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July 21, 2020
L. Annette Binder's Playlist for Her Novel "The Vanishing Sky"
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.
L. Annette Binder's novel The Vanishing Sky is an epic and moving debut where World War II's German frontis seen through the eyes of a family.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"A masterful story of war, horror, and love...Binder provides a family's-eye view of the terror and trauma, offering readers a unique perspective on the war."
In her own words, here is L. Annette Binder's Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel The Vanishing Sky:
It took me eight years to finish a first draft of The Vanishing Sky, and I listened to certain songs repeatedly as I wrote and revised. A few of these ten tracks are on the list because they helped transport me to a place and time that’s long gone. Others tap into something that I’m trying to convey in the story.
“John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” Sufjan Stevens
A haunting song that struck me completely still the first time I heard it. It’s about family and the evil that ordinary, upstanding people can do. The archival footage from the video only makes the track more chilling. And yet the ending of this song has always given me pause. “In my best behavior I am really just like him” — The ambiguity of this closing shows how difficult it is to acknowledge the humanity of a killer without inadvertently diminishing or normalizing the horror of his deeds. Something of which I was mindful as I wrote my book.
“The Orphan,” by Streabbog (Jean Louis Gobbaerts)
A spare and melancholic composition. Though it was written in the mid-1800s, it immediately transports me to Europe of the early and mid-20th century. It evokes the half-timbered houses of southern Germany and its spires and all the things that people knew and didn’t know about each other during a terrible time. It reminds me that events from long before you were born can carry over into your life in ways that nobody could have predicted. And the feel of a place —the fog, the slow-moving river, the dampness in the air — can leave a mark on you long after you and your family have left.
“The Silence,” Manchester Orchestra
I love Manchester Orchestra, and this song is one of my favorites. It’s about being a parent and how the love you have for your child can fill you with hope and fear in equal measure. “Let me watch you as close as a memory/Let me hold you above all the misery,” Andy Hull’s voice becomes a chant near the end of the song. A desperate prayer. The idea of trying to hold your child above all the misery resonates with me, both in terms of my story — the main character, Etta, is struggling to protect her sons during wartime — and in my own life as the mother of a young daughter.
“The Promise,” Sturgill Simpson (cover of When In Rome)
I’m a child of the 80’s and have happy memories of this song by When In Rome. Simpson makes it entirely his own. His voice reminds me of my father, who loved American country music with an immigrant’s passion. Large parts of my novel were inspired by my father, who spent his childhood in wartime Germany and was required to serve in the Hitler Youth (and years later saw combat in Vietnam as an American soldier). He died when he was barely in his fifties. Music probably gave my father a sense of peace, and the way I like to remember him now is driving in his Dodge Dart with his arm resting on the open window and the radio going. Smoking his Lucky Strikes and listening to his country music.
The first track I ever heard by the Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi. It was one of a few songs to which I listened obsessively as I revised. The granular structure of the piece, the repetition, and the cascade of sixteenth notes evokes a sense of inevitability. Classical purists sometimes criticize Einaudi’s compositions, but I find his music moving and beautiful.
“Hurt,” Johnny Cash (cover of Nine Inch Nails)
I admire the stripped-down quality of Johnny Cash’s cover of this song, and its darkness. It’s the musical equivalent of the relentless closeups of Tommy Lee Jones’ face in the Coen Brothers’ movie version of No Country for Old Men. Cash conjures up a man broken by the years, a man like Josef, the father in my story, who is starting to decline and wants to defend his country but lacks the mental sharpness and the moral clarity to see the horror of the regime. “Everyone I know goes away in the end” — The sadness in the song would be too much if it weren’t so beautiful.
“Time,” Cremaine Booker on cello (cover of Hans Zimmer)
This composition by Hans Zimmer is everywhere. Michael Zak (https://medium.com/@michalzak/hans-zimmers-time-we-have-to-go-deeper-2836111a17b) has a very funny post on how influential it’s been and how many other scores resemble it. Cremaine Booker’s version on cello is beautiful and full of emotion. To hear someone play with such passion fills me with yearning. I probably listened to “Time” more than any other piece of music during the years I revised the novel. Sorrowful and triumphant, it helped me tap right into my characters.
“Flyin’ Shoes,” Townes van Zandt
My husband introduced me to van Zandt’s music years ago, and this song is one of my favorites. “Being alone is all the hills can do” — this song is a reminder to embrace solitude and to find the poetry in my language. Townes van Zandt was an extraordinary lyricist, and his songs are bleak and hopeful at the same time, two emotions that I felt as I wrote my book.
“Like Spinning Plates,” Radiohead
Gorgeous and ethereal, this song was on my playlist as I worked on the first draft of the novel. Radiohead so often seems to stop just short of beautiful. On purpose, I think, as if to deny the listener the easy route. But this song gives in wholeheartedly to beauty. I study piano — without the benefit of musical talent, unfortunately — and I play this piece when life seems bleak. It lifts me right back up.
“Hallelujah,” k. d. lang (cover of Leonard Cohen)
Spiritual and suffused with love. I admire the lyrics here as much as the musical composition. And k. d. lang’s cover is perfection.
Melody evokes an emotional response in me that is made all the more powerful because it isn’t mediated or constrained by spoken language. This response carries over into my life and my writing. Listening to music makes me want to create something beautiful. Chances are I’ll fall short, but no matter. It makes me want to try.
L. Annette Binder was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. as a small child. She holds degrees in Classics and law from Harvard, an MA in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MFA from the Program in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. Her short fiction collection Rise received the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, One Story, The Southern Review, and others. The Vanishing Sky is her first novel.
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