A Beach Boys-inspired Reading List: 11 Books To Fuel A Weird, Beautiful Summer.

Photo from brianwilson.com

Beach Boy Brian Wilson, nan American brilliant and big clip Norbit fan, passed distant past week. He wrote immoderate of nan top popular songs of each time, and to grant nan departed musician, I’ve curated a playlist/reading database of tunes and books to battalion on nan adjacent clip you’re heading to nan beach.

Listen to: “Surfin’ U.S.A.” Let’s commencement pinch this classic, early ‘60s receptor worm. It’s beautiful saccharine though—why not temper it pinch thing connected nan darker broadside of surfing?

Pair with: William Finnegan’s memoir Barbarian Days will make you want to acquisition Finnegan’s ecstatic relationship to surfing, and besides fearfulness nan extremes of surf culture. I for illustration to ideate nan “ride nan tube and get pitted” feline was connected nan Pulitzer committee for this one.

Nothing says “surfing” and “USA” for illustration sadistic formation freaks and crazed ‘Nam vets. Kem Nunn’s Tapping nan Source is simply a fun, feverish, sand-blasted noir that inspired Point Break, 1 of nan apical movies successful nan Boyfriend Film Canon.

Listen to: “Help Me Rhonda” This deceptively sunny tune has immoderate existent heaviness beneath it: nan heavy guitars, nan debased “bow ohio oh”s, and nan rejected narrator pitching a weird emotion triangle. There are plentifulness of books retired location astir emotion triangles and men begging female to slumber pinch them, going each nan measurement backmost to The Aeneid’s self-serving person boy, but really mightiness Rhonda feel?

Pair with: Lise from Tove Ditlevsen’s Faces is simply a quintessential heartsick and confused characteristic to me, who is looking for immoderate alleviation too. I deliberation Lise mightiness spot herself successful nan opening lines: “Well, since she put maine down I’ve been retired doin’ successful my head/I travel successful precocious astatine nighttime and successful nan mornin’ I conscionable laic successful bed.”

Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby features different analyzable romanticist entanglement, pinch characters aft solace and love, and wherever everyone’s begging to “help maine get her retired of my heart.”

Listen to: “God Only Knows”

Pair with: One of nan top songs of each clip needs to beryllium paired pinch 1 of nan top books of each time: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Both are sweeping, reflective, hopeful, and appealing to a higher power: put these 2 American masterpieces successful conversation.

Listen to: “Good Vibrations” What sticks retired to maine astir “Good Vibrations” is really strangely patchwork it is: location are truthful galore mini compositions and moments that fresh together successful this trippy emotion song. I besides emotion nan invented connection “excitations” here, a neologism that doesn’t look to person caught on.

Pair with: This opus reminds maine of 2 dreamy and inventive short communicative collections: The Miniature Wife by Manuel Gonzales, which features a level that circles for years and a man who speaks from his ears. and nan smart scary successful The Doll’s Alphabet by Camilla Grudova, pinch stories of a spider-man successful Europe and a feminist revolution. Both are arsenic weird and beautiful arsenic Wilson’s song.

Listen to: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” Relationships are hard. Lyrically, this opus is beautiful simple, but nan complexity of nan philharmonic statement elevates it to thing much than conscionable a ditty astir teenage puppy love. This is simply a opus astir belonging, astir imagining a early pinch someone, and emotion nan pang of nan region betwixt wherever you are and wherever you dream to be.

Pair with: Naturally, this sends maine to a book astir uncovering emotion successful very caller places: Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy. Like nan song, Sky Daddy is strange, sweet, and afloat of heavy longing. Unlike nan opus though, this 1 features horniness for pitchy planes.

And if we’re talking astir Californians striving for a amended world, a “world wherever we belong,” Mike Davis’ City of Quartz has to beryllium successful nan conversation.

Listen to: “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” Brian Wilson was a man who struggled, and I deliberation astir apt felt beautiful retired of measurement overmuch of nan time. But location isn’t overmuch bitterness successful this song, and for illustration galore Beach Boys songs, nan complexity of nan euphony complicate nan meaning. This is simply a lament for thing that is retired of reach, almost unusual to nan narrator.

Pair with: When I deliberation of characters who are “looking for a spot to fresh in” and who “got brains but they ain’t doing…no good,” I deliberation of nan awesome Kobo Abe‘s books. Particularly, nan man and female successful The Woman successful nan Dunes, and The Box Man from The Box Man, who dons a ample cardboard box, retreating into a unusual reality each his own.

Sometimes if nan world is excessively unusual and frightening, we person to find ways to make thing new. Rest successful peace, Brian.