Largehearted Ledger's 1st Anniversary, A Playlist, Plus Links & Likes

An anniversary playlist, interviews with Sarah Rose Etter & Emerson Whitney, Brian Dillon on drum machines, A Matador Records playlist, Elyssa Maxx Goodman’s book launch & drag show party, and more

Jul 23, 2023

Largehearted Ledger turned one this past week, twenty years younger than its sibling, Largehearted Boy (a young Tom Cruise to LHB’s Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man seems a fitting analogy). How am I celebrating this anniversary? I’ll buy some books, of course, since first anniversaries are traditionally celebrated with paper gifts.

50 playlists, over a hundred newsletters, 500+ music & book links, plus writing about many other things I love, the newsletter has become a fixture in my life.

The past year has been fruitful. I started a new bookstore job. I interviewed for (and was offered) a teaching position (which I start next month). Largehearted Boy moved to a new platform. When LHB changed servers, I decided to pull banner advertising from the site moving forward. Between lower ad rates and the increasing use of ad blockers, revenue was down and the ads were increasingly less relevant and annoying for readers. Substack has helped replace some of that revenue.

Thank you for reading the newsletter. If you are a paid subscriber, thank you for supporting both the newsletter and Largehearted Boy. Paid subscribers currently receive a weekly playlist of new music and book & music recommendations, but I am always open to suggestions for added bonus content.

This newsletter has been both an inspiration and effective writing exercise. Writing two posts a week beyond the regular Largehearted Boy posts and my other projects expanded my world and offered even more interaction with both readers and fellow writers and curators. Substack’s Notes feature may not be a Twitter-replacement as advertised, but is an invaluable place for creators to gather, share, and appreciate each others’ works, and encourage everyone to join the conversation.

Going forward, I am looking to add occasional short interviews with writers and musicians, perhaps some guest playlists. Largehearted Ledger will continue to evolve with the reader in mind.

What would you like to see from the newsletter in the future?

An Anniversary Playlist of Music from the Past 12 Months (54 songs, 3 hours and 54 minutes)

Largehearted Likes:

The book launch and drag show party for Elyssa Maxx Goodman’s new book Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag
Elyssa Maxx Goodman’s book Glitter and Concrete:A Cultural History of Drag, is enthralling, comprehensive, and timely. Mark September 12th on your calendars for NYC’s most fabulous literary event of the year.
Maggie Nelson’s interview with artist Nao Bustamante
NELSON: I’m curious about the relationship between idea and manifestation, given how many layers there are. It seems like one would have to be both very patient and very open to the process, how it changes.
BUSTAMANTE: Absolutely. There’s the initial idea, the initial brain burr or the flash. And how that gets pushed back or built out is definitely part of the process. Brown Disco popped into my head pretty much fully realized. And I went at it. I didn’t get to realize it the way that I wanted to. Specifically, I had to find a lot of workarounds.
Bagels and cream cheese
Every weekend, my partner and I head out one morning and walk to one of the many bagel shops in north Brooklyn. Our orders vary, but inevitably are two bagels (hers toasted, mine not) with cream cheese (tofu for her, something with bacon for me). This is heaven.

Largehearted Links

Fluxblog’s Matador History playlist
The OTHERPPL podcast’s interview with author Andrew Lipstein
Brian Dillon examined the legacy of drum machines at Granta
Emerson Whitney was interviewed about his memoir Daddy Boy
I think in some ways this book is hopeful, because I desperately want this straight white guy to find humanity and be whole. Wouldn’t it be amazing if straight white men were suddenly a force for good in the ways that I am always desperately needing them to be? It feels so strange to reckon with the fact that I have absolutely no optimism for that.
The Quietus’s top albums of the year so far
The Quietus always introduces me to interesting, worthwhile music.
Sarah Rose Etter on her brilliant novel RIPE at NYLON
”I wanted the book to be like if you were holding a fruit. If they would have let me publish it in a circle shape, I probably would have gone for it. I was thinking about how to make writing as sculptural as possible. Sometimes when I’m writing a novel, the structure helps me finish the work, because I need everything to be in a container. When I started to think about the pomegranate, each section began as a way of looking at her life. The first section is the outer rind, and it’s her job, and where she lives. Then it gets a little deeper and deeper and finally we get to the seed, where she’s pregnant and trying to deal with her body.”
Tim O’Brien discussed writing his forthcoming road trip novel, America Fantastica, with Publishers Weekly
“I had a kind of perverse fun writing it,” he says. “But making sentences that are reasonably graceful and connect to one another is hard work. I feel now that I owe myself a road trip.”
Read a story from Kate Doyle’s excellent story collection I Meant It Once
Poet Maureen N. McClane discussed her new collection with The Rumpus
The book emerged from different things I was writing and thinking about over several years. Some poems were written in response to prompts from friends. I have an ongoing fiftieth-birthday project [in which] I’ve asked friends to commission me to write poems for them, and the poems thus far have addressed everything from the birth of children to dance to landscape to formal requests—one friend asked for triolets!—to broader philosophical questions.
A.M. Homes on her iconic Barbie story “A Real Doll”
When I wrote “A Real Doll,” I didn’t know much about Barbie’s history. It’s fascinating to think about how she went from being a product to breaking out of her box, so to speak, to becoming a larger-than-life figure. She is only eleven-and-a-half inches tall literally, but psychologically/culturally she is enormous because she is a refraction of our collective unconscious which makes her both profound and problematic.
Jesse Rifkin took Greta Rainbow on a walking tour of some of the sites featured in his book This Must Be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City