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June 16, 2020
Scott Spencer's Playlist for His Novel "An Ocean Without a Shore"
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, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Scott Spencer's An Ocean Without a Shore is a masterfully told novel of love and all its effects.
Booklist wrote of the book:
"Spencer has a gift for depicting the ecstasies and torments of romantic love with crisp detail and deliberate restraint, and it is this quality, together with Kip’s haunted narrative voice, that give this tale special resonance."
In his own words, here is Scott Spencer's Book Notes music playlist for his novel An Ocean Without a Shore:
Unrequited Love in Ten Easy Listens
The contract for An Ocean Without a Shore cites its title as Unrequited Love, but I abandoned that title well before I had completed the novel, after I checked on-line and learned there were several books with that very title.
Nevertheless, Unrequited Love remained as a kind of pentimento, and its very simplicity was a reminder to me that I wanted this novel to be emotional and direct. Here are the ten songs that meant the most to me, songs that captured the pain, the sweetness, the agony, the incandescence of what I was writing about. Naturally, George Jones leads off.
1. “This Wanting You,” from his great late career album The Cold Hard Truth, recorded in 1999, just a few weeks after an automobile accident that had Jones in a Nashville hospital, hovering between life and death, when he was nearly 70 years old. I think this is arguably Jones's most affecting album, and “This Wanting You” is the album’s signature song. It begins like this: I only wish/ that I could lose /my mind some time. And with that simple, artful incision the song proceeds to skin you alive. Slowly. Oh so slowly, with that overpowering melancholy he could bring to songs of loss. Trying to write something that can convey the loneliness and sorrow of George Jones’s voice is to be reminded that music is king, and to listen to him create the shadow of the letter L into the word never is to be reminded that indelible meaning comes from giving words your personal stamp.
2. “You Don't Know Me,” by Ray Charles. I have loved Ray Charles’s music since I was twelve. When he released his Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music record in 1962, I took it as a personal affront, believing that rhythm and blues was My Team and country music was Their Team. I had to work to appreciate the depth and beauty of the record—I worked my way through the soupy strings, the choir behind him that sounded to me as if they had just wandered out of the Mormon Tabernacle. But I was given a guide, a clue—Ray's perfect blues and gospel piano riffing beneath the violins and the voices, like a wink in my direction, assuring me that this was still Ray, still real, still worth hearing. And then, of course, like millions of others, I realized I was listening to one of the great records of the era. “You Don’t Know Me,” written by Cindy Williams for Eddy Arnold (and often covered, including a great version by Elvis Presley) is one of the most wrenching unrequited love songs ever: And anyone can tell, you think you know me well/well you don’t know me. If you were only allowed two lines to describe the torment of unrequited love, these two might be the best choice.
3. “I Don’t Want Him (You Can Have Him)” sung by Nina Simone. Let me say it again: Nina Simone. What more do you need to know? The song was written about eighty years ago by Irving Berlin. It’s often been sung in a jaunty way—Ella Fitzgerald’s version is way up-temps, as if you were meant to foxtrot to it. Nina slows it down to a slow, mournful keen of loss and resignation, and as she lists all of the things she doesn't want to experience with a man who is, in fact, with somebody else, her piano rumbles and trembles beneath her voice, like a volcano waiting to erupt—as Nina herself does at the end of the “live” recording of this beautiful song. I make reference to this song in my new novel—the narrator makes a little girl a breakfast and serves a couple of things mentioned in Nina's imaginary morning meal—apricot jam and buttered toast.
4. Unrequited love can darken even the sunniest disposition—and this snarling, potentially pathological side of being emotionally stranded is totally nailed by Ann Peebles singing “Breaking Up Somebody’s Home,” written by Al Jackson, Jr. and Timothy Matthews. I also like Albert King’s version of this song, but, as usual, King sounds a bit removed from the lyrics—he had a beautiful voice, but he never seemed as emotionally invested in the vocals as he was in his guitar playing. When Peebles sings Can't control the feeling/because after all I didn't make myself, you feel the scary self-justification, as well as the real insight in that lyric, and she has the irresistible Willie Mitchell production moving the whole thing along, thumping away like an imprisoned heart.
