« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
September 19, 2022
Joe Meno's Playlist for His Novel "Book of Extraordinary Tragedies"
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.
Joe Meno's Book of Extraordinary Tragedies is a propulsive and surprisingly funny novel about family placed in tough situations.
Library Journal wrote of the book:
"[A] richly embroidered coming-of-age story . . . An uplifting and interesting exploration of one family’s struggle for existence in the United States, against the backdrop of history, classical and popular music, and the financial crisis of 2007–08; highly recommended."
In her own words, here is Joe Meno's Book Notes music playlist for his novel Book of Extraordinary Tragedies:
Everything in fiction, for me, comes back to character and tone. I can never remember the plots of the books I love but I can always remember the people, their interactions, and the feelings of the scenes themselves. I had been writing about a family on the far south side of Chicago when I came across a box of my grandfather’s classical music albums in my mother’s garage. Although he was a tough, Yugoslavian-American factory worker in the steel mills on the east side and later a carpenter, he was also apparently an avid classical music fan. Something about those records offered the opportunity explore his past, the fictional family I had been writing about, and the city of Chicago in a much more complicated way than it’s usually portrayed.
The book ended up becoming a kind of symphony, with a conventional four-part structure, an attempt to capture both the epic and the ordinary as a family faces the events leading up to the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009. Here are a few musical compositions that inspired the book:
1 Monteverdi, Overture to Orfeo
Aleks, the twenty-year-old narrator of the novel, struggles with challenges from his own life and the life of his family, along with living with hearing loss. There’s something about the opening of this opera that follows the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice that feels oddly majestic and buoyant. The bright, resolute trumpet contrasts all of the tragedies that are about to unfold in the story and I wanted the opening chapter of this book to have that same epic, buoyant feeling, moments just before tragedy happens.
2 Mozart, Symphony No. 8
As children, Aleks and his older sister, Isobel, are classical musical prodigies and classical European music becomes their secret language, the way they best express themselves to each other. This brief composition by a young Mozart has a wonderful leaping quality that builds into a series of rapid string passages. In the book, Aleks is constantly riding his bicycle from one challenge to another as he attempts to support his older sister and other family members, and there’s something about the rushing quality of this piece that feels adventurous and urgent.
3 David Bowie, “Life on Mars”
At the age of ten, Aleks begins to lose his hearing. After failing an audition, Aleks has to face the end of his musical career. Together Aleks and Isobel commiserate under his bed and listen to David Bowie on the radio, which suggests a much more complete, complicated vision of the world than the one he has encountered in the classical compositions he has been forced to learn. Bowie becomes part of their secret musical language as both Aleks and Isobel turn to facing their ongoing problems outside of the familiarity of classical music.
4 Ghostface Killah featuring Mary J. Blige
Once Aleks leaves classical music behind, he begins to explore other genres including '90s hip-hop. This track is probably one of my favorite pieces of music of the last thirty years. In it, Ghostface details some of the challenges he faced growing up on Staten Island with his family. It feels more like a brilliant short story or a poem than a song and the hook by Mary J. Blige ends with a feeling of extraordinary optimism. As Aleks struggles taking care of his older sister, his niece, and his mother, he begins working at a plastics factory where he can sing as loud as he likes. He finds inspiration in this song and many other Wu-Tang tracks, which he can shout along to.
5 Kanye West, Graduation
Few performers or producers have redefined modern music, particularly Chicago music, more than Kanye. Regardless of how you might feel about his personality or politics, those first three Kanye albums shifted the possibilities of hip-hop and painted a picture of a young man facing real challenges, from working a series of dead-end jobs to the illness of a beloved family member. When Graduation came out, it felt like the genre had once again changed. Fifteen years later, “The Glory” and “Homecoming” sound as relevant and as powerful as anything anyone is putting out right now, completely personal, oftentimes heartbreaking and hilarious, always bombastic.
For Aleks, hearing Graduation confirms that there is an entire life, a world outside the small south side neighborhood he knows, which gives him the opportunity to meet Alex, a young woman who challenges him to continue to broaden his understanding of life and poetry and music.
6 Kid Cudi, “Man on the Moon”
Another incredible hip-hop raconteur whose lyrics detail a certain kind of Midwestern childhood, struggles with familiar family problems, and the need to be heard. In this track, Cudi seems to be confronting his inner critic and the voices of people around him who can’t understand or don’t want to understand the kind of music he wants to make. In the end, he resolves to exist outside whatever’s popular or currently acceptable in order to follow his own vision.
As Aleks begins to reconcile his sense of the future with his family’s dependence, he soon faces the difficulty of ignoring his own doubts and the voices of all the people around him.
7 Chopin, Etude in C#Minor, Opus 25, No. 7
This emotionally-resonant piece for cello and piano captures the conflict, ferocity, and longing that Aleks and Isobel share for each other. Beginning with a minor, dark, distinctly Eastern-European melody, the composition shifts unexpectedly to a soft, dreamy denouement before concluding with a return to the minor opening. As Aleks and Isobel find a way to challenge each other and stand on their own, both of them return to music as a way to help them face their ongoing struggles. After a violent run-in with Isobel’s ex-boyfriend, Aleks drags himself home and sits on the front steps and listens to Isobel playing this etude, hearing their entire future contained within it.
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and journalist who lives in Chicago. Winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a finalist for the Story Prize, Meno is the best-selling author of several novels and short story collections including Marvel and a Wonder, The Great Perhaps, The Boy Detective Fails, and Hairstyles of the Damned. He is a professor in the English and Creative Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.
If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider making a donation.
