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September 16, 2020
Daniel Hornsby's Playlist for His Novel "Via Negativa"
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.
Daniel Hornsby's Via Negativa is a road novel as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. A brilliant debut.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"Father Dan’s regrets and doubts about his impact as a priest come through amid acerbic humor, and the kinetic prose keeps the melancholic, slow burn kindled throughout. Hornsby has got the goods, and his stirring tale of self-reflection, revenge, and theological insight isn’t one to miss."
In his own words, here is Daniel Hornsby's Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel Via Negativa:
Let’s get the title out of the way: via negativa—the “negative road” or the “way of denial”—refers to a loose theological tradition within Christianity that rejects language that tries to define what God is, preferring to dwell on what the divine isn’t. Christian practices of imageless prayer (like that laid out in the medieval text The Cloud of Unknowing) fall into this tradition, and you can get a good sense of it from the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus and John of the Cross. To put it simply (stupidly?), it leaves some room for mystery and acknowledges the limitations of human understanding when dealing with infinity. My novel follows a priest who is particularly fond of this tradition, occasionally wielding it to deny his own painful relationships and the responsibility that comes with them, especially with his willful ignorance of the sex abuse crisis. (A couple other quick plot points, so the songs make sense: on a cross-country road trip, he picks up a wounded coyote and tries to heal it. There’s also a gun…hopefully this hooks you.)
I play in a band called Beauty School here in Memphis, and writing/listening to music has had a huge impact on my process. Music, which kind of wobbles between being axiomatic and non-axiomatic, with sounds coded and recoded with meaning, is just perfect for this dance between knowing and not knowing. There’s a lot of music in the book, and while I was writing it, I was constantly retooling playlists. Some songs evoked an idea, others a specific scene I was trying to figure out, and others were like training montage music, Jock Jams but for a writer (truly the opposite of a jock). This playlist is a bit literal, and (like my book) not quite as hip as I’d hope it to be, but some of these songs are true gems I’m happy to share with you.
Coyote - Joni Mitchell
How could I not? I mean, a road song with a coyote for a road novel with a coyote. Sam Shepard, who most people think is the titular coyote, is a favorite writer of mine. The plays, of course, but he’s put together some real good prose, too. There’s a little homage to one his shorts in my novel, in a scene set in a Cracker Barrel. And Joni has to be the most talented singer and songwriter—most people can do neither thing as well as her, none can do both (except maybe Dolly Parton). I love the narrator’s delighted bafflement with the whole affair here.
Sometimes It Snows in April - Prince
I could’ve chosen a number of songs by Prince, as he’s one of my all-time favorite musicians. As my priest narrator says, there’s a mystical theology to Prince. It’s not a stretch; here’s “I Would Die 4 U”: I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, I’m something you’ll never understand.” That’s the kind of negative theology I can get into. I chose this one because it’s full of that same sadness from “Purple Rain” (a track that haunts my narrator), but more personal here, telling the story of Tracy, the speaker’s dead friend. I think it nails some of the texture of the relationship between my narrator and his best friend, a bond that is at the heart of the novel. One of the saddest songs in the world, up there with “A House Is Not a Home.” Insert 7 or 8 weeping emojis. [Don’t really need to insert emojis.]
Make It Real - Dear Nora
This is one of those Jock Jams for artists. It’s a mantra song, and you get the sense songwriter Katy Davidson is singing it to herself, about making music. It’s a shorty, and it goes like this:
Make it real, or fade it out.
I need some help here.
Make it good, or put it to rest,
And do it with confidence.
Artists need to hear this. Go for it, or kill it. It’s especially useful for writers, who can waffle on a novel for way too long, wondering if it’s worth the time.
Wichita Lineman - The Meters
A bar owner subjects our narrator to a karaoke version of this one. I love this Meters version—don’t get me wrong, Glen’s is beautiful, but this replaces the excessive orchestral shit with a more stripped down, tremolonely soul arrangement. The song is thick with longing, a speaker driving across Kansas pining his ass off. To need more than want—what a line.
Suspended in Gaffa - Kate Bush
Kate Bush, our interdimensional duchess. This one seems to be about a kind of mystical experience that catches the speaker off guard—she gets it once, and then keeps trying to “have it all” again, and the divine is like, “Not till I’m ready for you.” This had to be common among the saints and mystics. What do you do once the Holy Spirit ghosts you? I used to get complex migraines and they actually gave me some insight into the brain, the nature of reality, that kind of bullshit (I gave these philosophical headaches to Fr. Dan). They were terrible, but with these bizarre effects (face blindness, strange geometrical absences). Sometimes I miss them.
Spirit in the Dark - Aretha Franklin
The queen of soul, and souls. This song is truly sublime. I love her God that sneaks around in the dark, that conceals Herself.
Cloud of Unknowing - Swans
On the nose, I know. Swans took the title from a medieval prayer guide that figures heavily in my book. But is there anything that conjures the terror of seeing God like drones and noise?
Brompton Oratory - Nick Cave
Kind of a nasty conceit, but also romantic in a way only Cave can be. He’s had sex with his beloved, and when he takes communion he can smell her on his fingers. “I wish that I was made of stone/ so that I would not have to see/ beauty impossible to define, beauty impossible to believe/beauty impossible to endure…the smell of you still on my hands as I bring the cup up to my lips.” That’s a nice bit of negative theology, too. (If this is too gross, by all means cut it, I’m sorry.)
Calm - Owl’s Head Mountain
This one’s by a friend, who is also a philosopher. One of OHM’s moves is to combine electronic music and Appalachian folk stuff, but it sounds much cooler than that description. The songs, in my opinion, have a spiritual dimension, something the soul of a banjo player trapped in a robot. (OHM really should be asked to score a movie.) I’ve played a few shows with him myself, and he’d tell me about phenomenology and Maurice Merleau-Ponty while he was finishing his dissertation and I was revising the manuscript. Rubbing elbows with these phenomenological ideas was helpful, actually, in thinking about the unfolding of events from my narrator’s point of view.
Random Rules - Silver Jews
“I asked a painter why the road was colored black/he said Steve it’s because people leave and no highway can bring them back.” When I was young and dumb I thought David Berman’s first name was Steve. This whole album is full of these bright diamonds, and he’s one of those mystical dudes (like Leonard Cohen), a standup delivering the cosmic joke. Here’s a line from “We Are Real” that could go on my grave: “My ski vest has buttons like convenience store mirrors and they help me see/that everything in this room right now is a part of me.” The mystical insight! The cover of my book pays tribute to the cover of American Water, an absolute treasure since I discovered it when I was 20ish.
Daniel Hornsby was born in Muncie, Indiana. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan, and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. His stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Missouri Review, and Joyland. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
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