5. Speaking of Harts! “Glad to be Unhappy,” was written by Lorenz Hart, with music by Richard Rogers. Billie Holiday, nearing the end of her life, wanted to record standards with a swooping orchestra of strings and brass. Fully aware that her voice was all but wrecked, she wanted someone to write protective arrangements for her like Nelson Riddles's orchestrations for Sinatra. Ray Ellis got the assignment, but for all the lushness—the album wasn't called Lady in Satin for nothing—the cracks and holes in Holiday’s voice are still piercingly evident. The spirit of “Glad to be Unhappy” is very much the spirit of my novel, which circles, pushes, and prods the question: what would you rather feel—longing or nothing? And even though the lyrics claim at one point that Unrequited love's a bore, it quickly adds but for someone you adore, it's a pleasure to be sad...like a stray/baby lamb/with no mammy and no pappy/I'm so unhappy/but oh so glad. Choosing love over happiness! Or is it desire that is being chosen?
6. The unrequited love affair lends itself to belief in alternative universes, where desires become reality. A somewhat more light-hearted look at unrequited love comes from The Temptations. “Just My Imagination,” revels in fantasies of possession, domesticity, and happiness, all the while maintaining its tenuous hold on reality. You can’t see the words It was just my imagination/running way with me without hearing The Temptations singing them. (The Rolling Stones covered this song, but Mick Jagger attempting to convey quietly persistent longing was as ridiculous as Jared Kushner’s attempt to bring peace to the Middle East.)
7. I loved “Love Has No Pride” written by Eric Kaz and Libby Titus the moment I first heard it. Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, and Tracy Nelson have done great versions. Titus herself recorded it, as have Rod Stewart, Grady Tate, and Billy Bragg. I think the one who does it best is Tracy Nelson, who throughout her career has managed to convey power and sorrow, mastery and intimacy all in the same note. When Tracy sings And if I could buy your love/ well I would surely try my friend/and if I could pray/ my prayers would never end/and if you want me to beg/I'll go down on my knees you hang your head and believe that happiness is for children.
8. Hank Williams. Hank Williams. Hank Williams—e.g. “You Win Again,” “I Can't Get You off my Mind,” “Half as Much,” “ Why Don't You Love Me.”
9. The haunting, wounding yet comforting presence of the absent one is so wonderfully captured in “Ghost in This House” where living alone with the memory of love is a kind of sublimity and moving on is for emotional small-timers. I don’t pick up the mail/I don’t pick up the phone/I don’t answer the door/ I’d just as soon be alone. This lovely song was originally recorded by Shenandoah, but I am very partial to the Alison Krauss rendition, recorded a few years later, in 1999. Alison Krauss is perfectly suited to sing words that teeter on the melodramatic—her voice so pure, delicate, and unbreakable.
10. The end of passion, and love denied are usually sung about from the point of view of the one who suffers, not from the one who inflicts the suffering. But “For Old Time’s Sake” written and sung by Marketa Irglova, captures this side of unrequited love with great pathos and kindness. Her song is a reminder that being on either side of an unequal romantic equation is kind of awful. With her stately piano and her unadorned voice, Irglova sings these uniquely painful lyrics: Hold me tight/ but just for tonight/but not as tight as before/we’re not that close anymore. And then, as if that were not enough, toward the end of the song, which proceeds slowly, regretfully, Marketa sings: We had something good that did not last/let’s not be constantly reliving the past.
Fucking shoot me.
Scott Spencer is the author of twelve novels, including Endless Love,Waking the Dead, A Ship Made of Paper, and Willing. He has taught at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Williams College, the University of Virginia, and at Eastern Correctional Facility as part of the Bard Prison Initiative. He lives in upstate New York.
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