In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward , Lauren Groff , Bret Easton Ellis , Celeste Ng , T.C. Boyle , Dana Spiotta , Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender , Roxane Gay, and many others.
Sara B. Franklin’s book The Editor is a captivating biography of Judith Jones.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“Jones is an exhilarating subject, and Franklin has done her justice in this expert, involving, and radiant biography.”
In her own words, here is Sara B. Franklin’s Book Notes music playlist for her book The Editor :
The process of researching and writing my new book, The Editor, took a decade. The book’s subject, the late, legendary editor, Judith Jones, and I met in January of 2013. I was, at the time, 26 years old and unmoored; both my parents had died of cancer when I was in my early twenties and, when I met Judith, I had recently moved back to Brooklyn after trying, more than once, to leave. I wanted to be a writer, yet wasn’t yet able to make a living off my pen. I’d begun a PhD program, but was unenthusiastic about sticking out the long process. Then I met Judith—who, having forged a life path for herself out of her twinned passions of food and books, was already something of a personal hero to me—and everything changed.
Judith was 88 at the time, and I fell in love with her fast and hard. I admired her intellect, her curiosity, her pragmatism; her penchant for hard work, her directness, her sensuality, her mischievousness and, above all, her insistence on envisioning a life of one’s own terms rather than following any sort of handed-down script.
During the years I worked on this book—beginning when I was sent to interview Judith about her life and work, and, after she died in the summer of 2017, via conversations with people who’d known her and the enormous and rich archive she left behind—so much happened in my life. I married, struggled with infertility, and left the city (a place I’d always felt ill-suited to). I gave birth to twins, and nearly lost one of them. I finished my doctorate, published two books. My marriage ended. The pandemic hit. Those years demanded repeated revision of my ideas of what my life was. What it could be.
Judith remained a constant for me throughout. She showed me, by example, that life—never uncomplicated or painless—is for the living. That womanhood and motherhood can take many shapes and evolve over time. She was guided by instinct, committed to integrity, and driven by an absolute belief in art and of pleasure as ways of knowing and being in the world. In knowing her, and living, these many years, with the stories she helped shape, her own words, and my memories of her, Judith emboldened me to claim my own hungers and appetites unabashedly.
These songs (all of which I had phases of listening to on repeat during the process of working on this book) reflect the radical re-envisioning I was doing of my life, and of the form and content of this book, starting in 2019. I was grappling with cultural delusions about the nuclear family, notions of success, and stability, coming to claim my own desires, and falling in love, again and again, romantically, yes, but also with life—my own and all the life surrounding me—and with the unruly, sensuous world Judith so loved.
Johnny Cash, “Hurt”
I first learned about this cover in an interview with the writer Celeste Ng in the summer of 2020. I remember exactly where I was—stealing away from my kids and their father for an afternoon to drive up to a lake in the Catskills, alone. It was a gorgeous day. My windows were down. I’m still moved by the confluence of beauty and pain in this track during a summer in which we were all hurting so deeply. It feels like truth, and like freedom.
Blood Orange, “You’re Not Good Enough” and Calle 13, “Atrévete-Te-Te”
In the early, ambiguous days of my separation, I’d escape my house for a precious 45 minutes each morning once my kids were situated and take my dog to the same trail in the woods and run. These two tracks were foundational to those sweaty, cathartic sessions, after which I felt able to think, and breathe, again.
Annie Lenox, “Walking on Broken Glass”
After the first 6 months of lockdown, my twins’ preschool reopened, but with very short, limited hours. Newly separated, my house was peaceful and quiet when my kids were gone, and I was able to return, in earnest, to working on my book, but the hours my kids were off my watch flew by without a chance for me to come up out of my solitary writing headspace before picking them up. So I found ways for us to transition together. Dancing together always helped. This was (still is) one of our anthems. Four years later, my kids still strip naked at the opening chords of this track and give over to being entirely in their bodies.
