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August 1, 2022
Noa Menhaim's Playlist for Her Essay Collection "The Life Fantastic"
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.
The essays in Noa Menhaim's collection The Life Fantastic vividly explore the origins of Western culture through the lens of history, literature, and popular culture.
In her own words, here is Noa Menhaim's Book Notes music playlist for her essay collectionThe Life Fantastic: Myth, History, Pop and Folklore in the Making of Western Culture:
In this collection of essays, I tried to chart the history and trajectory of some of the stories central to Western culture - Witches and vampires, lost books and ancient curses, werewolves and robots - the reincarnations of archetypes and the evolution of icons. It is rife with bizarre metamorphoses of gods into monsters, monsters into heroes and myth into metaphor. I tried to follow them as they hid in fairy tales, lurked in the minds of poets and madmen, burrowed in the recesses of history and found shelter in the crowded, chaotic hubbub of downtown popular culture. Their traces can be found everywhere: in literature, cinema, television, and of course, music. Many of the chapters abound with musical references, and like the book itself, these choices are... eclectic, ranging from pop to blues, rock to indie. I listened to them (and to many others, from Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries to Star Wars' Imperial March, don't judge!) While writing, and I'm happy for the opportunity to share some of them with you.
1. Hungry like the Wolf, Duran Duran
When Duran Duran sang" I'll be upon you by the moonlight side", they leaned into the common myths about the moon's influence on human behavior, and werewolves, which I examine in chapter 13. To this day police stations and emergency rooms increase manpower on full moon nights, for fear that something about them turns us into lunatics. But a comprehensive study done on this issue has unequivocally ruled that the gravity of our loyal satellite has nothing to do with what is going on in our minds.
2. Sympathy for the Devil, Rolling Stones
I paraphrased this song's famous opening line in the first sentence of chapter 10, which deals with our complex relationship with Lucifer and its surprising origins, from Persia through ancient Rome to the English Civil War and beyond. Was the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled convincing us he didn’t exist? Or was it something else entirely?
3. Forever Autumn, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds
I listened to this song over and over as I tried to arrange the many (so many!) sidenotes in the book, repeatedly coming to a moment when the "Thunder Child" sails away while the Martians cut through bridge after bridge along the Thames. Specifically, chapter 15 explores our connection to the Red Planet, our hope to find life on it and our desire to live on it. it also refers to the other great musical piece inspired by it, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. And of course, it has lots of aliens in it.
4. Man on the Moon, R.E.M
I knew this song long before I ever heard of Andy Kaufman or conspiracy theories of the moon landing, so I didn't really understand whet Michael Stipe was talking about when he sang, "If you believed they put a man on the moon / If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve". I devoted Chapter 14 to trying to understand why the moon casts a spell on us, the kind of paranoia that spawned the belief that Neil Armstrong never reached it, and the Zeitgeist that R.E.M captured in their song.
5. The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke, Queen
The man who created the enigmatic work described in this song was once one of the most promising painters of his time, until - following a psychotic episode in 1843 - he killed his father and tried to flee England. He spent the rest of his life in an institution, where he also worked on The Fairy Fellers Master-Stroke. "Touched by the Fairies" was a euphemism for someone who was not in the right mind, but also an expression of our intense longing for the lords and ladies of Efland, which I visit in chapter 20.
6. In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus), Zager and Evans
One of the themes I return to again and again in the book is Time: what we lost to it, how we attempt to fight it and how we try to imagine the deep time of the future. Will it be a dystopian one, where "You won't need no husband, won't need no wife / You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too / From the bottom of a long glass tube", as is depicted in works like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's 1984? Or will it be a utopia? And perhaps, as the last chapter of the book seeks to prove, one's utopia is always, inexorably, the others dystopia?
7. Vampire, Antsy Pants
Few monsters have undergone a more extreme makeover then the vampire: from filthy cemetery dwellers to sophisticated urbane aristocrats, from Christian princes to Jewish parasites, from unscrupulous murderers to tragic heroes, as the lyrics of this song illustrate: "I am a vampire / I have lost my fangs /So I'm sad and I feel lonely / So I cry and I'm very angry". Need I say more? If so, you will find it in the chapter 12.
8. Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush
The Romantic period gave us Gothic horror, the terror of the sublime, the awesome in all its original sense, which I describe in chapter 30. It explored our deep and lingering fears and desires, in works like those of Anne Radcliffe or Charlotte and Emily Bronte, in her doomed love story Wuthering Heights, which is captured chillingly and beautifully by Kate Bush singing as the wandering, obsessive spirit of Catherine Earnshaw: "Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy / I've come home, I'm so cold / Let me in your window".
9. I Put a Spell on You, Screamin' Jay Hawkins
When Jalacy Hawkins first released this single, he was not yet Screamin' Jay. But the notorious version, all howls and moans, released in 1956, was banned from the radio for what was dubbed its "cannibalistic" style. That didn't stop Hawkins. On the contrary. In the clip, he appears in full regalia, complete with a skull in his hand and a pair of bones stuck to his nose. His slow, heavy blues, screams and grimaces, and the few words that spoke of witchcraft, evoked the spirit of voodoo. You can read more about the West's horror of black magic, zombies and cannibalism in chapter 29.
10. Monster Mash, Bobby Pickett
"I was working in the lab, late one night / When my eyes beheld an eerie sight / For my monster from his slab, began to rise". These could - almost - be the words of Mary Shelley, when she wrote in her diary in 1818 about the dream that gave birth to the first modern monster, Frankenstein - and the creature he created. Yes, Dr. Frankenstein is the real monster here, and if you want to know why, you will find the answer in Chapter 28.
Noa Manheim is an essayist, editor, lecturer, literary critic and head of the Hebrew literature department at Israel's largest publishing house. Manheim has made many appearances on radio and television. She is also known for her screenwriting, script editing and TV series development.
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