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November 10, 2022
Scott Gould's Playlist for His Novel "The Hammerhead Chronicles"
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.
Scott Gould's The Hammerhead Chronicles captures the essence of small town Southern life through a menagerie of oddball characters.
In his own words, here is Scott Gould's Book Notes music playlist for his novel The Hammerhead Chronicles:
The Hammerhead Chronicles features seven different narrators who alternate telling the story. (Okay, maybe eight, depending on how you’re counting. Split the difference. Seven and a half.) I won’t take up time or space to give you a character sketch for each of them, but I will confess this: songs—or the mention of a musical group—punctuate the plot at some pretty important moments in the narrator’s stories, stories that ultimately intersect and entwine each other. Here’s the music that makes an appearance in The Hammerhead Chronicles:
Claude’s ringtone for his annoying sister-in-law, the ringtone he ignores when she calls to inform him his soon-to-be-ex-wife has passed away: “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen.
The cassette Samuel naps to in the front seat of his cranberry-colored Lincoln Continental when his buddy Claude steals his dead wife’s ashes and screams for a getaway driver: The Temptations Greatest Hits. I’m guessing the song might be “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” (Spoiler note #1: Sorry, but there’s no sly, cryptic, non-spoiler way to tiptoe around the fact that somebody dies. And somebody else steals the ashes.)
The song Claude and Peg hear a bar band playing the night they meet…and end up naming their daughter after, which has never made the daughter real happy: “Marlene” by The Killer Whales. (Trivia note #1: The Killer Whales were an extremely popular South Carolina-based band in the early ‘80s. I made dozens of pilgrimages to their shows while I was in college and graduate school. I figure if they ever do a reunion tour, mentioning them in a novel gets me on the VIP list forever.)
The song Samuel imagines his mother dancing to when he gazes at a grainy, black-and-white photo from her high school days: Something by The Four Tops. (Samuel does love his Motown.) If you were to ask him, I’m guessing Samuel’s choice would be “It’s the Same Old Song.”
The song stuck in Claude’s head when he and his expensive bicycle play chicken with a BMW roadster on a mountain switchback: “The Things We Do for Love” by 10cc. (Spoiler note #2: Claude and the bicycle lose.)
The song that flies into Claude’s brain-injured head following the aforementioned chicken incident, when he wonders why he can’t make sense of things: “Stop Making Sense” by Talking Heads. (Confession note #1: In retrospect, this choice might be a little too on-the-nose. Probably too late to change.)
The song Cheryl weaponizes like a musical shiv when she confronts her husband about his affair: “Little Willy” by Sweet. (Spoiler note #3: This isn’t really a spoiler. Just a fun way to slide a cheesy pop song from 1972 into the plot of a novel.)
The song playing on Samuel’s Motown’s Greatest Hits cassette the moment before he tells a racist the thing a racist never wants to hear: A Diana Ross and the Supremes song, probably “Baby Love.”
The song playing on Samuel’s Motown’s Greatest Hits cassette the moment he tells a racist the thing a racist never wants to hear: “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye. (Confession note #2: Early in the editing process, a trusted reader said that using a song at that point in the narrative was a bad idea. And I said, “but I need a song here for the Largehearted Boy play list, so your editorial rationale is completely invalid.”)
Songs I should have put in The Hammerhead Chronicles if I’d thought about it more: “Call Me the Breeze” by Lynyrd Skynyrd would play on repeat in LeJeune’s ’67 Mustang. Marlene would have a Ramones lyric tattooed across her shoulder, Walking down the street trying to forget yesterday from the song “Poison Heart.” Peg, the only narrator who is actually dead, would listen to Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” (Trivia note #2: Guns ‘N Roses did a really sappy, melodramatic cover version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in the early '90s. Confession note #3: I didn’t even consider the Guns N’ Roses version.) And Wallace and Wade, the twin, gay, racist bookstore owners who nightly sit on their porch and sip their favorite beverage, a Dark ‘N Stormy, would no doubt ask Alexa to sample the soundtrack from Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary. “Ashokan Farewell” would bring them both to salty, ironic, Confederate tears.
Scott Gould is the author of the story collection, Strangers to Temptation (Hub City Press), and the novels, Whereabouts (Koehler Books) and The Hammerhead Chronicles (University of North Georgia Press). His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, New Ohio Review, Crazyhorse, Carolina Quarterly, New Stories from the South and others. He is a multiple winner of the Individual Artist Fellowship in Prose from the South Carolina Arts Commission, as well as the Fiction Fellowship from the South Carolina Academy of Authors. He lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina. More information is available at scottgouldwriter.com.
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