Tom Waits, “Come on Up to the House” and Mavis Staples, “You Are Not Alone”
Adjusting to the end of my marriage during COVID was both a gift (privacy!) and incredibly challenging because of the isolation. Sometimes, when my kids were with their dad, I’d listen to these two songs over and over again at top volume while I cooked myself dinner. It wasn’t a substitute for the physical comradery and intimacy of friendship I so craved in those long months, but it helped.
Maxwell, “This Woman’s Work”
Coming out of the winter of 2020-2021, I felt like I’d shed so much dead weight and also become more sensitive and porous than I’ve ever been. I felt both stronger and completely flayed open. This cover of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” felt like it sang that feeling in being with its tenderness, and in the tension between the incredible control and soaring reach of Maxwell’s voice.
Charles Bradley and The Budos Band, “Changes”
When I was feeling stronger—when the kids seemed okay and the writing was moving along and I felt like I could hold the moments of overwhelm in perspective—this was one of the tracks I reached for in my time alone. The heavy, slow rhythm, the brass, and Bradley’s sometimes almost wailing voice held both the pain of loss and a feeling of certainty in a yet unknown future.
Buffy Sainte-Marie, “Helpless”
The first time I ate at a restaurant after my kids and I were all vaccinated was with a friend of mine whose personal and professional life had also been completely reshaped during those long COVID months. We’d agreed to splurge at a higher-end local spot, sadly gone now. I was early, my friend was running late, and while I waited for her and drank a glass of wine, this track came on and I fell for it, hard, right away. Where Neil was almost whiny, Sainte-Marie was a powerhouse. Her refrain of helplessness wasn’t a fragile plea, but a recognition that fighting to exert control is a waste of energy. A willing, fully embodied submission.
Kamasi Washington, “The Rhythm Changes”
The poet and essayist Ross Gay has been a really formative figure in my life, and I first learned about Kamasi Washington through reading him. But this track, in particular, I learned about via an episode of the podcast Vs. with the poet Aracelis Girmay , after Ross Gay spoke about Girmay in an interview about his book-length poem, Be Holding, which found me at just the right time in my life. This track, with Washington on the saxophone and Patrice Quinn on vocals, is a joyful reminder of the reality of constant change, and the steadying forces that can hold us as we’re rocked.
D’Angelo, “Feel Like Making Love”
One of the great joys of the past several years has been writing a book about a true sensualist while coming back online and into my own senses after COVID, lockdown, and divorce. It’s been thrilling, coming into a new relationship to my body and to pleasure in this new chapter of my life.
I’ve found a kind of freedom of movement, autonomy, and pleasure with my body that I never quite imagined for myself, certainly not as a mother of two young children. Flirting and sex have been a significant part of that, and there’s no one I’d rather get down to than D’Angelo.
Adrianne Lenker, “Donut Seam”
I first heard this track live at a Big Thief concert here in my hometown of Kingston in July of 2023. I’d just turned in a complete revision of the book to my editor, and I felt both euphoric and completely emptied out. We’d also just come through several weeks of wildfire smoke blanketing our skies, a reminder of the preciousness and precarity of everything. I gave myself over to a couple weeks of just being: going out for bacchanalian nights with friends I hadn’t seen during the intense, lonely stretch of months of writing I’d just come through, working in my garden, hiking in the woods with my dog, and skinny dipping in my favorite lake. Lenker sang this track, which hadn’t been released yet, solo, and I remember sitting in the audience in the dark with my heart in my throat, feeling like she’d reached inside me and put the bittersweetness I was so in touch with at that moment in my life to words.
For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter.
Sara B. Franklin is a writer, teacher, and oral historian. She received a 2020–2021 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholars grant for her research on Judith Jones, and teaches courses on food, writing, embodied culture, and oral history at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is the author of The Editor, the editor of Edna Lewis, and coauthor of The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook. She holds a PhD in food studies from NYU and studied documentary storytelling at both the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She lives with her children in Kingston, New York. Find out more at SaraBFranklin.com.
If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong.
All Rights Reserved Book Blog