and lyrically captures the lives and struggles of two fisherman adrift at sea.
The Times Literary Supplement wrote of the book:
"[Bolivar and Hector] build a friendship that is artfully portrayed by Lynch, who resists the temptation to romanticize their connection, instead spotlighting its volatility, fractiousness and intensity . . . [Beyond the Sea] articulates Lynch's literary preoccupations striking clarity . . . its pages are alive with elegance and insight."
In his own words, here is Paul Lynch's Book Notes music playlist for his novel Beyond the Sea:
I don’t listen to music any more when I write, though I used to listen to jazz to help me find an abstract space. I wrote pretty much the entirety of my first novel, Red Sky in Morning, to Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil. I am, by and large, a jazz-head by night, working my way through a growing collection of LPs, but by day, when writing, I’ve learned there is enough rhythm and swing in my sentences without the need to absorb it from music.
Beyond the Sea, my fourth novel, is a book that seeks to open a space to silence in this time of noise and limitless data. It tells the tale of two South American fishermen who are washed out into the Pacific by a great storm. They are ill-prepared for the event and ill-matched — Bolivar, an indifferent, ironic man, must learn to survive alongside Hector, an inexperienced youth who has taken the place of Bolivar’s usual fishing partner.
How does one generate the necessary degree of hope and belief to fight against impossible circumstances? Their responses towards survival are profoundly different and reveal their inner worth and and the secret truth of each man. As the story progresses, time seems to fall away and the book enters a mythic plane in which silence affords each character — and one hopes the reader, too — an opportunity to examine, or butt up against, some of the fundamental problems faced by our modern, alienated selves.
Perhaps the idea of two men adrift on a boat is a grim subject, but something beautiful happens to Bolivar, revealed in both the quality of his resistance, and the profound transformation that occurs to his character.
I am Ahab — Mastodon
The story pivots on a storm the reader knows is going to happen. And so we need some heavy metal for some heavy weather. There is something about Bolivar as he stands dauntless and stares into the face of the storm that is pure Ahab. Hector, on the other hand, wakes up screaming.
Riders on the Storm — The Doors
The small panga boat is carried for days like an insect on the back of a monstrous sea. The men huddle together in an ice-cooler turned sideways. “Into this house we’re born; Into this world we’re thrown”, sings Jim Morrison, anticipating perhaps some of the deeper themes of the novel.
Prelúdio, Bwv 847, performed Marcelo Magalhães Pinto
Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No 2 in C minor is one of my favourite pieces. This jazz interpretation by Marcelo Magalhães Pinto is an ideal accompaniment as the men, having survived the storm, now discover they are running out of water. For days they watch a blue and barren sky. The music circles without ever resolving, it seems, but then comes the wonderful release.
Fratres — Arvo Part
To be a survivor on a small boat without hope of rescue is to be alive and dead at the same time. Each man begins to travel deep into his own mind. Part’s fragile, searching music summons a mood that captures their vulnerability, and the mood-change of two men slowly entering into an extraordinary complicity.
Billy Budd — King of the Birds — Benjamin Britten
Britten’s opera based on Melville’s short story takes an ironic turn. Bolivar is indeed king of the birds, as he discovers it is easier to catch birds than fish. He will do whatever it takes to survive but Hector cannot overcome his disgust.
Wake Up — Rage Against the Machine
“The way to one’s own heaven,” wrote Nietzsche, “always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell.” When Hector slides into a profound religious silence, Bolivar sees only disease and desolation in the youth’s face. He rages at Hector to rally but the youth has other ideas…
Naima — John Coltrane
The sweet, yearning sound of Coltrane’s horn is the ideal accompaniment to Bolivar’s musing on the past he willingly left behind and the secret he carries in his heart that comes back to haunt him.
What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong
Bolivar’s journey, though outward by appearance, is truly inward. The fisherman who begins the book as a foolish man becomes profoundly altered, and enters into what Schopenhauer called, an “oceanic feeling of oneness”.
Requiem – Mozart: Introitus, Sir Neville Mariner
With each novel, I know and write towards the book’s last sentence. If I don’t feel it when I write those final few words, you won’t feel it too. Mozart’s Requiem speaks those feelings of transcendence and release.
Beyond the Sea — Bobby Darin
If a book were to end with a song and end-credits, Beyond the Sea would go out with Darin’s crooning classic:
“No more sailin’ / So long, sailin’ / Bye bye, sailin’ / Move on out, captain”
Paul Lynch is the author of the novels Red Sky in Morning; The Black Snow, which won France’s Prix Libr’a Nous for Best Foreign Novel, and Grace, which won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, and was a finalist for both the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Saroyan International Prize. He lives in Dublin with his wife and daughter.
also at Largehearted Boy:
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Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for Lady Lazarus
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
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