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March 9, 2021
Forsyth Harmon's Playlist for Their Novel "Justine"
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.
Forsyth Harmon's Justine is one of the strongest debut novels I have read in years, a propulsive examination of girlhood in the late '90s.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"A propulsive depiction of what a summer in the New York suburbs felt like before iPhones and what a crush can drive someone to do. . . . A novel that captures the emotional intensity, confusion, and quickness of adolescence."
In their words, here is Forsyth Harmon's Book Notes music playlist for their debut novel Justine:
This playlist has evolved alongside Justine from the beginning. The music is woven into the novel, both explicitly—when it plays in the background, a character mentions a song, or lyrics appear in the illustrations—and implicitly, as I often listened for inspiration. I found nothing more effective than these songs to bring me back to the beauty and pain of being a teenager in 1999, the year Justine takes place.
1. “Fairytale in the Supermarket” by The Raincoats
I love a good supermarket story—from Alan Ginsberg’s poem “A Supermarket in California” to the 1999 indie film Go to Sayaka Murata’s recent novel Convenience Store Woman. What song could be more perfect to soundtrack Justine, a coming-of-age novel about love, obsession, and loss in a Long Island Stop & Shop? This song is the self-taught musicians’ very first single. “No one teaches you how to live!”
2. “Lonely Days” by Future Bible Heroes
This song was playing when, in my first-year undergrad dorm room, the scale displayed the lowest weight of my anorexia career—an experience I drew on to write this novel. Anorexia is a lonely disease. I like this song for Justine’s narrator, Ali, driving around her suburban Long Island town just as her eating disorder begins to take its grip. My favorite lyrics are always both sad and funny: “Don’t forget to stop and smell the glue / No one falls in love with you.” I like Stephin Merritt projects for this reason; he does funny/sad better than anyone since The Smiths.
3. “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” by The Smiths
Speaking of, Justine’s title character is obsessed with The Smiths. If you look closely, lyrics from this song appear on the keys of the cash register illustrated on page six of the book. It’s a tragedy that Morrisey has since joined the far right. How could a person who offered so much solace to the lonely and forsaken now ally with forces who would crush them? Miserable now indeed.
4. “Les Yper Sound” by Stereolab
This track pulses with futuristic exuberance, and when I hear it, I imagine groceries moving down a conveyor belt, Ali then stacking them into double paper bags like blocks in Tetris. Stereolab lyrics abound with leftist political slogans and rebukes of capitalism, so I especially like the idea of them playing in the Stop & Shop, that epicenter of commercial convenience.
5. “Can I Kick It?” by A Tribe Called Quest
I’ll never forget watching Larry Clark’s Kids in the theatre as a young teenager. This Tribe song soundtracked a skateboarding scene in Washington Square Park. I sometimes think of Justine as being about the kids who watched Kids. The Ryan character in particular would have been intrigued by the film. He’s a skateboarder, and a big fan of '80s and '90s tristate hip hop. I love the Native Tongues collective, and I would have included De La Soul’s “Wonce Again Long Island” on this playlist if it were on Spotify.
6. “Sugarcube” by Yo La Tengo
I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is my favorite Yo La Tengo album, and “Sugarcube” embodies the dynamic of Ali’s obsession with Justine so well: “Whatever you want from me / Is what I want to do for you / Sweeter than a drop of blood / From a sugarcube.” When I saw Yo La Tengo perform at Maxwell’s, I shouted a request for “Tom Courtenay,” and they played it! What a beautiful song, and what a thrill to hear it played live by request.
7. “Hypocrite” by Lush
I imagine this song plays when Nina, Ali’s rival, appears at Ali’s register at the Stop & Shop. There’s something muscular to the guitar, and the vocals manage to be both ethereal and powerful. It’s a gorgeous assault, which is pretty much how Ali experiences Nina’s visit. Lush may have been the very first band I saw live in New York City. I wanted to be Miki Berenyi, with that fire engine red hair.
8. “Definition” by Black Star
Ryan works at the local gas station. He takes off on a monologue inspired by this song, which blasts from Ali’s car stereo as she stops to get her tank filled. Ryan tells Ali that Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s collaboration, Black Star, got their name from The Black Star shipping line, founded in 1919 by Marcus Garvey. Ali later goes to the local library to check out a book on the Jamaican political activist. The song itself is a joyful celebration of both Brooklyn and hip hop itself.
9. “Hot Freaks” by Guided by Voices
I was fascinated by Robert Pollard slamming beers and high kicking when I saw Guided by Voices in concert at Irving Plaza. I find this song oddly sexy in the way it juxtaposes the erotic, the culinary, and the alcoholic—all three of which the young characters in Justine explore (or repress)—and I imagine it playing when Ali is in Ryan’s bedroom.
10. “Strictly Business” by EPMD
Ryan makes an “educational cassette tape” for Ali that includes this song from the Long Island-originated EPMD, which samples Eric Clapton’s cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sherriff.” The complications around being a hip hop-obsessed white kid living in segregated suburbs with a cop for a father mostly escape Ryan, although not entirely; there is a copy of Mark Costello and David Foster Wallace’s Signifying Rappers on his bed.
11. “Fast as You Can” by Fiona Apple
Fiona Apple is all over this book. Justine notices that Ali’s bed is made up with the same sheets that appear in Apple’s famous “Criminal” video, and the illustrations on page nine, one of which is featured on the book cover, are inspired by that video, too. I love “Fast as You Can” for how it shifts gears—between fast-paced and slow, dominating and submissive—creating a destabilizing effect that feels so true to young love. I imagine it plays when Ali and Justine visit a very late nineties institution: Tower Records. Full disclosure: Spotify reports me as being in the .1% of top Fiona Apple listeners of 2020.
12. “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Ms. Lauryn Hill
This is one of those very few covers that’s better than the original. It captures Ali’s unexpressed love for Justine so beautifully. I hear it when, after a wild Fourth of July party, Ali tucks Justine into bed, then lies beside and curls into her.
Forsyth Harmon is the illustrator of The Art of the Affair by Catherine Lacey, and has collaborated with writers Alexander Chee, Hermione Hoby, Sanaë Lemoine, and Leslie Jamison. She is also the illustrator of the essay collection, Girlhood, by Melissa Febos. Forsyth’s work has been featured in The Believer, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Awl. She received an MFA from Columbia University and currently lives in New York.
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