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March 22, 2021
Brock Clarke's Playlist for His Essay Collection "I, Grape"
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.
Fiction writer Brock Clarke turns his keen eye to the work of others in his witty and insightful essay collection I, Grape.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"Novelist Clarke chronicles in this whimsical outing his obsession with fiction as an art form. . . This impassioned defense of fiction is great for dipping into, and those who engage with fiction on a deep level will find much here that piques."
In his words, here is Brock Clarke's Book Notes music playlist for his essay collection I, Grape:
I, Grape is a new thing for me—a book of essays about the fiction writers and novels and stories that I love, and don't love. And also about the people and places I love. And also about how difficult it can be to express that love, to do justice to it. Which is why—I argue in I, Grape--we turn to fiction, which can do things with degraded materials (ie: us) that we ourselves cannot.
So, yeah, for a fiction writer like me, it's a new thing, but a new thing that is made up, in places, of old parts: I wrote the oldest essay twenty years ago, and I wrote the most recent one not long before I wrote this playlist. And so I thought I'd go back and try to put together what I was listening to when I wrote some of these essays.
Stephen Malkmus, "Jo-Jo's Jacket" and Frank Black and the Catholics' "Robert Onion."
These great frontmen of two great bands started making great solo albums at the end of the last century. As I was working on the book's first essay about why memoir seemed to matter to a lot of people, and why it didn't matter to me, I was listening to these musicians, these songs. No connection, thematically, I don't think, although Malkmus does sing, "I'm not what you think I am..." A good line for someone trying to think about fiction and memoir.
"Pretty Little Poison" by Robbie Fulks and Lucinda Williams
I lived in Clemson, South Carolina, from 1998-2001. Which is when I first started writing these essays, and there weren't many days that went by during that stretch when I wasn't listening to either Fulks or Williams.
"Dried Up," by the Ass Ponys
I've written about this band before for Largehearted Boy, and in fact I write about them in I, Grape, and in fact I wrote about half of the book while I was living in Cincinnati, which is where the Ass Ponys were from (the drummer, Dave Morrison, was my neighbor). What a band! They sometimes made it difficult for you to love them—the name, for instance—but then, the things most worth loving usually do.
"Out in the Streets," by the Shangri-Las
This is such a great, wistful, haunting song. At least, I'm haunted by it. It's a mess, with odd changes in tempo, volume, and lots of big strings, and sporadic piano plinking. But the messiness is one of the reasons I come back to this song, and this group.
"Satisfy my Mind," by the Greenhornes
Another Cincinnati band, garage rock. They sound like they could have been contemporaries with the Shangri-Las. They weren'tthis song was made in the first decade of this century. I often would see the singer at the Blue Jay diner down the street from my house, eating goetta. What's goetta? Oh, you should look it up, and then go to Cincinnati to have some.
"Theme from 'Cheers,'" by Titus Andronicus
As you know by now, I've lived in Clemson, and Cincinnati, and now I live in Portland, Maine. But no matter where I've lived, I always feel this ridiculous, self-destructive longing for my hometown, Little Falls, NY. I talk about why in I, Grape. But this song says why, too.
Brock Clarke is an award-winning author of eight works of fiction, including the bestselling An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. He lives in Maine and teaches at Bowdoin College.
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