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December 15, 2022
Jeff Chon's Playlist for His Story Collection "This Is the Afterlife"
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.
Jeff Chon's story collection This Is the Afterlife is filled with warmth, humor, and surprising turns.
In his own words, here is Jeff Chon's Book Notes music playlist for his story collection This Is the Afterlife:
While piecing This Is the Afterlife together, it struck me how much music was referenced in these stories. I’m definitely not alone in using diagetic sounds in stories. For me, it’s fascinating knowing just the placement of one song might change the way a reader sees things.
The interesting thing—for me, anyway—in creating this playlist, as opposed to for a novel, was that these stories were written in very disparate moments, as opposed to the somewhat sustained timeframe of a novel. I listened to lots of different kinds of music when thinking about, drafting, and revising these stories. Unless there were specific memories attached, trying to crystallize each story into one song was challenging at times—and a sincerely fun time.
“Antisocial,” by Anthrax
“P.A.L.A.D.I.N.” takes place during the mid ‘80s, a small town caught up in Satanic Panic. As I was writing it (that particular gentleman was president at the time—but maybe that’s irrelevant in the grand scheme of things), I was amazed by how none of this felt like ancient history. These dummies are evoking Satan right now as we speak. I’ve always had a soft spot for metalheads. They were always some of the most genuinely good people I knew as a kid. I like this song because it’s in that “I’m not crazy/You’re the one who’s crazy” school of thought: we’re not the anti-social ones; the pastors and the politicians and all the adults who lie and cheat are. Anthrax rules. \m/
“Running to Stand Still,” by U2
“Tanuki” is the story a son processing the knowledge his estranged mother is a hoarder. I know the literal “poison” in this song is heroin, but there’s a sense of hopelessness in the lyrics that I feel relate to the mother’s anguish in my story. There’s this yearning to be free from pain that I connected with, and I’d like to imagine this song reminds the main character of his mother.
“Erase,” by They Might Be Giants
“All These Lives” is the closest thing this collection has to a love story, and it happens to involve two people mourning the death of a necrophiliac. These two are going to have a lot of baggage to sift through if this thing’s going to ever have a chance, a lot of bad memories they’ll have to shed.
“I Will Possess Your Heart,” by Death Cab for Cutie
I find it funny this song’s longer than the actual story, which is called “Stay Put.” It really gets to the heart of how the stalker in this story feels about the human being he’s terrorizing—all that pathetic anger and resentment twisted into what he sees as heightened romantic ideals.
“Brain of J,” by Pearl Jam
“There’s No Connection Here” is a story about a friendship with a broken man who’s bought into conspiracy theories and is now planning for the impending apocalypse. Because they’re the ones who’ve invented these catastrophic events out of whole cloth, the people who believe in these scenarios always believe they’ll be the ones who find their way to the other side of the apocalypse. Some people feel so helpless, they’ve convinced themselves the only way they can thrive is if someone finally torches everything. And I think we’ve all felt something like this in our weakest of weakest moments.
“Thought I Knew You,” by Matthew Sweet
“This is Not Happening” is a break-up story set against the backdrop of a high school drunk driving awareness assembly, and it was a lot of fun to write because of all the “crowd shots” (also featured in “P.A.L.A.D.I.N.”), where people basically become the scenery. There’s a real sense of betrayal that just bubbles up in the protagonist’s guts throughout this story, and like the song, he can’t seem to let go of the pain. He really sees himself as the aggrieved party, as one does. Very underappreciated break-up song.
“Secret,” by Madonna
This song appears at a pivotal point in “You Will Not Be Redeemed by the Likes of Them.” It’s an extremely ugly moment. I wanted to explore the idea of payback and trying to make amends when it’s already too late. What if you don’t deserve an apology? What if the person who wants to make things right doesn’t realize you’ve already wronged them in the most irreparable ways?
“When the Children Cry,” by White Lion
“I’ll Allow It, Just This Once” is the third and final appearance by a metalhead in this collection. Main difference here is this time it’s more hair/glam metal. This song was on my mind a lot while writing this thing because when I was a younger person, I used to make fun of this song. We had a friend at school who was really into hair metal (Tommy Lee was his hero, which is really interesting given the context of all this), and this was the song we’d roast him with. Then he’d point at someone’s T-shirt, which invariably had Morrissey or David Gahan’s face on it, and then we’d all laugh. You get older and realize you were actually doing a really shitty thing that had little to do with making fun of the music. This story has nothing to do with these things, while having everything to do with these things.
I’ve come to realize this song and hair metal are both pretty awesome. Way more awesome than Morrissey.
“Blue Moon,” by Beck
I like this song being the soundtrack to a story (“Dead End”) about two women on opposite sides of the country picking up the pieces of their lives, both shattered by the same con artist. A lot of beautiful sentiments here that I’d like these two characters to feel.
“Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” by Digable Planets
Small autobiographical detail in this story, entitled “Not a Fever, Not a Dream,” which takes place at the party after my high school graduation. My friend was very drunk, and the first half of the night he was singing the horn loop from this song. Then the second half of the night it was the synth part from “Nuthin’ But a G Thang.” This went on all night. It was very annoying, as you can probably imagine. As a tribute to that specific memory, one of the characters in this story may or may not have been transported to an alternate universe where there was a mash-up of those two songs, so it was a coin toss between this song and “Nuthin’ But a G Thang.”
“Try Not to Breathe,” by R.E.M
“Undead” is a story about how people drift apart, and then the relationship becomes a burden. This song seems to me about a person who no longer wants to burden the other person by being around.
Some of the stories in this collection are very funny.
“Monkey’s Paw,” by Laurie Anderson
I heard this song on a Model United Nations trip during high school. We had a teacher who was one of those hip young types, and she used to make fun of our music all the time. Then we all gathered in her hotel room for a meeting, and she was playing this song when we walked in. I remember my friends feeling vindicated because they thought the song sucked—things got kind of heated, in a playful way—while I didn’t want to admit I kind of liked it. Anyway, “They Belong Here Now” uses “The Monkey’s Paw” as an extended metaphor. I hadn’t thought about this song in years, and writing this story triggered that memory and made me laugh, which made writing this story really enjoyable.
“Recipe for Hate,” by Bad Religion
I started piecing “The Ruins” together a little after Charlie Hebdo, and it took a lot of work—I think this one might have honestly given me the most trouble. One of the themes in my story is the deployment of racism in the name of “owning the Libs,” and I think this notion of considering defiant cruelty as an act of patriotism shouldn’t really surprise any of us. That scene in The Northman when the Berserkers torch that hut filled with children—that’s America. We did this when we got here, and we’ve exported it around the world. This is not who we are becomes a cruel joke when the only people who seem to understand This is exactly who we are have embraced it without shame.
“The World At Large/Float On” by Modest Mouse
It might feel like a cheat, but I’m one of those people who consider this to be one song. Any time I hear either song unaccompanied by the other, they feel incomplete. I think this story has this arc that begins with feeling lost because something’s missing, and then ends with him realizing he has to run. Those of you who’ve read my novel Hashtag Good Guy with a Gun will know how it turns out for the narrator of “This Is the Afterlife.” The nice thing about ending this collection with this story is I feel like I’ve closed the circuit and can now move on from that book (and now I’m really feeling this song).
Jeff Chon is the author of the novel Hashtag Good Guy With a Gun (Sagging Meniscus, 2021).
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