In the year 02026 AD I find myself in two book clubs.
First, there's the one with Alex's aunt Di and cousin Beth, which is now in its fifth year and has introduced me to some of my favorite books of all time: "North Woods" by Daniel Mason, "This is Happiness" by Niall Williams, "There's Always This Year" by Hanif Abdurraqib, "Mecca" by Susan Straight. Right now we're reading "The Emperor of Gladness" by Ocean Vuong, whose cast of secondary characters takes me right back to the days of working the stock room at the UCLA student store. If you're looking for something to read, I've been tracking our reads on The StoryGraph; maybe you'll find one you're interested in?
And then there's the unexpected Mountain Goats Book People Book Club that has emerged among the comments section of 15-year-old YouTube videos, specifically the songs selected for John Darnielle's recently-released book "This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days".
(I think, if you've read my blog, you probably know a little bit about John Darnielle and his 3.5-decades-long musical output that is the Mountain Goats, but if not, the short context is that he is one of my favorite lyricists and storytellers of all time, whose works span lo-fi cassette recordings from the 90s to novels about text-based RPGs to, most recently, a musical about two people washed ashore from a storm at sea.)
Like a lot of people, I've been reading "This Year" day by day, the goal being to savor the book across the whole year, each day flavored in part by whatever song and personal reflection JD chose for that particular date.
Here's one of my recent favorites, from January 16:
Fresh Cherries in Trinidad
When I woke up on Saturday and you came in / And you brought the sunlight in / I felt sleep slipping away from me / I feel things occasionally / Like this / Fresh cherries / Hanging from your fingers
When the water on the window lit the sunlight through / And I got a good look at you / Standing above me bright and tall / There are no words for it, there are no words at all / I saw / Fresh cherries / Hanging from your fingers
Water, windows, fruit: the inviolate early Mountain Goats troika! The second person, in medias res, and a specific point in time (Saturday): the troika of secondary necessity! But it's the note of longing in a song like this that, for me, made the song a keeper instead of one among many other songs featuring water, windows, and fruit that never got released. The details are there only to get to the longing: to frame it in a way that makes it feel real. And it is real; I wrote this song after Joel, now mentioned for at least the fourth time, either wrote or called to tell me his partner, Kim, had brought him fresh cherries. They lived in Trinidad at the time. Trinidad, California. It's up near Humboldt, but I was under no obligation to tell you that.
After reading the lovely annotation with my morning tea, I hopped over to YouTube to listen to the song—as has become custom—and delighted in its unexpectedly cute Casio beat (so many of these early songs I'm hearing for the first time!!¹). Even though the songs that were released on cassette aren't uploaded to the band's official account, locating them is never an issue...the Mountain Goats fandom is unabashedly obsessive² and I've found that there will always be a ~10-year-old video uploaded by a fan somewhere, which is where we all convene for a day to check in with each other:
For a fandom that is largely Gen X and Millennials, finding community in the comments section of a website that used to be a melting pot of DIY digital creativity, this feels appropriate. Our book club conversation happens piecemeal, day by day, part literary/musical analysis, part diary, part motivational talk.³
I'm sure there are plenty of people like me (dozens of us?) who don't comment but read the thread all the same, maybe slinging the occasional upvote for comments that make us smile. We're all here, listening to this song today, and then going out and doing our own thing until we reconvene tomorrow.
footnotes
¹ "Billy the Kid's Dream of the Magic Shoes" - Another recent discovery among the early tMG catalog, perhaps my favorite so far.
² "Going to Fennario" - This latest Mountain Goats release is in honor of Bobby Weir. I was born too late to be a part of the Grateful Dead fandom at the peak of the band's touring years, but being a Mountain Goats fan feels similar: there is camaraderie and lore around the music, both recordings and performances only experienced live. JD's words about Bobby Weir (on the Bandcamp page) are a lovely tribute, and I feel lucky to have a connection to both bands.
³ The song after which the book is named, which doubles as an anthem to sing when you're going through it.