In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Lori Ostlund‘s story collection Are You Happy? is dark, thought-provoking, and funny in the best of ways.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“These nine startling stories capture the subtleties of feeling—and being made to feel—out of place . . .. Ostlund proves herself a master of the form.”
In her own words, here is Lori Ostlund‘s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Are You Happy?:
The nine stories that make up Are You Happy? explore class, desire, identity, and the specter of violence that hangs over women and the LGBTQ community—except there’s humor involved. Rather than identify a song for each story, I’ve decided to write about nine songs that focus on my themes, setting, and process.
Themes
“Delia’s Gone,” Johnny Cash
I pitched this story collection to my agent as a book that might aptly be titled “guns, god, and gays.” I grew up in rural Minnesota in the 60s and 70s, at a time and in a place where guns and God were ubiquitous, less so (it seemed) gays. When I sat down to think through my playlist, I started not with songs that I knew and loved. Rather, I Googled “songs with guns.” Somehow, I was drawing a blank on gun songs. The first name to pop up, not surprisingly, was Johnny Cash; I like Cash, though the song listed—“Delia’s Gone”—was not a Cash song I knew. When I listened to the song, I learned that “Delia’s Gone” was a title that functioned—somewhat in the way that passive voice does—to sidestep blame. Why was Delia gone? Because the narrator of the song had killed her. It turns out Delia was “cold and mean” and made him want to “grab his sub machine.” So maybe this song was not my radar because it has lost its appeal? Maybe.
“Losing my Religion,” REM
The title reflects a throughline in the collection, characters who are losing their faith in something—justice, humanity, religion. That said, the book is not cynical or despairing—these are characters who are trying to save their relationships and understand themselves and where they come from better.
“Shiny Happy People,” REM
In an REM-twofer and in response to the title question, ARE YOU HAPPY?, I offer “Shiny Happy People.” I write funny, sad stories, and this has always struck me as a funny, sad song.
Setting
Skyway,” The Replacements
Five of the 9 stories in Are You Happy? are set in Minnesota, the other four in New Mexico and California. Minnesota is where I spent my formative years, the first twenty-three years of my life, the years that define much of one’s music nostalgia. “Skyway,” by The Replacements, will always be my go-to Minnesota song. Always. It’s a song about cold and loneliness. I first knew that I wanted to be a writer when I was in college, a state school in Moorhead, Minnesota, which is the twin city to Fargo, North Dakota. Some nights, I would drive around Fargo-Moorhead by myself, picking up people who needed rides. Strangers. I was very shy, but I wanted to understand people, wanted them to tell me their stories, and this seemed the way to make that happen. Mainly, I picked up drunk college students. Once, I took a man standing outside a closed liquor store in Moorhead across the state line into Fargo because North Dakota had later hours for package sales of liquor. Another night, late, I picked up a woman whose shirt had been torn open. She leaned against the door and sobbed while I drove. I was too young to know what to do. I kept a small tape recorder in the glove compartment, thinking that I would use it to make notes about all of the stories that people told me as I drove them home. I never used it. Nobody told me stories. I just drove.
“Totally Nude,” The Wallets
The story “Clear As Cake” is set in a dive bar in Moorhead, MN, where I spent many a night as a college student. On the weekends, bands would play at the bar across the street, Kirby’s, and we would drink cheap beer at Ralph’s between sets and then run across the street to dance. The Wallets was my favorite band.
“It’s Raining Men,” by The Weather Girls
I came out in 1989, shortly after I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for graduate school. I mainly went to two gay bars, one of which was Crickets, a working-class bar on the west side of Albuquerque where my now wife then bartended. It was located in a strip mall, a space that always housed either evangelical churches or gay bars. The other bar I went to was a lesbian bar called Corky’s. It was in a strip mall also; like many gay bars back then, there were no windows, and you had to be a member to get in. When “It’s Raining Men” started playing, every single lesbian in the bar got up and danced.
Process
“Plastic Jesus,” Tia Blake
I do some of my best thinking about my writing on walks, while listening to music. “Plastic Jesus” always becomes an earworm that lasts for days, but I’ve done some good thinking with that earworm in my head. I prefer the version from Cool Hand Luke—the Paul Newman character learns that his mother has died, and he sits on the bunk in his cell and plays the banjo while singing “Plastic Jesus”—but when I walk, I listen to Tia Blake’s version.
Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater”
I live in a tiny house with my wife, a writer and teacher like me, and often a young person, either our adopted daughter or, more recently, one of the sponsees that we have hosted through an LGBTQ refugee organization. Our house is under 900 square feet, so my point is that often I have to listen to music when I am writing not because I write best to music—I don’t–—but because music creates a buffer from the rest of the house, and not just from the house, but from the world itself. When I’m writing, I like feeling that the world has retreated. To write about the world, I need to feel apart from it. Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater is one of my favorite buffers.
“Sympathique,” Pink Martini
Sometimes, in order to write, you just need to feel a certain way, and one of the songs that makes me feel ready to write is Pink Martini’s “Sympathique,” with its lyrics borrowed from a Rimbaud poem. Mainly, the lyrics are about not wanting to work, wanting only to smoke. I don’t smoke, never have, but sometimes, when I’m resisting writing, this song makes so much sense.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Lori Ostlund’s playlist for her novel After the Parade
Lori Ostlund is the author of Are You Happy? (Astra House, May 2025). Her novel After the Parade (Scribner, 2015) was a B&N Discover pick, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her first book, The Bigness of the World (UGA, 2009; Scribner, 2016), received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, ZYZZYVA, and New England Review, among other places. Lori has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She has served as the series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award since 2022 and is on the board of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, the writer Anne Raeff. www.loriostlund.com