Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life is, on the face of things, a relatively simple story. Girl meets boy under less than perfect circumstances and they struggle to make something of it. A classic love tale. But that’s where simplicity, or even any semblance of understanding, ends. This is a novel about post-9/11 New York, a tale of immense confusion, mistrust and paranoia, about poverty in a city smothered by it, about millions of people trying to make a life out of nothing.

Zou Lei is an illegal immigrant from China, a Muslim of the Uighur tribe, Skinner a PTSD-suffering Iraq vet who scraped through three tours of a war that’s followed him home in more ways than one. Queens is bursting at the seams with people looking for something better, or else ways to distract themselves from the present, a roiling, screaming sea of humanity. Lei and Skinner end up together, bonding through a common sadness and a shared appreciation of discipline and exercise. Their unsentimental yet gentle relationship serves as a recognisable, familiar way-in to a recognisable but wholly unfamiliar place. All of this is written in some of the best prose I’ve read in a long while. Beautiful and terrifying and sad, it captures New York as a gritty, humming place that’s crumbling in time with America’s perception of greatness.

Just like the characters, the reader is in alien territory. The overwhelming majority of us cannot fully understand the positions in which these protagonists find themselves. The fringes of society swamped by an overwhelming Lack Of. A lack of money and respect, of kinship and trust, as well as lack of material stuff (Zou Lei has a bed to sleep in but is essentially homeless, Skinner renting a basement with decidedly finite savings). But both are still subject to the American bombardment of dreams and nightmares that constitute the consumerist culture. They see shop-fronts and billboards, they see mistrust in the media and the faces of passers-by. The paradox of feeling isolated and lonely in a crowd of people seems designed specifically to torture them.

But the confusion is deeper than that, one that might impinge on Lei and Skinner more than most but hangs over us all. Not only are there no answers here, there are barely any questions. If 9/11 provided the West with a new narrative, a renewed sense of moral importance and superiority , then events like those at Abu Ghraib snatched away the veil. Technology has made it impossible to ignore that the ‘Bad Guys’ are mostly innocent, scared people like us, that our dirty secrets in exotic wars will not be buried. Everyone lives in this grey area but Skinner personifies it, pining for the purpose and friendship of war while being eaten alive by the truth of it.

“He took a drink from a flask of Bacardi Scorched Cherry and watched an execution on his laptop”

Here’s a collection of songs which we feel are somehow relevant to the themes and feel of the novel.

Tracklisting:

1. I’m New Here – Gil Scott Heron
2. Wish it Was True – White Buffalo
3. Drinking at the Dam – Smog
4. There I was in the pouring rain again, but this time I was at the drive-thru at Mac Donalds’ – Talons’
5. Beacon Hill – Damien Jurado
6. Heartbreaker – Noah Gundersen
7. Cold Apartment Floors – Vagabon
8. Travel Map – Hip Hatchet
9. Death By Dust – Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
10. Linens – Water Liars
11. The Modern Leper – Frightened Rabbit
12. No Future (Pt. I) – Titus Andronicus
13. Shitty City – Moonface
14. The Whip – Jesse Marchant
15. Third of Life – A Weather
16. Bloodkin Push (Forget the Ones) – Will Johnson
17. Wall Around Your Heart – Huck Notari
18. The Trapeze Swinger (Iron & Wine Cover) – Gregory Alan Isakov
19. I Could Only Stand By – The Weather Station
20. Fake Empire – The National

Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish is out now on Tyrant Books (US) and Oneworld (UK + Aus). Quiet, Constant Friends is available digitally and on cassette via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page.

The post Lit Links: Atticus Lish – Preparation for the Next Life appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Huck Notari

Earlier this year Portland’s Huck Notari completed a successful Kickstarter campaign for his third album, Huck Notari and the River. Now released, the LP does not disappoint with Notari’s trademark wistful strumming and stirring lyrics. If you are new to the artist, check out ’Wall Around Your Heart’, one of my favourite songs.

Tiny Ruins

Haunts is the latest EP from Auckland’s Hollie Fullbrook, AKA Tiny Ruins. This is organic music, with simpe instrumentation supporting the main attraction – Fullbrook’s incredible vocals. It feels like she is singing in an empty room for you alone, her voice filling the space and bringing to life the tales she is telling.

Old Haunt

An offshoot of The Gertrudes, Old Haunt is a haunting blend of traditional folk and more experimental genres like electronic and drone. Herohill’s write-up states that front man Lucas Huang described the project as ‘Tim Hecker unearthing a box of Townes van Zandt demos’, which makes us very excited for the full album coming this November.

<a href=“http://oldhaunt.bandcamp.com/track/ghost-town” data-mce-href=“http://oldhaunt.bandcamp.com/track/ghost-town”>Ghost Town by Old Haunt</a>

Jason Isbell

Southeasten, the new album from the former Drive-By Truckers man, is an exceptional collection of songs. Listen to a few of them here thanks to Garden and Gun (kudos to Songsfortheday for the find).

Suntrapp

The press release accompanying the first single by Newcastle’s Suntrapp states that it intends to capture the human conditions, being ’impulsive, celebratory and cathartic in equal measure’. I think this is a perfect summation of what indie-folk-rock (or whatever) should be all about.

Glass Cake

Glass Cake aren’t particularly folky but the idea behind this series was to let us post about more good music, not constrict ourselves with rules. Lunar Caustic is like a Sharon van Etten x Twin Sister x Scout Niblett hybrid playing a raucous garage rock. It’s great.

Ben De La Cour

Ben De La Cour is a singer-songwriter based in Nashville. He has recently released his third album, Ghost Light, a really nice collection of acoustic folk songs and some country rockers. I’ve seen comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Townes van Zandt and I think these are fair. He certainly has the pedigree to be considered an oldtime-style wandering man, having travelled the world as an amateur boxer, a bartender, a janitor and farm worker. You can download the album for however much you like over at Ben’s bandcamp page.

Wes Tirey

We have featured Wes a few times recently, with a review of his EP I Stood Among Trees, and last week’s interview about his music and writing, and he has a new 3-song EP out now. False Idols is another collection of superbly written earthy songs from some old vision of America and is available for as little as $1. All funds will go towards Wes’ Indiegogo campaign to get him to Italy.

We’ll be seeing you next month.

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