Ben Tanzer’s The Missing is a moving novel of parenthood and loss.
Leesa Cross-Smith wrote of the book:
“The Missing is a hold-your-breath story exploring the many layers of love in a life, in a marriage, in a family. Vices and regret frozen in thin ice, nostalgia comforts and chokes. Ben Tanzer has written a book like a cigarette—smoke blurring out and swirling around what it means to be married, what it means to be a parent, what it means to be human…sinking, sinking into the mystery of what’s truly missing. How and where to find it?”
In his own words, here is Ben Tanzer’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel The Missing:
Can I stay on-brand?
Which is to say, may I say, again, “It’s lovely to be back.”It is.
One of the things that’s wonderful about having a book come out after a long break between new books – and trust, while I’ve been practicing patience, I would’ve been happy not to have a seven year break between new books – is how much literary love people show you.
Which is also to say, it’s lovely to be back not only because I have a book to talk about. It’s fun to be talking about books with those who care about books, and who cares about books more than the Largehearted Boy?
There’s no need to answer that.
The question then is how to do this when Largehearted Boy has been consistently generous and supportive of my work and I’ve been honored to do this a number of times before?
Good question, thank you for asking.
I’ve thought about this and here’s what I’ve been thinking:
I’m here today because my book The Missing is out in the world. It’s the story of a married couple whose teenage daughter has run away with her older, but not criminally older boyfriend, and doesn’t want to be found, or contacted. She wants to be gone from their lives. She wants to be missing. She’s become a ghost and the story is focused not on her, but on her parents and how they try to cope and make sense of where they find themselves. This is challenging for them for many reasons, not the least of which is because of the many things missing from the protagonists lives – healthy coping skills among them. I don’t personally know much about finding oneself in such a situation, but I do know fear and confusion and being in a long term relationship.I also know my children – Myles and Noah, aren’t missing. They’re not necessarily right here, one’s in college and the other is all over the place, but that’s different.
I thought though, what if I ask them their thoughts on this playlist. Unlike the daughter in The Missing I can ask Myles and Noah for their recommendations and they’ll respond to my texts. Mostly. And either way, with enough pushing, they’ll have thoughts on music, and the music they associate with me. They love music. We talk about it all the time. One reason I can write about my fears at all is because I lead a boring dad life, I feel safe, and I can reach out to my children and they can reach out to me.
So, I asked, they responded, and I have a playlist and Book Notes essay to share with you.
Also, and again, “It’s lovely to be back.”
Myles – Age 22
Run Away with Me / Carly Rae Jepsen
What may be most important about this song is that Myles recently asked me to go to a Carly Rae Jepsen concert with him. Imagine, your adult child wants to spend time with you. More than that, however, the show itself, at the Aragon Ballroom on the north side of Chicago, was like attending church, a very celebratory, colorful, and happy church, and the show was quite wonderful when not outright moving. I would add, this song is about being with the one you love if only briefly, and wanting it to be just right, something the protagonists in The Missing wish could happen for them.
I Remember Everything / Zach Bryan (featuring Kacey Musgraves)
Much of what my children listen to I do not. Which is to say I listen to the music they ask me to listen to and I do so, gladly, most of the time, and sometimes enjoy it, and sometimes do not. Which I would suggest is fine. The job is to be present and responsive, and to engage with things they love because they love them and that’s enough. Which might be how I would describe most of my relationship to the work of Kacey Musgraves. It’s okay. Myles introduced me to her work several years ago and we talk about whatever she has coming out when it’s coming out. It’s the opposite with Zach Bryan. Myles and I both love him – and this song, he’s a recent discovery for both of us, and the best part – one of the best parts, is that when I stumbled into Bryan’s work and texted Myles to suggest he might listen to him as well, Myles already was. Magic that.
Dreams / The Cranberries & Never Tear Us Apart / INXS
What do we do when our children are exposed to the art and culture of our past and like it? Which is not to say Myles loves Dreams or Never Tear Us Apart, however, he loves Derry Girls, and now I love Derry Girls, and Derry Girls loved Dreams and here we are. Why Never Tear Us Apart re-entered the charts and our psyches is hard to say. What isn’t hard to say, is that as parents we want our children to like what we like – and I liked The Cranberries and INXS. They are foundational elements of my life from my foundational years, and we always risk rejection when we introduce our children to the foundational stuff. In this case I didn’t have to. Myles, like the culture at large, found it on his own.
Rise Up / Andra Day
When I asked Myles why he chose this song he said he associates it with me. Why? He doesn’t know. I know. We watched Day sing the song with Common at the 2018 Oscars. I also know that Myles and I, like my wife Debbie and I, love and bond over the Oscars and movies, and this felt like a special performance happening during an event we’re already primed to enjoy. There are also these lyrics:
When the silence isn’t quiet
And it feels like it’s getting hard to breathe
And I know you feel like dying
But I promise we’ll take the world to its feet
And move mountains
Bring it to its feet
And move mountains
I know these words have something to do with heartache, as does parenting, as does The Missing.
