Cally Fiedorek’s Atta Boy instantly became one of my favorite New York City novels, a vividly written debut.
Rachel Khong wrote of the book:
“Atta Boy is a New York novel like I’ve never read before. Lively, madcap, and frequently hilarious, but not without sensitivity and insight too. Via its cast of all-too-human characters, Cally Fiedorek whisks us from dim barrooms to gleaming penthouses to examine the complexities and compromises of being alive today.”
In her own words, here is Cally Fiedorek’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Atta Boy:
Part coming-of-age tale, part crime comedy, Atta Boy tells the story of Rudy Coyle, a college dropout from Flushing, Queens, who becomes a doorman in a storied Park Avenue apartment building, where he comes under the wing of an embattled taxi mogul and his charismatic family as they weather upheavals both public and private—an industry-wide debt crisis on the one hand, and infirmity, domestic woes, and adolescence on the other. Though it’s squarely of its time and place, namely 2019 New York City, I like to think there’s a little something for everyone in the book: a business-in-the-front, party-in-the-back sensibility, hardboiled social realism with a screwball, loving touch.
Some of these playlists include extremely thoughtful preambles about the role of music in the author’s imaginative process, and I wish I had something more affirmative to say on the topic. At the risk of sounding like a wet blanket, as I’ve gotten older and more serious as a writer, music has actually loosened its grip on me a little bit. No more the furious identification as a fan, no longer that almost pained acquisitiveness, the constant scavenging for new bands in my teens and twenties with a pace and purpose which were probably unsustainable (and possibly obnoxious).
Some writers, I’m sure, are promiscuous in their consumption of music, movies, etc. and make out just fine; other art forms feed into and complement their own, and the synergy’s a happy one. But I bet I’m not the only one who’s a bit more crotchety about things. When I write, I need to live in words. Too much music, too much easy-flowing rhapsody, and the written word feels ever more inert and insufficient.
So no, I don’t listen to music at all when I write, and—Jesus, my fifteen-year-old aspiring-Pitchfork-contributor self would be sad to hear it—but I’m a very casual listener overall these days. “Dad rock whilst cooking, IF and when Bluey isn’t also on elsewhere in the room” about describes the conditions of my fandom lately. (Lame I know.)
That all said, writing a debut novel is always a matter of mining the past—a leave-taking of old selves—and I’d be a poor writer if I couldn’t conjure something of the way music used to make me feel. . . . So in that spirit, here are some songs from the Atta Boy universe. . . .
“Here Comes a Regular” by The Replacements
The opening chapter is set in an Irish bar in midtown Manhattan at Christmas, and this song captures the wintry, after-hours melancholy of that milieu extremely well.
“This Is the Day” by The The
Terrible band name, great song. I associate it closely with New York City, probably for banal and predictable reasons—because I’ve lived there my whole life, and this song is so much about looking back. But there’s something about it that sounds very urban to me. There’s the sense of an impending reckoning, an implicitly citified state of mind—as if in a large, crowded, pedestrian space, the machinations of fate are keyed-up somehow, and life, for better or for worse, is more pivotal than in those places where human data’s more diffuse. Fun fact: the lead singer Matt Johnson’s family owned and operated a London bar for forty years, so he and Rudy share more than a little spiritual DNA.
“Theme from New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra
Love Sinatra. Whatta man. It hurts to hear him sing. (Check out “Old Man River” from his 1967 TV special. Problematic I’m sure, but I dare you not to get goosebumps.) This song got a particularly large amount of play during those crazy months of 2020 when the world was topsy-turvy and I was first scratching my way into the earliest notions of what the book could be. My daughters and I would take to the rooftop and bang pots and pans (didn’t have to ask them twice to participate in this ritual—then one and five) and we’d give it up for the first responders and nurses, this song cranking out all the while from an unknown neighbor’s open window.
Though one intuitively associates this track with peak midcareer Sinatra, it wasn’t recorded until the late ’70s, when he was basically retired, a former died-in-the-wool democrat turning into a curmudgeonly Reaganite before our eyes, and semi-reluctantly brought out of the woodwork to sing this for the soundtrack of an eponymous DeNiro/Minelli film directed by Scorsese (also a big touchstone for the book). It’s not just a wonderful song, but a curiously reflexive document of cultural nostalgia, dealing heavily in the currency of the postwar heyday at the time it was recorded, at the end of an exceptionally stormy, violent, and not at all rosy chapter in the city’s history.
The song is still pretty ubiquitous obviously—Yankees games and pedicabs are partial to it. Some days I hear it and it makes me roll my eyes, and other days, it makes cry. These things are complicated.
“Take My Breath Away” by Berlin
This is one of a few songs explicitly referenced in the book. I remember hearing it a lot as a child. I think it was some bit that ran at the beginning of Paramount movies on VHS in the ’90s, a compilation of romantic clips (Ghost with the pottery wheel, An Officer and a Gentleman with Richard Gere and Debra Winger in a passionate embrace) and feeling sad and uncomfortable—it seemed to represent a vast and terrifying, oceanic world of romantic love that was at that point completely unavailable to me. Of course, when one is not in love, no matter your age, it will always feel completely unavailable. That’s where Rudy’s head is at at the beginning of the book, hearing this song in a pharmacy and wanting to break down at the loss of access to love, like some kind of Brigadoon or Shangri-La that has receded into the mist. (By the way, who can know what obscure licensing agreements govern the overhead music at Walgreens and Trader Joe’s?)
“Angel of Harlem” by U2
I spent quite a lot of time in my adolescence, as mentioned, trying to cultivate an interest in what I perceived to be esoteric music, so it’s been a relief to make peace with my non-negotiables—U2, Springsteen, the Beatles. I’m done caring who knows it. This song, from Rattle and Hum, is a classic December-in-New York song.
“The Ties That Bind” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Ditto for this one, on the dad-rock-classics front. I think Rudy’s arc attempts to make justice to the wonderfully simple and empathic lyrics . . . pushing up against the strictures of conformity—the prosaic outlines of one’s time and place and family of origin—and maybe trying to make peace with them.
“Conga” by Gloria Estefan
This plays during the Russian wedding scene in Brighton Beach. Why not?
“Baby I’m A Star” by Prince and the Revolution
One of the best party songs ever! I associate this song with Rudy strutting around town, nursing his delusions of grandeur while surrounded by plebs and drunkards. There’s that Saturday Night Fever element of the striving outer-borough kid hoping for his big break. I like that the lyrics are sort of insecure and vainglorious—it’s upbeat and life-affirming, but there’s a rage to it, a nastiness and backbite . . . he really wants you to know that he’s *somebody* and methinks he doth protest too much. (Not Prince—he’s obviously somebody—but Rudy might be overstating his case.) I think with humility and affection on the many would-be artists/dancers/actors/writers/fashion designers/stars in the epic foundry of New York City who felt the same conviction about themselves, and still couldn’t make their dreams come true. Where are you now? I love you.
“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues
I mean, this is so on-the-nose. I’m rolling my eyes at myself a little bit while I write this, but c’mon, this song is Liffey’s, Rudy’s dad’s bar. The Irish American experience in New York has been a source of enduring fascination for many, and for me. It’s a huge thematic undertow of the book, and this song is it.
Cally Fiedorek is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction. She lives in New York City.