"I was just a card, caught up in the stars."

Capital! Straight out of the mouths of his characters, capital describes Amor Towles' beguiling and bittersweet novel about New York twenty-somethings swinging their skirts and drinks towards each other and the future. It's 1938 and adorably-named protagonist Katey Kontent is just one of the story's clever fish, swimming uptown in her own resourcefulness - from a Brighton Beach upbringing into social circles that sparkle like diamonds and bubble over like champagne. Like Katey, friends Evey and Tinker discover this year that pre-war Manhattan is the perfect place to lose yourself, find yourself, or maybe a little of both. After all, "Doesn't New York just turn you inside out."


Katey's reflection on 1938 is told from the halls of the Museum of Modern Art. In the fall of 1966, in middle age, walking through a Walker Evans exhibition with her husband, Kate is caught up with subway photographs of the young fellow she once fell for. Her memory's journaling of the year she passed with Tinker and Eve is a sharp reminder of how, no matter the quickness with which people may come and go, some are indelibly present in spirit - especially those who find us when we're young. 


Towles, as Katey, says best at book's end: "...life is...a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions - we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come." Rules of Civility is no fairy tale. In fact, Katey, Evey, and Tinker all lose sight of each other by the end of 1938. Yet, what still makes this story so charming and sweet is the fact that, somehow, Towles' little rascals seem contented just the same. "You mean how was he on the inside. He was happy." Or so I think.


Katey Kontent is such a likeable lead. Maybe it's because she is so independent in choosing her cards. She wavers so little in the moments up-to and after she makes her decisions. In this way, she is a modern girl's fairy tale princess. In a nod to Kate, I put together this mixtape without thinking too much. No eraser to paper once my gut cried out. 'Cause sometimes that really is just the way it ought to be. 


I went back in time a little for this one. Of course! 1938 is a year when Fats Waller, Count Basie, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Billie Holiday, and the Gershwins were making their mark on American music. Eve, especially, is a huge jazz fan, and Towles' trio frequents clubs with romantic names like the Hotspot and the Lean-To. For older Kate, telling her story from mid-century, I opened and closed this mixtape with Dinah Washington's 1960 recording of Gershwin's Loved Walked In and Ella Fitzgerald's rendition of Irving Berlin's Now It Can Be Told, from her 1958 sessions with Paul Weston's orchestra. 


But this mixtape really evolved around my concurrent (and constant) listening to Laura Marling's latest album, A Creature I Don't Know, and the track I Was Just A Card (kismet, right?). Laura's deep, sure voice tells cautionary tales with jazzy verve and bluesy beauty. This album breathes Katey Kontent to life for me. The Muse soundtracks Kate and Tinker's early flirtations. Salinas is for Eve as she rides the train to LA. 


Beirut always takes me places - other times, other continents - and they are all over this mixtape, too. St. Apollonia tips a cap to Katey's Russian heritage, nights at Chernoff's, and her love of churches. The Long Island Sound is the perfect antidote for an unbearable party in the Hamptons. A Call to Arms drones like the horn of a freighter, calling Tinker to the edge of the wharves and a new beginning.  The rest of this mixtape's modern songs are tunes that somehow walk the line, in lyrics and tone, between happiness and melancholy, still young and full of whimsy - much like these characters were during our fleeting friendship. About the proverbial discard pile, those choices, Towles writes, "...right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss." And here, that's not such a sad thing - in the end.

Soundtrack to a novel: Rules of Civility, Amor Towles

1. Love Walked In, Dinah Washington

2. Lulu's Back In Town, Fats Waller

3. St. Apollonia, Beirut

4. Winter Fawn, matt pond PA

5. The Muse, Laura Marling

6. Vacationing People, Foreign Born

7. Big Sad Eyes, The Immediate

8. Dots, Everest

9. In the Summertime, The Rural Alberta Advantage

10. The Long Island Sound, Beirut

11. Autumn in New York, Billie Holiday

12. Salinas, Laura Marling

13. September Song, Walter Huston

14. Waltz (Better Than Fine), Fiona Apple

15. Jumpin' at the Woodside, Count Basie & His Orchestra

16. Tupelo Honey (Van Morrison), Joan Osborne

17. It's De-Lovely, Eddy Duchin & His Orchestra

18. You Won't Be Fooled By This, Albert Hammond, Jr.

19. A Call to Arms, Beirut

20. Man\Bag of Sand, Frightened Rabbit

21. I Was Just A Card, Laura Marling

22. Now It Can Be Told, Ella Fitzgerald

Listen to this mixtape on Spotify (partial)

"What you love can be what destroys you."

