literary soundtracks

Jackie ♦ July 13, 2007 ♦ Leave a Comment

I recently started checking in on a blog called Largehearted Boy, which bills itself as a blog about music, literature and popular culture. The songs posted are usually to my liking, but the real treat for me has been the Book Notes feature, where the blogger invites authors to share what playlists were their soundtracks while they were writing their current book. He gets lists from Gayle Brandeis, Bret Easton Ellis and more, and they are fascinating little pieces even if you haven’t read the books. I’ve been intrigued by interplay between music and literature for a long time now myself, so this was right up my alley.

I’ve fooled around a lot with short stories, but have had little success so far (which is why there is no fiction category at the top of the page there) but each one I’ve tried has been woven through with song lyrics and music. Someday I’d like to get better at fiction, but it’s hard to drag myself back to it when I still need so much practice. It’s also a hard balancing act to make the musical references fit within the story well enough that the reader doesn’t need to have heard the song for it to resonate, but that if the song is a familiar one, the scene will really fly. Stephen King is really good at that, for my money.

I’ve been thinking also that making playlists might be a neat journal exercise for students to try as we make our way through books like The Great Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye, which seem like they could lend themselves really well to a soundtrack.