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February 18, 2020
William Lychack's Playlist for His Novel "Cargill Falls"
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, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Roxane Gay, and many others.
William Lychack's novel Cargill Falls is a powerful and lyrical evocation of youth in the recent past.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote of the book:
"'Cargill Falls' is a poignant eulogy for childhood, and childhood friendship, in a time when the world seemed somehow both very small and limitless."
In his own words, here is William Lychack's Book Notes music playlist for his novel Cargill Falls:
We once found a gun in the woods...
me and Brownie, twelve years old...
two of us walking home from school one day...
and there on the ground in the leaves was a pistol...
In many ways, I thought of this novel as a kind of love story to a place and time, a kind of resurrection of a friend and a friendship, but also a hard reckoning of the toll of expectations and disappointments. After hearing about the suicide of my childhood friend, Brownie, I wrote Cargill Falls as an attempt to make amends for what might have gone wrong in a life, circling back to one long-departed winter’s day, when everything seemed to change for “these two little idiots.”
Years from this place—a lifetime away that one afternoon—and still I can’t help but wish I could reach down and somehow lift the gun away from these two little idiots. Give them baseball practice or trumpet lessons. Somehow linger them back to the playground after school with friends. Wish I could make a train set of their town: Cargill Falls, Connecticut, circa 1980, its old mills and tired little worker houses, its churches and sidewalks and cemeteries, the grocery and package stores, that constant hint of potato chips in the air from the Frito-Lay factory in the next town over. If I could, I’d put those boys anywhere but the woods that day. I’d set them out by the train station, figurines throwing rocks at freight cars going by. I’d get them out near the river where the carp pucker the weeds above the falls. I’d wander them home through a kind of Busytown, give them bikes to ride, whisper for them to get out of here already. That’d be me rustling the maple and oak leaves, just enough to spook these kids away.
Not like they’d have listened, of course. Not like they’d have been able to hear a single word. All the iron filings would line up on that magnet of a gun for them, and yet there were so many things a pair of boys might have done different at this point in the story....
As for a soundtrack, the book is noisy with music, a kind of emotional wash over the scenes, an undercurrent in the lives of the people in this world. Crawford's mother wanted to be a singer, so she sings Dusty Springfield and the Shirelles; the narrator's mother has sad and sentimental songs on the hi-fi when he comes home, his childhood filled with Merle Haggard and The Righteous Brothers; and the three boys have bands and albums and radio stations running through their 12-year-old days:
It wasn’t far to Brownie’s house from here. Less than a mile, and we went along singing snippets of The Cars, The Police, The Who. We sang Cheap Trick. We sang like we were driving with the windows down, the three of us hollering Earth, Wind, and Fire. We kicked a flattened soda can. We cross-country skied along the sand and salt that collected in the gutter from winter. We sang, the Devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal, he was in a bind, he was way behind, he was willing to make a deal. We tried not to look over our shoulders for a rescue, some miracle of Cutlass or Chevelle to swoop down, some teacher or coach to come calling after us, me and Brownie and Crawford dragging our feet through our la la la la Lola....
Songs of the boys:
"Devil Went Down to Georgia," Charlie Daniels Band
"Dream Police," Cheap Trick
"Let's Go," The Cars
"Behind Blue Eyes," The Who
"Don't Stand So Close to Me," The Police
"Message in a Bottle," The Police
"Got to Get You into My Life," Earth, Wind, and Fire
"Lola," Kinks
Songs of their mothers:
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me," Dusty Springfield
"Will You Love Me Tomorrow," The Shirelles
"Unchained Melody," Righeous Brothers
"Green, Green Grass of Home," Merle Haggard
You could reach down into your throat and pull your heart out raw and warm and still-beating to show the world, but the world would probably just shrug like it was nothing. The world had its own problems. The world didn’t want your heart. It had more than enough hearts already.
William Lychack and Cargill Falls links:
the author's website
the author's Wikipedia entry
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for The Architect of Flowers
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