Friday 11 November 2011

All the Lights Playlist Part 3

Here's the third and final installment of the playlist to go with Clemens Meyer's short story collection All the Lights. Do go out and buy a copy, why don't you?

Story Eleven: Riding the Rails – two men who form a bond in prison meet up again on the outside and travel around Germany pulling petty crimes. The song: KD Lang’s Ridin’ the Rails – because this is how the two imagine themselves, a romantic couple of hobos. The title (which is a long way from the original “Wir reisen”) wasn’t inspired by the song, but it could have been.

Story Twelve: Your Hair Is Beautiful – a man abandons his wife, having fallen for a prostitute he believes to be Lithuanian. The song: Joe Cocker, You Are So Beautiful – because it’s ridiculous and obsessive and OTT and imagine someone saying something like that to you. You’d want to do something nasty to them too.

Story Thirteen: A Ship Will Come – a young asylum-seeker boxes her way up through life. The song: Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life – because it’s punchy and go-getting and there’s no resisting it. And it's in Trainspotting, which a few people have compared Clemens' writing to.

Story Fourteen: Carriage 29 – a wine salesman finds himself on a train and can’t quite work out what on earth he’s doing there. The song: The Beatles’ Helter Skelter – because this is one of those Clemens Meyer stories that whirls you round and makes you dizzy and brash with confusion, just like the protagonist.

Story fifteen: The Old Man Buries His Beasts – an old man kills his animals and says goodbye to his neighbours in a dying village. I have to admit I was stumped to find a song to go with this very precisely told, melancholy story. To I crowdsourced it and my colleague Shaun Whiteside came up with Randy Newman’s Old Man – the perfect match.

Anyway, thanks for your patience, and do excuse the rather strange link choices. It's partly because a lot of material isn't available for viewing in Germany due to Youtube restrictions.

3 comments:

X.Trapnel said...

You couldn't think of any way to work in Kanye's "All of the Lights"? Talk about low-hanging fruit! (And what about "Atomic" for "Your Hair is Beautiful"?) (Hopefully one of those links works in Germany ... I remember finding that extremely frustrating (as did this artist!)

X.Trapnel said...

... er, but what I meant to ask was, any chance the book will get US distribution?

kjd said...

Thanks X.! Low-hanging fruit indeed, but just not quite right for the stories.

US distribution is a bit tricky, I believe. What we need is for a US publisher to pick up the US rights and then they can go ahead and re-edit my translation into American and bring joy/depression to the entire United States with this fantastic and wonderful collection of short stories.