Matthew Daddona’s debut novel The Longitude of Grief is a coming-of-age tale that covers a vast emotional landscape.
Helen Phillips wrote of the book:
“In The Longitude of Grief, Matthew Daddona traces the complex connections among a boy, his family, and his community. This dark coming-of-age tale explores the ebb and flow of intimacies and betrayals in a small town over the course of the years. Daddona’s debut is rich with melancholy beauty and emotional acumen. A mesmerizing read.”
In his own words, here is Matthew Daddona’s Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel The Longitude of Grief:
I don’t listen to music when I write, which is a ridiculous thing to say. Who doesn’t have something that triggers them like a song? Sometimes actually a song. Song being the bridge between past and present. Song as metaphorical reminder, impossible to shake off, or as Robert Earl Keen sings on the oddly cheerful “Corpus Christi Bay,” “But that life it is contagious / And it gets down in your blood.” Song as inheritance and learned habits. Like your impulses and devotions. Your desires.
My novel The Longitude of Grief is a rumination on inheritance in the literal and symbolic sense. The main character, Henry Manero, is a boy who becomes a young man but cannot shed the familial bonds that confuse and contort him. That’s the titular grief of the novel–something so abstract and unwieldy that it threatens to upset anything that also has the potential to help it. That’s the true burden of freedom, its ultimate irony. In compiling the songs for this playlist, I’ve imagined the tracks as being somehow aware of their sadness but trying–oh how hard they try–to find hope in the ruin. They’re reminders that somewhere under the surface, maybe deep within the ripple of pages, a pulse exists. Maybe it’s even a song. It gets down in your blood.
“Origins,” Tennis
The song starts mid-chord, as if one is opening the door to a party and finding a pair of lovers embroiled in a makeout session. One of those lovers is your own. You quickly close the door but realize your perspective has shifted, perhaps permanently. The house in which you wander looks fuzzy, like Tennis’ bass tones. You wonder if the scene you’ve stumbled upon was a complete shock or a long time coming. You wonder if every other facet of your life is a cruel menagerie. You wonder if you can stomach it. Since the first chapter of TLOG feels like an extended montage of Henry Manero’s origin story, Tennis’ ‘in media res’ approach suits just fine. I hadn’t ever thought to look up the lyrics and meaning of this song, but a quick search on the website Genius shows a possible meaning being about the concept of inherited sin. I reveled in this coincidental discovery. For Henry’s sake and soul.
“I’m Mad Again,” John Lee Hooker
No bones about it, this song is about a narrator taking in his friend (housing him, feeding him, etc.) and the friend taking advantage of the narrator’s good nature by sleeping with his wife. I don’t wish to find songs that are so deceitful and ribald, but it’s like they find me. It’s an apt song with which to introduce Benjamin Manero, Henry’s sexually avaricious and unapologetic father. The speaker in John Lee Hooker’s song is so enraged that he’s willing to drown, shoot, and gag his friend. There’s humor in John Lee Hooker’s song (as in a lot of his music), but it’s the kind of humor that makes you writhe. While Benjamin Manero doesn’t go to such drastic lengths, his manipulation tactics in the novel feel like one long balancing act. At any point, he’s bound to tip into deranged and delusional patterns. The reader watches with disgust.
“My House,” Lou Reed
The Blue Mask is a difficult record. Stubborn, exhausting, and genius. And its opening track, “My house,” seems to set the elegiac tempo, with its “image of the poets in the breeze.” It’s a lovely tribute to Lou Reed’s friend and mentor, the “Wandering Jew” Delmore Schwartz, as well as to the house that Reed and his wife Sylvie lived in. The song here works as a tribute to Jonathan Bartlett, the soft-hearted and feckless love interest of Alma, Henry’s mom. Jonathan’s house is a farmhouse, with a red door, that seems to bleed against the fervent fields where his and Alma’s relationship blossoms (the red door is also a symbol for violence, obviously). Reed’s song is sad, yes, but it’s also charming and simple. Just like Jonathan.
“Bisou Magique,” Melody’s Echo Chamber
A French song that I’ve never bothered to look up the lyrics to–a trend I’m noticing. It’s like in The Shawshank Redemption where Red admits, “To this day, I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are left best unsaid.” If there were no lyrics at all, this song still functions as a mood, a vibe as the kids say. I imagine it’s the kind of song that booksmart Janine, Henry’s best friend, would listen to while reading Greek philosophy and journaling about how much she loves Henry’s cousin, Andre. Janine lives vicariously at times through the texts she devours–myths about Artemis and her hunting dogs for instance–and Melody Echo Chamber’s groove (did I say vibe before?) is a perfect backbeat to her fascination. If only someone, like Henry, would leave her the heck alone and let her get back to journaling!