One could argue I shouldn't touch this book here. Philip Stephens' Miss Me When I'm Gone comes with its own soundtrack. Musician Cyrus Harper returns to his hometown of Apogee, Missouri shortly before his mother's death. He has spent years chasing the ghost of his missing sister, Saro, in California. He finds the area decaying much in the way of his memories and hope of finding what, and who, he is looking for. And changing. Stephens fills the past and present of his story with traditional songs of the Ozarks - songs that Cyrus, Saro, and a cast of colorful characters sing, play, and carry themselves on like lifeboats. Embedded within this novel is the musical history of a region. 

Running at angles destined for collision are the stories of Cyrus and Margaret Bowman, a murderess on the run to the daughter she lost. Meanwhile, Stephens provides an education in songs. He is an expert. I cannot possibly attempt to share the legacy of these Ozarkian songwriters and songplayers. Instead, my mixtapes (there are two!) play these intertwining tales in modern music rooted in the folk songs of Cyrus and Saro's by-gone days (The Avett Brothers, Ben Sollee, The Civil Wars, Jakob Dylan), in music as heavy as the burdens the characters shoulder (Dead Confederate, Deer Tick), as terrifying as the loneliness they feel (The Slip, Elliott Smith), in songs ominous and full of loss. I created playlists for both Cyrus and Margaret, trying to tunefully trace their journeys in separate soundtracks, but with songs by (mostly) shared artists. Just like in the novel, I wanted their paths to cross in some way.

Every mixtape starts in some moment. It might make Mr. Stephens cringe, but here it begins with a music video by a trio of Australian teenagers. Miss Me When I'm Gone begins like this: "The hog-eyed man returned to her...his blood-black eyes reflected what moonlight filtered through the window. He grinned, and his gums shone." These hog-eyed men - constant demons of the Harpers' minds (and story) - are Cyrus' mother's undoing, maybe someday his. My image of these creatures came creeping in via an MTV memory from my early, grunge-tastic teen years - the greedy, hog-faced monsters of Silverchair's "Tomorrow". As unlikely as it feels that this song should soundtrack this story (I'm still not sure it should), I knew I had to include it on Cyrus' soundtrack. For me, "Tomorrow" is the way the Harpers' hog-eyed men stalk the mixtape. I couldn't get this damn song (and video) out of my head. The song invites the listener to a little town that is a dreadful place, churns in anger that Cyrus feels, eludes to the greed of his brother Isaac's vulture-like circling of the family land as he waits to complete the gentrified condo-ization of Apogee as a memorial to mom.

But a mixtape needs more than a song to exist, to tell a story. Along with the artists mentioned above, I wanted to shade these playlists with female voices that could tell Cyrus and Margaret's stories while feeling reminiscent of Saro Harper's legend - lending nightingale voices to the story's most important ghost. Earthy Emmylou Harris and angelic Alison Krauss were early additions. Before her disappearance, Saro and Cyrus were a duo of stagelings. For this, I also chose duets (and a triad) featuring the magical voices of Joy White (The Civil Wars), Kate Long (Release the Sunbird), and Neko Case and Kelly Hogan (Jakob Dylan ft. Three Legs). Gillian Welch sings of mistakes and endings. "That's the way the cornbread crumbles. That's the way the whole things ends."

Sountrack to a novel: Miss Me When I'm Gone, Philip Stephens

These Old Shoes, Deer Tick

Cyrus

1. Evil is Alive and Well, Jakob Dylan

2. Home Sweet Home, Emmylou Harris

3. Piece by Piece and Frame by Frame, Deer Tick

4. My Father's Father, The Civil Wars

5. Gone, The Black Crowes

6. I Don't Think I'm Ever Going to Figure It Out, Elliott Smith

7. Tomorrow, Silverchair

8. Echo/Always On/EZ Con, Blitzen Trapper

9. My Lady and the Mountain, The Avett Brothers

10. Life in Disguise, The Slip

11. Wrecking Ball, Dead Confederate

12. Pig Food, The Middle East

13. Come Back to Us, Release the Sunbird

14. Dead American Writers, Tired Pony

15. Copper and Malachite, Ben Sollee

16. Lay My Burden Down, Alison Krauss & Union Station

Margaret

1. Walkin' for You, The Avett Brothers

2. Paper Birds, The Slip

3. The Way It Goes, Gillian Welch

4. Dear Companion, Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore

5. Get Out, Dead Confederate

6. Without You, Silverchair

7. Anywhere I Lay My Head, Tom Waits

8. Holy Rollers for Love, Jakob Dylan ft. Three Legs

9. Fire and Fast Bullets, Blitzen Trapper

10. Lie Awake, Alison Krauss & Union Station

11. Barton Hollow, The Civil Wars

12. I Am a Landslide, Tired Pony

13. Christ Jesus, Deer Tick

14. Another Roadside Tragedy, The Black Crowes

15. Bye, Elliott Smith

The Way The Whole Thing Ends, Gillian Welch

Listen to this mixtape on Spotify (partial)