Good as Hell / Lizzo
Yeah. It’s hard to feel good about Lizzo these days, which is ironic and heartbreaking, given her focus on feeling good and positivity. But I also know that this song didn’t register for me until maybe 2019 when it was re-released, and it made me happy, and my children, especially Myles, and that wasn’t nothing as 2020 rolled around. Lizzo apparently isn’t what she seemed. Her behavior was hypocritical, and that too is a theme in The Missing, even if not for the same reasons, and even if listening to this song now feels bad.
Noah – Age 18
RNP / Cordae & High John / Mavi
Thisis important if one is steeped in the Ben Tanzer parenting narrative, or at least my previous Book Notes essay. For UPSTATE I wrote this about Cordae’s Lost & Found:”…Matt & Kim could have easily been the last show I ever saw live. Who knows how, if, this pandemic will end? Except that my younger son asked me to take him to see one of his favorite performers, Cordae, and it was my son’s first live show. It was also February 5th. We went out in the cold, waited on line, avoided getting a contact high, waited through 1/2 dozen warm-up acts, and it was all so very wonderful for me. Father and son shit can be tough. It can be hard to talk, express things and connect. It’s all over Upstate. And the thing is, my son will probably never ask me to take him to a show again. It was great, but he knows he can do it now without me. Still, we had that moment, and it has certainly sustained me since.”
Yeah, father and son shit can be tough, and apparently, based on The Missing, parent shit can be tough in general. And so, I’m not going to state the pandemic has ever really ended, but since that last Book Notes essay, we have begun to attend concerts again, and wouldn’t you know it, Noah still wants to see the occasional show with me, even if I’m merely the back-up plan. Seeing Mavi was just such an occasion and I’m not complaining what-so-ever.
Family Ties / Baby Keem
Look, Noah loves Kendrick Lamar. I love Kendrick Lamar. We can’t always have new Kendrick Lamar. Sometimes we need to settle for Kendrick collaborating on songs with family. Family. That’s the thing here, right? All the ways it works and we work on it, avoid it. embrace it, support our family members, all of it. Also, there are these lyrics:
“The facts mean this a vaccine and the game need me to survive.”
Yup.
We’re not escaping any of this, or anything, and we still need to survive it, not unlike the parents in The Missing who can’t escape how they feel or their inability to make sense of it. Too much? I don’t believe so.
Blue Mesas / Leon Bridges
I haveso many thoughts on this quite beautiful song. First, our children introduce us to the things they love, and while it can be entertaining when they’re younger – I’m a total sucker for Lemonade Mouth, as they grow older, their interests become, well, more interesting. You also see both your influences in their interests, and how they’re becoming their own people. Cordae is all Noah, and Leon Bridges represents some kind of overlap in the Venn diagram of our interests. Second, there are these lyrics:
How you get lonely even though
You’re surrounded by the ones you know?
Killing myself, saying these words
There’s a hurting deep down in my soul
But I learn not to let it show
Do I need help?
No
This says something about Noah, and how I know him and don’t, offering insights and opportunities for conversation should he want them. The parents in The Missing don’t know if they’ll be able to have such conversations with their daughter again. They do know, now, that she hurt, and that if she needed help, she didn’t want it from them.
Hotline Bling / Drake
Noah is so into Drake and I’m so not, but again, Venn diagrams, and dad shit. Which it to say, we talk a lot about Drake, who I don’t get, but this song, and this video, he’s sort of dad dancing, and it’s funny, and dumb, and that’s a role that on good days, dad’s get to play – dumb and funny and aware enough to know you’re being dumb and funny. Dad jokes exist for a reason. Still, what’s also important here is how this also speaks to the parents in The Missing – they’re self-aware enough to be and do better, yet unable or unwilling to do so. These are the characters I’m drawn to. They’re not Drake, though clearly neither am I.
Kill Bill / SZA
What seems important about SZA is that one day Noah was listening to who knows what – stuff Myles liked certainly, but he was still a kid, listening to kids stuff, and one day he wasn’t just a kid, and he was forming his own likes and favorites, and along with Cordae, one of his earliest favorites was SZA. Kids grow-up, we know this, and it’s wonderful. They can be wonderful at all ages in different ways, but it’s also cool as they slowly, and sort of become peers. Not exactly, right, we’re not friends with our children – I try not to be, but we may have common interests, and if we’re lucky, they keep us connected. Do I care about SZA? Kind of. Do I care about Noah? Endlessly. Would the parents in The Missing be happy to have such simple concerns? More than anything.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Ben Tanzer’s playlist for his story collection Upstate
Ben Tanzer’s playlist for his memoir Be Cool
Ben Tanzer’s playlist for his book The New York Stories
Ben Tanzer’s playlist for his novel Orphans
Ben Tanzer’s playlist for his novel Lucky Man
Ben Tanzer’s playlist for his essay collection 99 Problems
Ben Tanzer’s playlist for his novel Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
Ben Tanzer’s work includes the short story collection UPSTATE, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. I’m a storySouth and Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival Nonfiction Prose Award and a Midwest Book Award, and He’s received an Honorable Mention at the Chicago Writers Association Book Awards for Traditional Non-Fiction and a Bronze Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. He’s also written for Hemispheres, Punk Planet, Men’s Health, and The Arrow, AARP’s GenX newsletter.