Soundtracks for books

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I dont listen to music with singing while I'm reading a book. Lyrics tend to get in the way and it's too much for my 'ickle brane to take. It's better anyway cos it creates a soundtrack. But anytime I listen to Coltrane's "Giant steps" I cant get the image of rundown Vietnamese streets and scraggly hippies puking on matresses after too many reds cos I was reading Robert Stone's "Dog soldiers" when I was listening to that album for the first time. Anyone got any other examples?

― Michael Bourke, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

'blue flowers' and hellboy. the first jazzmatazz album and ivan tugenev's 'the diary of a superfluous man'. dubliners and 'midnight marauders'. i will think of more later.

― ethan, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I couldn't read Joyce and listen to A Tribe Called Quest at the same time. Seems like a strange combination to me.

― Michael Bourke, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Hey, there's no such thing for me.

(speaks someone who has read "Minnow on the Say" while listening to Jay-Z ...)

But I do seek out certain books that seem relevant while listening to particular records, yes, all the time.

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Some authors set a tone so specific that it reminds me of a certain kind of band, regardless of simultanaeity. Is that too far afield? Well here are some suggestions:

Dennis Cooper: Merzbow, X
A.L. Kennedy: Stereolab.
Denis Johnson: the Gories.
David Foster Wallace: Built to Spill (? both virtuousic. and maybe that they both always say too much, yet not enough)
David Eggers: They Might Be Giants covering Elliot Smith
Julio Cortazar: Serialism, Morton Feldman
Harry Crews: Lefty Frizell

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'm sorry, Michael, it's just too tempting to fuck with this topic. Probably I cd even think of some genuine answers that were also vaguely amusing/incongruous, but I just wanna say (completely untrue) stuff like: "I can only read the poetry of Stephane Mallarmé if at the same time I play _We're the Greatest Cockney Rejects_."

― mark s, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

"Know Your Enemy" by the Manics made a perfect soundtrack for reading Vols 2 and 3 of the Deutscher biography of Trotsky ("The Prophet Unarmed" and "The Prophet Outkast" er, Outcast that is).

Vollmann goes with The New York Dolls and The Dead Kennedys.

The Voidoids go with, duh, Richard Hell.

Lou Reed goes with Henry Miller, also with Exley.

Martin Amis goes with Iggy and The Stooges.

Paul Simon with The Paris Review.

Everything goes with Pynchon, but especially Jefferson Airplane and Cap'n Beefheart.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Mark, if that *were* true you'd be a man after my own heart ...

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Ace subject - the most memorable experience I had was being in Greece on a 6th form cultural visit a few years ago and listening to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambent Works Volume 2 (the best "visual" album to date imho) whilst reading Alastair Gray's long short story "Five Letters From An Eastern Empire". It worked perfectly. I suggest everyone check out both Aphex Twin's album and anything ever written by Alastair Gray.

― Dog Latin, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

How about Poe's Haunted and Danielewski's House of Leaves.

― bnw, Tuesday, 5 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I never read Dostoevsky unless I'm listening to 'The Idiot' by Iggy Pop, only peruse Homer when 'Odyssey and Oracle' by The Zombies is on the turntable, insist on playing 'Wuthering Heights' by Kate Bush while reading Bronte's masterpiece, and wouldn't be able to begin to look at the comic 'Caspar the Friendly Ghost' unless playing Daniel Johnston's paeon. Sometimes I listen to 'Sympathy for the Devil' while reading 'The Master and Margarita' and occasionally I play 'A Song for Europe' when browsing through 'Thus Spake Zarathustra.' But I can only read Goethe while doing the 'Mashed Potato' to 'Woolly Bully' by Sam the Sham.

― Maryann, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

and Mark S. - I deserved to make that last lazy joke, cos I made all the really difficult ones before it

― Maryann, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Mailer's 'Executioner's Song' with a bit of Merle Haggard - can't beat it!
Sterling, for Vollman, shouldn't that be the Avengers, Crime, and Flipper instead? Left coast thing.

― tarden, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Yes I know you mentioned the Dead Kennedys, but I hate them.
I've got a good DKs story - I saw their original guitarist (6025) get beat up by two transvesites in SF, because he had 'reformed' after the DKs and got another punk gig busted for obscenity.

― tarden, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Vollmann isn't just left-coast anymore. I picked the Dolls and DKs because they're loud and angry, but also sort of covey a stench of decomposition and rot. Which Vollmann does too.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Do you notice that people who read a lot of self-help literature tend to be into AC? Obviously that's 'AC' as in'Adult Contemporary', not Anal Cunt.

― tarden, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Life would be much more interesting if AC did mean Anal Cunt.

― Dan Perry, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Is there a Nabokov-Gary Glitter correlation?

― tarden, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

If by connection, you mean "cheap tasteless joke regarding sex with minors," then yes.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 6 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

new discovery: the devil's dictionary and wagon christ. and geez, 'tugenev', what the fuck? TURGENEV. i'm off to read my hellboy trade paperback while listening to gravediggaz now.

― ethan, Thursday, 7 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Iggy and Martin Amis? I've only read "Time's Arrow" but it seems very un-Iggy like.

I read a lot of engineering texts to Loveless. I can't listen to Loveless any more. Blurhg.

― Dave M., Thursday, 7 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I thought that Iggy/Martin Amis thing was a strange choice also.

― Maryann, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

You have to buy one of those recordplayers which only insane Christians own, for playing Led Zep backwards to hear the devil telling you sex is quite nice.

Or else you play the Stooges in the normal direction and read the book backwards, a probable improvement given its author.

― mark s, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.