Kurt Baumeister‘s Twilight of the Gods is a compelling epic for our times where Norse gods meet modern Boston.
Sequoia Nagamatsu wrote of the book:
“Forget what you think you know about Norse gods and modern history. Irreverent, humorous, and packing a gut punch of reality, Baumeister has invoked perhaps one of the most memorable Lokis of the 21st century.”
In his own words, here is Kurt Baumeister‘s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Twilight of the Gods:
In 2017, I got my first chance to build a playlist for Largehearted Boy. That set of tracks had to do with my debut novel, Pax Americana, a book I think of, with an obvious nod to Joe Pesci in JFK, as a satire inside an alternate history wrapped up in a spy novel. In writing Pax, I wanted to blow up the Dubya years, metaphorically at least, imagine what all that military adventurism, born-again Christianity, and consumptive capitalism might lead to in our near future. What I came up with was a caper in which the world’s richest/craziest/most self-servingly religious crook gets his hands on a next-gen AI program capable of brainwashing people, a sort of “personal god.”
Readers seemed to respond well to the book overall, but there were a few reviewers at the time who thought my premises seemed, to quote Larry David, “pretty-pretty-pretty” far-fetched. I guess America was focused on Trump 1.0 then—a billionaire buffoon who seemed much less beholden to Christian fundamentalism than the brazenly born-again Dubya. Sure, Trump 1.0 talked about abortion a lot and often framed the issue in Biblical terms, but he wasn’t invested in religion to the extent Dubya had been because, well, Trump’s not religious. Whether it’s selling self-branded Bibles, brandishing the King James upside-down, or struggling to come up with a portion of the thing he’s actually read (a-humina-humina…2 Corinthians, anyone?), the guy is a pagan through and through. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a pagan. Some of my best friends are pagans. Hell, I might even be a pagan. The problem with Trump’s paganism is that he’s a psychopathic, GOAT-tier liar willing to say anything to make a deal. And with criminal and civil trials at the federal, state, and local levels staring back at him, Trump needed desperately to make a deal. He needed to change.
So, the psychopathic dealmaker refined his pitch, developing a more polished, overtly Christian message to appeal to a certain ill-informed, militant, firearm-packing part of his base—the type of people who embrace Q-Anon’s conspiracies, have come to see Trump as an American messiah, and think the answer to gun violence is more guns. No, none of it makes sense to me either, but I guess that’s what America has become—a place in which the little that used to make sense no longer does. As I write this, Trump 2.0 stands on the threshold of a second term as president; America, with its casual cruelty, Christian nationalism, and mass deportations, on the verge of taking a path similar to the one Germany took in the 1930s.
My new book, Twilight of the Gods, takes a similar kitchen-sink approach to the one I employed in Pax America in that it combines multiple genres—this time satire, noir, alternate history, the political novel, memoir, and metafiction. But I like to think it’s ultimately about something simple: humanity’s quest to make sense of reality and the fact that we seem doomed to look for that answer outside ourselves. We speak and argue and blame and fight and kill…but most of all we lie in a vain attempt to forget what we’ve done and what we’re doing. We lie to ourselves, retreating into false memories of a history so brilliant and golden it can turn the worst of our sins into the most sacred of our truths.
Maybe in a way, this book is an admission to my participation in the worst aspects of our collective failures, our inability in this moment, to find answers to the questions of history and repetition so starkly before us. Perhaps, to paraphrase Kundera regarding the novel’s role as an agent of inquiry rather than solution, Twilight of the Gods has no answers at all. Or maybe its sole, honest answer, the only thing in here that’s not at least a little bit of a lie, is that if we want to survive as a species, we need to find satisfaction in the questions we’re so good at coming up with instead of the answers we know are lies.
“Superman” by REM
The title of REM’s “Superman” and its soaring chorus make you think you’re in for a little life-coaching, a pep talk at the bare minimum. Of course, anyone who’s familiar with Nietzsche’s concept of the superman (“der Übermensch”) rather than its comic book bastardization, knows that’s not the case. As does anyone who’s listened to even a little REM.
