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Book Notes - William Walsh ("Questionstruck") - Largehearted Boy

May 28, 2009

In his own words, here is William Walsh's Book Notes music playlist for his book, Questionstruck: A Collection of Question-Based Texts Derived from the Books of Calvin Trillin:

Questionstruck is a book of interrogatives, so here’s a mixtape of songs titled with questions. I’ve pulled questions from Calvin Trillin’s books that speak in some way to the songs.

“How Soon Is Now?” The Smiths

“Was it possible that he had found himself among the sort of cultists who beat up elderly vegetarians?” (Killings, 1984)
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Book Notes - Matthew Vollmer ("Future Missionaries of America") - Largehearted boy

In his own words, here is Matthew Vollmer's Book Notes music playlist for his short story collection, Future Missionaries of America:

The Smiths, "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out"

In "Future Missionaries of America," an atheist teenage girl (Alex) compulsively writes letters to a fundamentalist Christian boy (Melashenko), who also happens to be her partner in a Health class where they must take care of an unpredictable infant simulator. One night, during an ice storm, Alex and the robot baby get stranded at Melashenko's house. There, Alex discovers that his family couldn't be less like her own, and that he's been keeping a secret from her. The story ends with Alex heartbroken, and I expect that once she returns to her house, she'll dial up this beloved Smiths song, to hear Morrissey croon: "and if a double-decker bus/ smashes into us/ to be by your side/ is such a heavenly way to die."