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June 14, 2022
Anna Dorn's Playlist for Her Novel "Exalted"
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.
Anna Dorn's second novel Exalted is smart and perceptive, and once again cements her place among the funniest writers writing today.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"Dorn returns with a hilarious and surprising chronicle of astrology packed with sharp cultural commentary... The narrative conveys a deep knowledge of astrology, which the characters skewer with sharp-witted observations ('Freud,' Emily claims, 'is just Astrology for men'). Compulsively readable, this consistently shocks and delights."
In her own words, here is Anna Dorn's Book Notes music playlist for her novel Exalted:
Exalted follows two hot messes searching for love in Southern California. The first is Emily, a failed actress in LA who runs the popular astrology meme account Exalted and reads birth charts for cash. She becomes obsessed with a client named Beau based on his blessed astrological placements and starts stalking him. The second is Dawn, a middle-aged party girl in the Inland Empire who was just dumped and is desperate for a new love interest to save her from her sad life. She’s a big fan of Exalted and tries to seduce its creator. As it turns out, the two women have more in common than their interest in the cosmos.
Here are some songs that inspired the novel.
“Everything In Its Right Place” - Radiohead
This is probably Exalted’s theme song. Emily becomes obsessed with Beau’s birth chart because all his planets are in the right places. She’s also obsessed with Radiohead. With my first novel, Vagablonde, I tried to be very current and contemporary with the references, and since years pass between the drafting of a novel and its publication, I was cringing a bit at some of it when it came out. So with Exalted, I purposely created a character who had opted out of pop culture for over a decade. She loves Radiohead because it’s what she listened to in high school, before she was a failure.
“Come As You Are” - Nirvana
Emily spends a lot of her time at a burlesque club throwing money at women pole-dancing to Nirvana. Her favorite dancer, Onyx, always performs to this song.
“Lucky” - Britney Spears
Emily’s least favorite dancer who becomes her best friend always dances to Britney, and “Lucky” is Emily’s favorite, probably because it’s about a lonely girl in Hollywood.
“California Dreamin’” - The Mama and the Papas
Exalted is all about California Dreamin’. It’s also about class anxiety. California doesn’t have the same class signifiers as the East Coast because most of the money here is new, meaning no one knows exactly what money looks like. Both main characters in my book frequently assume people are rich when they aren’t. They assume everyone has money but them. And they both dream of that ideal California life, albeit slightly different versions. For Emily, it’s being an indie film starlet. For Dawn, it’s being on a boat in the sun. Dawn would love to hear this song on a boat.
“Money Power Glory” - Lana Del Rey
Both of my protagonists are on the hunt for money, power, and glory. I guess we all are to some extent, and Lana Del Rey guides all my work in some way. Lana and I are both East Coast girls who fled to California and make art that celebrates and mythologizes it. I call our style Southern California Gothic.
“Everywhere” - Fleetwood Mac
Just like Emily hasn’t stopped listening to Radiohead since high school, Dawn hasn’t stopped listening to Fleetwood Mac since her glory days. At one point in the novel, Dawn and her best friend do coke to Fleetwood Mac, and I imagine it’s this song—among Fleetwood Mac’s most upbeat.
“A Long December” - Counting Crows
Emily loves Counting Crows kind of as a joke but also not really and listens to them sort of ironically but also sincerely throughout the book. I feel similarly about this song.
“Needy” - Ariana Grande
At one point Dawn hears Ariana Grande playing inside a Coffee Bean and recalls an ex who loved her. Dawn thinks Ariana sounds like bubble gum but she likes bubble gum okay. I imagine if Dawn dove into Ariana’s catalog she’d feel particularly connected to “Needy,” which is all about craving attention to soothe a roller coaster of emotions.
“Computer Love” - Kraftwerk
This song is about staring at screens on lonely nights, which Exalted is also about.
“Where Ya At (Feat. Drake)” - Future
Drake is Emily’s “least favorite Scorpio,” but the coffee shop slash bar she frequents is always playing him. Future, too. Emily hates this type of music, but it surrounds her constantly, heightening her sense of alienation.
“Pictures of You” - The Cure
There’s a romantic scene where Beau takes photos of Emily, and her black hair and goth attitude feel very The Cure to me. And she’s “always so lost in the dark.”
“It Could Be Sweet” - Portishead
Portishead comes on at one point when Emily is at Mirror Box and she’s “soothed by the sounds of the ‘90s, a superior time, when there were no algorithms and Winona was queen.” This song is all about longing for a love that could be good but isn’t working, a theme of the novel.
Anna Dorn is a writer living in Los Angeles. A former criminal defense attorney, her article on juvenile life without parole was cited by Justice Sotomayor in Jones v. Mississippi (2021). She has written about culture for LA Review of Books, The Hairpin, and Vice Magazine. She is the author of the novel Vagablonde and the memoir Bad Lawyer.
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