“Superman” the song is about the power of mania and the mania that comes with power, the delusion that can twist philosophy or even perceived reality into something that bears no resemblance to itself. That delusion can grow, metastasize more like, into an alternate reality so powerful it can overtake a person or maybe even a nation.
Think of how many memes depict Trump as Superman. And of how many Christians create those memes. Now, think of the way Nietzsche’s Übermensch is a rejection of the idea of God.
“Creep” by Radiohead
If Trump wants us to believe he’s Superman, that he alone can fix things, the reality is something quite different. And even though that’s a reality we already lived once, from 2017 to 2021, a majority of America seemed to have forgotten it by Election Day. I’m convinced, though, that a few months with Trump as President again will jog those faulty memories.
“The Ride of the Valkyries” by Richard Wagner, as incorporated in Apocalypse, Now
The composition, “The Ride of the Valkyries,” has an undeniable power, a nobility in its acceptance—its practical welcoming—of battle and inevitable death. But is it, and the ancient myths it signifies, overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of America’s national fury—the beating chopper blades as war drums, the impassive sun and mourning sky, the stories inside those copters and more than that, the rice paddies beneath, so soon to end?
“The Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin
A reduction of “The Ride of the Valkyries,” in a way, a compression of its martial mania to a wrecky, rumbling coda and screamed chorus, the title of Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song” was a joke when it was coined. It still is, but the joke is different now, in our time, far darker.
Twilight of the Gods is about multiple incarnations of fascism, in America and Germany, over the last century. It’s about the power of mythology and that of forgetting. The Nazis knew this in spades, that myth and forgetting were, in a way, the same thing. Sometimes, I guess, when you can’t find the answers inside, the solution can be a constructed lie, a mythopoetic history of yourself, told by yourself, to yourself, told so many times you begin to believe it.
“Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” by Fleetwood Mac
The campaign song for Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992, I remember the balloons falling at that convention, the two young couples (young at least for politicians; young especially for politicians now) dancing and waving. Clinton would preside over a relatively peaceful and prosperous eight years, but his ethical shortcomings would thwart potential successors (Gore in 2000, Hillary in 2016). Did Gore and Hillary fail for other reasons as well? Sure, it wasn’t all Bill’s fault. Neither had the raw political skills of Slick Willy; most notably his ability to empathize, to “feel your pain.” Sadly, I think they both would have been better presidents than Clinton, certainly better than what we wound up with, respectively, in Dubya and Trump. But no sense crying over the past. As the Mac Attack opined nearly fifty years ago, “Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone…”
“City of Blinding Lights” by U2
Psych. Let’s cry just a little more.
The campaign song for both Obama campaigns, “City of Blinding Lights” marked the ascension of a generational political figure who will be eternally (and sadly) linked with Trump. Whether as the obvious counterpoint to Trump’s negativity and incompetence, the polite target of the birtherism that would presage so much racism to come, or simply as the song’s metaphorical “light, “ so much more stark in the wake of the darkness Trump has brought, different enough to leave us wondering, along with the song, “What happened to the beauty I had inside of me…”
“Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes
Trump tried to use this song in campaign events. The White Stripes tried to keep him from doing it. They sued him and kept him in court for a long time. Then, when he got elected again, when he “went Christian” as easily as Dylan went “electric,” they gave up. Let’s hope it was because they reasoned he’d never use the song again and not that they were so scared of him that they gave up on opposing him.
“Is it Over Now?” by Taylor Swift
I toyed with the idea of using “Cruel Summer,” which seems an apt summation of what many of us went through last year. Biden doddering on national television, out-debated by a venal, idiotic, slightly less doddering liar, out-charmed by a man you’d think in all his boorish criminality would be completely charmless, then, finally, just…out. And Kamala was in, and she was up, and Trump was down. But not for good, not forever.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Kurt Baumeister’s playlist for his novel Pax Americana
Kurt Baumeister is the author of the novels Pax Americana and Twilight of the Gods. His writing has been published by Salon, Guernica, Electric Literature, and many other outlets.