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July 24, 2020
Michael Credico's Playlist for His Story Collection "Heartland Calamitous"
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.
The stories in Michael Credico's collection Heartland Calamitous are brief but absurd and filled with surprise and wonder.
Foreword Reviews wrote of the book:
"In his compelling collection of stories—most only a few pages long—Michael Credico marshals bold, creative images to depict a grim Midwest dominated by slaughterhouses and fast food restaurants. . . . Echoing the work of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller, the intense, slippery images animating these powerful stories bring to life alienated characters and are challenging and surprising at every turn."
In his own words, here is Michael Credico's Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Heartland Calamitous:
I spent my teens driving around Northeast Ohio, especially the hillier, rural areas, listening to music. My first three cars—a Sunbird, Celebrity, and Avenger—did not have a CD player. I used a cassette tape converter you could plug a Walkman into. The problem with that was any slight bump caused the CD to skip. Still, I spent thousands of miles inside those cars listening and driving in circles, believing in the road and the possibility of escape. I was always raring to go. I did not know how to go. I first crossed a state line in my late twenties. I have never been outside of America. My fourth car had no tape deck and just barely a radio, meaning the weather had to be nice. I started driving in silence. It was an old car you needed to listen to because who knows what it was trying to say and where you would end up or not because of it. Today, I drive a Honda Civic. I can stream any band, song, or album I can think of, but I do not. I like the sound of the windows rolled down.
“Redford (for Yia-Yia & Pappou)” – Sufjan Stevens
He opened with this instrumental when I saw him in Pittsburgh in 2015. I was experiencing serious change in my life, personally. As a writer, I had scrapped most of my manuscript-in-process and began what would become Heartland Calamitous. When I hear this song, I think of starting over.
“Like Like The The The Death” – Silver Jews
If the collection had an epigraph, it would be “Folks who’ve watched their mother kill an animal know / that their home is surrounded by places to go.”
“Grievances” – Daniel Johnston
For every misfit in the collection—the girl born covered in wool, the bear adopted by the parents of the boy it has eaten, the woman who turns into an eyeball, the man swallowed by a wolf, the woodsman with a fetish for having knives thrown at him as he runs naked through the trees—and their awkward, mostly difficult interactions with a world that is always letting them down. “And I saw you at the funeral / you were standing there like a temple / I said, “Hi, how are you? Hello” / And I pulled up a casket and crawled in.”
“Get It Up” – The Time
There is only one explicit sex scene in Heartland Calamitous and it goes nothing like this song!
“Everything Flows” – Teenage Fanclub
Work is an important part of my fiction, probably because I will always have to. My experience in manufacturing, especially entry-level quality assurance, and my sometimes-difficulty separating self-worth from occupation had a significant influence on these stories. The mornings filled with anxiety and dread. The years suddenly disappearing. I remember asking myself, “Where have you been?” I was offended. I had no answer.
“Hyperballad” – Björk
I have been listening to Björk since I was really young. The words to “Hyperballad” are probably the first short story I fell in love with. It is about walking to the edge of a cliff every morning to imagine jumping off it and experiencing a violent death, then returning to your lover to feel happy and safe. I think in “Sister,” when the girl born covered with wool shears herself as an act of performance art, this is playing in the background.
“Teenage Spaceship” – Smog
Two stories in the collection are linked by the presence of a rocket ship: “Postwar: Apiary, Aviary,” and “Snuff Film.” In “Snuff Film,” the rocket ship takes off and drags the world behind it. As the world hurtles through the universe, people begin deciding between holding on and facing whatever comes next or letting go and peacefully floating away. The next story, “Commuter,” is about returning to a world that has moved on without you. This song is a reminder that there is also beauty in being out of step with everything and everybody else.
“Changes” – Sugar
For every moment of upheaval: People morphing into animals. Babies appearing out of nowhere. Landscapes in a constant state of decay, quaking and exploding. The car crashes, the planes crashes, and the mob of cowboy zombies. The runaway trains. The escaped tigers and packs of wild dogs floating in the sky.
“Diggin’ Holes” – Ugly Casanova
For when the members of the death cult in “Heartland Wilds” bury themselves alive near the river.
“That’s Us / Wild Combination” – Arthur Russell
Eight of the 24 stories deal with the narrator’s relationship with K. In “Baby,” they unexpectedly become parents after catching a baby in a glue trap meant for bugs. In “Postwar: Lake Michigan,” their suburban idyll is disrupted when they find a decomposing body in their swimming pool. In “Animals,” the narrator attempts to ease K.’s dread-induced insomnia by constructing a mobile from animals he catches in their backyard. This song is my romcom theme.
“I Was a Landscape in Your Dream” – of Montreal
The penultimate story in the collection is called “The Water is the Last Thing.” It follows a man, a woman, and the animal on a journey from Ohio to the West Coast by freighthopping, and their conversations on love, death, god, and the body, told in 99 fragments. When they run out of things to say, they stare through the slits in the train walls and watch “time pass in the shape of landscapes” before plunging into the ocean.
“Long, Long Day” – Paul Simon
A song about the end of a tour, and wondering what was it for, even? From the stolen Eldorado that hits a deer in Cairo, Illinois in the “Western,” to the narrator being shot at as he runs down an endless country road in “The Man with a Fish in His Heart,” “I sure could use a friend / Don’t know what else to say / It’s been a long, long day.” My favorite version of this song was recorded live in Cleveland, and appears in the film One Trick Pony, but not the album.
Michael Credico is the author of Heartland Calamitous (Autumn House Press, 2020). His fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, New Ohio Review, Puerto del Sol, and others. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
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