“Ships On the Ocean,” Junior Wells’ Chicago Blues Band
Like some of the best things, I happened upon this song accidentally. Although maybe it was actually algorithmic, which most things are these days. This is the type of song I’d write to if I listened to music while writing (I don’t): stalking high-hat hits, explosive vocal dynamics, train-horn harmonica, and crisper-than-hotel-sheet guitars. The type of song you pace to while drafting and, once over, immediately play again.
“Lily,” Bill Callahan
“I started writing your death song / Long before you were gone,” Callahan says in the song’s first few seconds, a confession if I ever heard one. Even the acoustic guitar that accompanies it is restrained by cold shock. I imagine this as the novel’s closing track to the end of the middle part, right when…No, I’m not going to spoil anything. You’ll have to see what happens. It involves pain, and on the ground, so many insects.
“The Conversion Experience,” Bill Orcutt
The Miami-born guitarist and composer Orcutt is a master at slow electric ‘jams’ (no words, and no backing band) that yo-yos between atonal harmonics and the most scintillating melodies you’ve ever heard. This song off 2019’s Odds Against Tomorrow feels as though it’s about to cut the brakes at any moment and freefall off a cliff, but it stays contained till the end, though barely. It’s the perfect song to kick off the third part of the novel, where the book switches to the first-person narration of Henry Manero, five years removed from where we last left him. Henry is older and maybe a little wiser, but that insecurity (like Orcutt’s four-string guitar–yes, four strings) is the novel’s marching theme.
“In the Gallery,” Dire Straits
I’ve listened to a lot of Dire Straits because I’ve gotten over the infantile, and wrong, belief that Dire Straits isn’t cool. I don’t know what person or godforsaken thing implanted that idea into my head, but I’d like to find that person or thing and ask it to renounce their entire constitution and crawl into a hole for the rest of eternity. Dire Straits is cool. Not cool in the way of ‘Let’s hang out in Chad’s basement and listen to the Pixies and sneak tall boys in our jackets,’ (Not that I did that), but cool in the way of ‘Never studying for a test and receiving straight-As.’ Dire Straits is like that: a little too self-assured, smart, and pompous for its own good, but someone to sit next to on test day.
“A Love,” The Pretenders
I chose this song because it’s ‘newer’ on a playlist of sort-of old songs, but Chrissie Hynde is still writing and recording bangers, and I did this for no other reason than I like Christie. No, I revere Christie. Christie is cool. Christie doesn’t get straight-As and doesn’t give a flying fork. This song from her post-pandemic novel came out when I was putting the finishing touches on the novel’s edits and its lyrics seemed to echo some of the book’s undertones: “I’m not scared of your dark eyes / They mesmerize and soothe / But I don’t mess with burning coal / Or anything I can’t control”
“Love On a Farmboy’s Wages,” XTC
XTC is tongue-in-cheek the way the best powerpop bands are. This might be an outlier on a playlist full of doleful songs, but it’s also a whimsical tribute to the farm owner-turned-millionaire Jonathan Bartlett, perhaps my favorite character and the one I had the most fun writing about. Plus, I’ve always wanted to fall in love. On a farm.
“Know Til Know,” Jim James
An electronic head-bumper from My Morning Jacket rocker Jim James, I imagine this as accompaniment to the fast-moving last section, in which Henry Manero’s narration operates as pseudo ‘news reports’ on his life, family, and memories (with some nice cameos from Caravaggio, Fleetwood Mac, and nods to Mary Karr). The song’s sweaty bass line is enough to convert any passive Jim James fan. When it slows and quiets down toward the end, and the song turns into a ballroom shuffle of sorts, the bass stubbornly demands attention. You just can no longer hear it.
“I’ve Been Told,” Odetta
You ain’t a fan of folk until you’re a fan of Odetta–not to mention she’s one of the most important and undersung voices of the Civil Rights Movement–and it’s her seemingly instantaneous toggling between baritone and soprano that makes every song of hers soar. This is where we leave Henry Manero too, somewhere among the clouds of his mind (but surrounded by books no less, so many of them). If he could read every book in the room that his mentor has left, it would never be enough. There’s a chance Henry has never heard of Odetta, much like he probably hasn’t heard of Charles Portis or Octavia Butler. Writers mean nothing if their books aren’t plucked from their dusty rows. If only Henry could pluck. This is why Odetta finishes the playlist, because her work is too important not to sing us out.
Matthew Daddona is the author of the poetry collection House of Sound, which Publishers Weekly called “ruminative…a glimpse into a mind on the search for answers.” A multi-hyphenate writer, his work has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Newsday, Electric Literature, Whalebone, Tin House, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He lives on the North Fork of Long Island, where, in addition to writing, he shucks oysters, installs irrigation systems, and volunteers as a firefighter. The Longitude of Grief is his first novel.