In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Cat Fitzpatrick’s The Dinner Party is a compelling novel-in-verse about queer love, family, and friends.
Maggie Milner wrote of the book:
“Whether she’s narrating an Ovidian verse drama, composing a sonnet sequence, or retelling Plato’s Symposium in perfectly iambic envelope quatrains, Cat Fitzpatrick is a total genius at making old modes accommodate new realities. I’m so moved by this virtuosic collection of long poems about queer family-making, freaky friendship, erotic love, and gender transition. The Dinner Party is brilliant, hot, uproarious, and gay as hell: at once a high-wire camp performance and an aching tribute to the sounds and shapes of our language.”
In her own words, here is Cat Fitzpatrick’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Dinner Party:
The book I have coming out is called The Dinner Party and the title poem is about throwing a dinner party. So I figured I would offer a list of what is probably playing during that event.
The constraint here is that I always and only play vinyl records during dinner parties, and that my vinyl collection is… erratically put-together. I think I have bought a new vinyl record three times in my life (1999 by Prince in the Minneapolis airport, that incredible new Rosalia record, and one featured here, Spiro World by Time Wharp). The rest of it consists of two main categories
1) records I stole from my mother when she went deaf
2) random LPs I purchased for five dollars or less on a whim from market stalls and charity shops
By these means I have acquired a fair number of records,. but the selection is random, and not especially reflective of any “taste” or “opinions” I possess. This list is less chosen than evolved. It is therefore extremely fit for survival. If you play these LPs while serving people huge amounts of good food and wine, guests cannot but let their hair down and disport themselves. They will be compelled.
In all these cases, I play the whole record the song is on. No half-measures. No gods no playlists.
Jealousy – Yehudi Menuhin and Stephan Grapelli (from the album Jealousy)
I actually met Yehudi Menuhin once when I was a child,.He is a classical violinist, but here he plays pop hits of his youth. Very jaunty. Perfect to get things going with aperitifs and nibbles. I favour a wet martini (1/3 vermouth to 2/3 gin, but no ice, just freeze it) or a dry sherry (Inocente) and I like to serve thin slices of baguette with flavoured butters – perhaps a garlic, a herb and lemon, and an anchovy.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans – Professor Longhair (from the album New Orleans Piano)
New Orleans Piano is a late career Professor Longhair record, jazzy rather than bluesy. Good for when you’re herding them to the table and opening the white wine, something saline or stony, like a Sylvaner from Franken in Germany, in one of the attractive lumpy traditional bottles. Unusual wine bottles really help with the atmosphere. Peopel feel fancy when you have a weird bottle. So also when you play Professor Longhair.
Any Old Time – Maria Muldaur (From the album Maria Muldaur)
I got this record in Camden Town Market for £1.50. There are greater singers than Maria Muldaur, but she always sounds like she’s having a good time. The guests will too. For a starter I often serve a small but intensely flavoured soup: a white gazpacho made with almonds; or a cream of sorrel soup; a chickpea and yoghurt soup, or my favourite, a tomato soup made with cashew cream.
Nighttown Boy – Horslips (from the album Dancehall Sweethearts)
As you open the red, things should be beginning to go sideways. The elegant sophistication of the early meal should be turning to messy intensity. This was one of my parents’ records. It is Irish Glam Rock. Messy. I might open a decent left-bank Bordeaux, or a Ridge Zinfandel, something heady.
It Will Stand – The Showmen (from the compilation album It Will Stand: Minit Records 1960-1963)
The second New Orleans record on this list, but more R&B, less jazz. Has the vivacity to keep things moving through the hefty main courses I like to serve – often vegetarian verisons of french classics, like cassoulet or choucroute garni (yes I ferment my own cabbage, what do you take me for?).
Ypomini – Nana Mouskouri (from the album Songs of my Country)
Once the main is eaten people relax and slow down. Ballast, you know. Time for more reflective music. Time for Nana Mouskouri. I mostly open a sweet wine at this point. Perhaps a Jurançon, which tastes of passion fruit.
Un Jour Te Verras – Marcel Mouloudji (I have a best of disc, Les Grandes Chansons de Moloudji)
And now the dessert. Dessert is the most emotional of courses, and of course everyone will by now be emotional in at least the British sense (drunk, Americans, I mean drunk). Chanson it is. Dessert might be a lemon tart, an almond and orange cake, or a fallen chocolate souffle with prunes. Emotional.
Spiro World – Time Wharp (from the album Spiro World)
If you are doing right, the time after dinner is of potentially infinite extensibility. This party might last for ever. To achieve this you need music that does not mark the passing of time, A Time W(h)arp. In the wharp one has digestifs and petit fours. The digestifs should please but not demand attention, like whiskey Nikka “from the barrel” or kirchwasser from Schladerer in the Black Forest. The petit fours are amandines.
Po Ata Rau – St Joseph Maori Girls College Choir (1962 version! from the album Maori Love Songs)
Eventually even eternity ends. It is time to leave. But you want to send your guests, who have been committed to your care and are now returning to theoir own, out feeling hopeful, good, not at all like raddled debauchees. So: singing children. Send them away to the sound of singing children. Works every time.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Cat Fitzpatrick’s playlist for her novel The Call-Out
CAT FITZPATRICK’s debut novel, The Call-Out (Seven Stories Press, 2022), was awarded the 2023 Lambda Award for Transgender Fiction. She is the author of the poetry collection Glamourpuss (Topside Press, 2016), and the co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Fantasy from Transgender Writers, which won the ALA Stonewall Award for Literature. Fitzpatrick is the first trans woman Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers University–Newark, and she also serves as the Editrix at LittlePuss Press. The Dinner Party (Seven Stories Press, 2026) is her second novel in verse.