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February 4, 2022
Swan Huntley's Playlist for Her Novel "Getting Clean With Stevie Green"
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, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Swan Huntley's Getting Clean With Stevie Green is one of the most mesmerizing novels I have read in ages, with a protagonist as unforgettable as she is fascinating.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
"Compelling ... animated by genuine emotional resonance—plus a thoughtful exploration of addiction, anxiety about sexual identity, and the ways family bonds shift in adulthood."
In her own words, here is Swan Huntley's Book Notes music playlist for her novel Getting Clean With Stevie Green:
This is definitely the most personal novel I’ve written so far. In it, the main character, Stevie, who is a lot like me, moves back to her (our) hometown of La Jolla, California and reconnects with people she knew in high school. That part’s not autobiographical. I don’t live in La Jolla. But when I go back to visit, it’s like taking a bath in my memories of how it felt to be young there. Often, songs are playing in the background of these memories. I’ve tried to listen to many of them during later periods of my life to see if they’ll attach to new memories, but no, the experiment never works. The songs on this playlist will always remind me of being a confused and reckless teenager in La Jolla.
What that means for you: this is a '90s playlist.
Garden Grove, Sublime
I’ve snuck into a jacuzzi at an apartment complex in Long Beach with my friend and some dudes she knows. One of them is saying, Yeah, the guy from Sublime used to live down the street.
Sublime, to me, was the quintessential Southern California garage band of the '90s. When I see a skate park, or a bro in wraparound Raybans eating a burrito in the sun, I cue Sublime in my head.
Also, if I’m honest, I listened to Sublime because it was what the popular kids did, so while I like this song, it also reminds me of all the time I’ve spent in my life trying to fit in. And by “fit in,” I mean “disappear.”
I Can’t Make You Love Me, Bonnie Raitt
But I’m going to attempt to make you love me anyway?
Whenever this one comes on, I think about all the time I’ve spent in my life trying to charm people into falling for me. Obviously, the Love Me campaigns started in my teenage years, because that’s when I became interested in romance.
In the novel, two characters dream about being chosen by Stevie, and I imagine both of them driving around in their cars at night while listening to this song and wanting to cry.
4am, Our Lady Peace
High on diet pills and whatever else, I am meticulously cleaning my room, and this song is playing on my stereo, which in today’s terms would be considered incredibly bulky. The angst of the singer embodies the angst that I feel. And the first lines—“I walked around my good intentions / And found that there were none”—make me imagine that my good intentions are a pile of something at a museum, and I am walking around them, inspecting.
Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Pat Benatar
In the novel, this song is playing as Stevie’s sister Bonnie declutters her “dumpsite” by the pool. As the lyrics boom through the air (“Fire awaaay!”), Stevie thinks, “I felt like we could have been the stars of our very own toothpaste commercial.” Pat Benatar’s music is so uplifting. And so are toothpaste commercials. Which is why I put them together in this scene.
Moondance, Van Morrison
This song reminds me of young love. It was the song of a couple I knew in high school. The boy used to drive the girl somewhere nice, like a vista, and turn up the volume, and they’d dance near the car. Since the goal of teenage-hood was to never be home, their lives and mine very literally revolved around our vehicles.
In the novel, Brad takes Stevie to the beach and they dance to this song in the parking lot. I rarely draw so directly from real life in fiction, or rather I should say that I often do draw directly from real life, but I’m often not aware of it until I read what I wrote later. In this case, I was aware of it. As I wrote the scene between Brad and Stevie, I was imagining my high school friends dancing at a vista, with the freeway traffic sparkling like diamond bracelets somewhere down below.
Wheel in the Sky, Journey
Driving to my job at Gap Kids while wearing size 4 Gap jeans. Size 4 is too small for me. I can’t breathe. I bought this size because my friend (the girl of the Moondance couple mentioned above) thought we should buy too-tight jeans and then sleep in them to stretch them out / torture ourselves.
This song, and probably all the songs on this playlist, remind me that I’m glad not to be young anymore.
White Flag, Dido
It’s a warm afternoon and I’m looking for a parking space outside my old high school. This song is turned up loud, and the part when the music swells has a cinematic effect. I feel like I’m in a movie about my own life—which makes my own life a lot more bearable.
A Long December, Counting Crows
This song is excellent poetry set against an arrangement of musical choices that is complex enough to keep it from going stale. With most songs I’ve known for a long time, I listen for 30 seconds, think, Oh, I know the rest, and then move on. When this one comes on, I always listen to the whole thing.
“The smell of hospitals in winter / And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls.” The first time I really heard these lyrics, I thought, Whoa. I’d ditched school on a foggy day and gotten stoned, so maybe the combination of drugs and evocative weather amplified my whoa, but even now, I think these lines, along with the ones that follow (“All at once you look across a crowded room / To see the way that light attaches to a girl”) are magic.
Unimportant, but I’ll tell you anyway: the color of this song, to me, is olive green.
Swan Huntley is the author of Getting Clean With Stevie Green, The Goddesses, and We Could Be Beautiful. She earned her MFA at Columbia University and has received fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo, where she was the 2019 recipient of The LeSage-Fullilove Residency. Her writings have appeared on Salon, The Rumpus, and Autostraddle, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.
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