In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
The stories in P.J. Blumenthal’s collection Self Portraits are wonderfully diverse and fascinating.
Elfriede Jelinek wrote of the book:
“When you book Blumenthal, your trip is fully guaranteed. Adventure galore in the unknown known: first-class entertainment, funny and serious-just as it should be. Book now!”
In his own words, here is P.J. Blumenthal’s Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Self Portraits:
Self Portraits is a collection of 23 stories, all quite diverse and strung together like a string of beads. The introductory piece is like the “guru” bead on a Buddhist mala, the “pappas” on a Greek komboloi, the “imame” on an Islamic tesbih or the “cruciform” bead on a Catholic rosary. It serves as a point of departure and unification for these diverse portraits, these portraits of selves.
During the act of writing, I never listen to music. External music is a distraction for me. My ears need to concentrate on an inner music: the music of language, of vowels and consonants which I struggle to fit together in my search for verbal harmonies and creative dissonance.
Four of my stories do however refer to music explicitly:
“Laura” – a reminiscence about a young woman whose name, Laura, is an homage to a song composed in 1944 by David Raksin for a film called…what else?: “Laura”. That melody is at the heart of my story, quietly haunting, and evoking painful longing.
In my story “The Murals”, a narrator relates what he experiences after stepping into a street mural and entering – how shall I put it? – a parallel reality. During his explorations of the city he has stumbled into, he hears music somewhere, but it is a music he has difficulty describing because it is very unlike the music we are familiar with on our side of the mural.
“The Other Side of the River” – here the narrator, after crossing a bridge over a river, describes a part of town tourists rarely visit. There, to his surprise, he encounters old friends – and someone who seems to be an old lover. In the flat of this – nearly forgotten – lover, the narrator finds a musical instrument leaning against an easy chair he has sat down on. It resembles a mandolin but is somehow different. Moreover, the tuning is unknown to him. He picks it up and begins playing. Soon, the narrator and his old lover are singing together – in a language unrelated to the one the narrator had been using before he crossed the river. For the reader’s sake, the narrator translates the lyrics into English.
“The Museum of Victimology” – In this story, the Curator of the Museum of Victimology guides a visitor through the rooms of the museum. From time to time, the Curator’s explanations and descriptions are interrupted by music which here has the function of delineating an entr’acte before the action continues. We are never informed about the nature of this music. We only know that it is an integral part of the narration and the museum.
My Playlist
“Laura” – theme of the film of the same name (see above). “Everybody’s talking about Laura” was the sales blurb in 1944 when this Otto Preminger film hit the theaters. It’s a thriller, a film noir. Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews, is investigating the murder of the attractive young advertising executive, Laura Hunt. McPherson’s investigation brings him in contact with various people who have known – and loved – Laura Hunt. That wistful, haunting melody, composed by David Raksin is heard continually as a Leitmotif and adds to the suspenseful ending…
“Ten Cents a Dance” – sung by Ruth Etting tells the sad story of a “lady teacher” who needs to earn extra money as a for-purchase dance partner in a dance hall in 1930 (at the beginning of the Depression). Her melancholy fate carried through this sad song echoes in my inner ear frequently and finds its way into stories.
“Casta Diva”, an aria from Bellini’s Norma – sung by Maria Callas – In this scene the priestess Norma is praying to the moon goddess, a chaste goddess, in the hopes of averting a war between Celts and Romans. Her voice is powerful, her yearning fervent and convincing, the melody passionately lyric. This is a state similar to one I experience when I enter that realm where new words are born.
“Waltz in C# minor” Frédéric Chopin – a light and contemplative piece by one of my favorite composers. Eliot thought Chopin should be reborn in intimate company. This complex mixture of pensiveness and playful scampering is also a part of my mood when I write. I am sure I have listened to this waltz hundreds of times.
“Someone to watch over me” – George and Ira Gershwin – from the musical “Oh Kay” from 1926. I’ve never heard Gertrude Lawrence’s version from the original Broadway production, but I’m sure it was hypnotic. She was a great performer. The song evokes a mood that frequently sweeps through me – a part of the yearning that accompanies the writing process.
“Ruhe sanft mein holdes Leben“ – sung by Beverly Sills and the London Symphony Orchestra – from Mozart’s unfinished opera “Zaide”, composed when he was 23. The melody is transcendent and has accompanied me many years of my life. Sometimes I catch myself singing that melody and sometimes I play it from memory on the flute, the mandolin and the chromatic harmonica.
P.J. Blumenthal is an American writer living in Munich, Germany. He is the author of a nonfiction book on feral man, Kaspar Hausers Geschwister (Kaspar Hauser’s Siblings), as well as a German-language blog, “Der Sprachbloggeur.” Three volumes of his poetry have appeared in the USA so far: A Lusty Romance, Poems for Readers and Slow Train to Cincinnati.