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August 4, 2020
Caroline Leavitt's Playlist for Her Novel "With or Without You"
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.
Caroline Leavitt's novel With or Without You is skillfully told and moving.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"What if Snow White woke up and decided she didn’t much like Prince Charming? Something like that happens in Leavitt's latest novel . . . One character’s coma is only the first surprise in this satisfying story of middle-aged love."
In her own words, here is Caroline Leavitt's Book Notes music playlist for her novel With or Without You:
So much of my new novel With or Without You is steeped in longing and dramatic change, but I wanted also to be infused with a sense of awe. About a 40-ish longtime couple, once famous rock star Simon and practical nurse Stella, whose lives are upended when Stella emerges from a coma with a drastically different personality—and a talent—like all my novels it didn’t start out to be deeply personal, but then it became just that. So my musical choices were deeply personal, too! I listened to a lot of different music while I was writing just to try to get the emotional confusion right, the longing, and yes, the magic.
Fame by David Bowie
Who was more famous and is more missed than Bowie? One fascinating thing about him is an exhibit we went to all about him, which showed video clips of how he changed, from an awkward young guy with really, really BAD British teeth, to a guy with pearly whites and an attitude. Fame did that. Yet the thing about Bowie was, love did it, too, and in the end, he morphed. He cared more about his wife, his kids and pushing his imagination than the roar of any crowd. I like to think that my character Simon would be listening to this song, an anti-fame anthem, even as Simon yearns and yearns and yearns for popularity with increasing desperation.
Girlfriend in a Coma by The Smiths
I love the Smiths. "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" is my favorite song of all time, or one of them. I love this song because despite the seeming heaviness of the lyric (his girlfriend is in a coma!) the music itself lilts and skips and seems to even wink.
Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House
This was Crowded House’s breakout song, and it’s been open to a lot of interpretation. Some people think it’s about a relationship breaking up, others about depression, others about never, ever giving up. For me, it’s once again the emotion it stirs up when I listen to it. It sounds and feels like a plea, like the person who is being encouraging is really talking to themselves and hoping that they can believe this, too.
Love Stinks by The J. Geils Band
This was my go-to song for when I felt stuck, because the pounding beat got me going, and the nasty refrain “love stinks” sounded like something my character Simon would have belted out in his younger Rockstar days before he knew the sorrow behind a statement like that. And of course it’s about the person you love loving someone else. Plus Love Stinks is just a kind of glorious punk anthem.
Landslide by the Dixie Chicks version
One of the saddest and prettiest songs on the planet, I listened to this over and over because it acknowledges that yes, things change, age happens (Stevie Nicks’s lyric, “yes, I’m getting older, too,” is painfully raw) and isn’t it something that such a sad, almost depressing song about aging could be so gorgeous, too? With or Without You is so much about aging, and being in a relationship for the long haul, and what it means to change, and how yep, there are landslides, but we can sometimes regain our footing. And fun fact: this is always my go-to song for karaoke.
Motion Sickness by Phoebe Bridgers
Any kind of change is always turmoil, and when I hear this line of Bridgers, about “emotional motion sickness,” I know exactly what she means, and so do my characters.
Yes, I’m Changing by Tame Impala
I read a whole lot of quantum physics for the layperson and a whole lot of books about brain chemistry while writing With or Without You. To my surprise and delight, so many woo-woo things become rational to me when approached with science, like the fact that there might be no time at all, that everything is happening at the same moment. The one line: “There is another future waiting there for you” is both mysterious and hopeful to me. Plus, come on, this is one great song.
Strange Magic by ELO
Well, first, you can’t go wrong when you need a bouncy beat than to turn up anything by ELO, and this song played constantly in my office, so often that my husband made me put on headphones. That line “I’m never gonna be the same again” is pure With or Without You, and yet by calling a drastic change magic, there is an affirmation of the awe, mystery and wonder of life itself, where things can pivot so fast you can get whiplash. Plus, this is another great one to sing along to while you are trying to figure out plot.
Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You, Is This Tomorrow and 10 other novels. Her newest, With or Without You will be published August 4, 2020 from Algonquin Books. A New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow, she is a book critic for People, AARP and the San Francisco Chronicle and she teaches novel writing online at Stanford and UCLA Writers Program Extension. Visit her at www.carolineleavitt.com
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