In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Terese Svoboda is one of our masterful storytellers, and her memoir Hitler and My Mother-in-Law is as inventive as it is provocative.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Canny, meandering, and revelatory, it’s a remarkable family memoir that stretches across major developments of the 20th century while questioning how the truth gets produced. Readers will be riveted.”
In her own words, here is Terese Svoboda’s Book Notes music playlist for her memoir Hitler and My Mother-in-Law:
“The Hills are Alive” tinkles away under the opening of my second memoir, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, part of which takes place in Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s snug home-away-from-home high in the Alps. But it’s not your dull and boring dip into WWII. My mother-in-law Patricia Lochridge climbed 6,017 feet to his redoubt just after the hills were alive – with furious defeated Germans. “Was the first gal reporter to make his Eagle’s Nest and it was certainly well worth it.” Not only the sole female reporter to cover both the Pacific and the European theaters of WWII, she was also the only woman in the CBS news room (pace Colbert), assistant to the head of the Office of War Information (cue spy music), VP of one of the largest public relations companies in the world (MAD MEN), third in command of UNICEF where she convinced Matisse to provide artwork for free (Matisse, the Mexican pop band), editor of her own newspaper in Arizona (Arizona’s music video) where she hustled naïve art on the side, and finally, she helped Hawai’i hold onto their 1% of the Arts bill. In thanks, the Hawai’i Philharmonic opened the legislature for many years. “What good is sitting alone in your room?” sings Liza Minelli in “Cabaret”. There’s a lot more, including a chapter about Joe McCarthy, apropos of the excellent “Senator McCarthy Blues” by Hal Block. Plenty of mother-in-law jokes make it too, but because they tend to be raunchy, I’m very particular. Here’s Julie Kim’s take.
Since it’s a memoir, I’ve had to hold up my end. There’s the hometown riff on Ogallala by Trapper Schoepp, a Gordon Lightfoot moment for my early years in Canada, six months of wild Cook Island drumming, and a year in Nuerland. Then the world turned punk, and I was featured in the TV series Real People as a new blonde in a jumpsuit who composed lyrics with the word “pork butt” for the anarcho-punk band Sleeping Dogs who recorded for Crass. I don’t have music for the Svoboda asteroid, but here’s ASTEROID, and since Svoboda means freedom, it’s featured in several Slavic national anthems, e.g. Ukraine’s.
As a finale to this piece, I answer the all-important (for a memoir) “What song are you?” questionnaire. I am apparently Lady Gaga in “The Edge of Glory.” I do like the lipstick, the jumping and wriggling on NYC fire escapes, but squirming on the sidewalk in that metal studded outfit looks downright dangerous. One line, however, was perfect: “I’m hangin’ on a moment of truth.” That’s what Hitler and My Mother-in-Law’s about: A True Story.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Terese Svoboda’s playlist for her books The Long Swim and Roxy and Coco
Terese Svoboda playlist for her book Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet
Terese Svoboda ‘s playlist for her novella Pirate Talk or Mermalade
A Guggenheim fellow, Terese Svoboda is the author of 20 books. She has won the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Prize for poetry, an NEH grant for translation, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation prize for video, the O. Henry award for the short story, and a Pushcart Prize for the essay. She is a three time winner of the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and has been awarded Headlands, James Merrill, Hawthornden, Hermitage, Yaddo, MacDowell, Rowland, VCCA, Bogliasco, and Bellagio residencies. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.’s Disney Hall.