McSweeney's Field Recordings Volume 2Sweet Nothings and Essential Slow Jams

Pucker up, all you hopeless romantics. Prepare to share a big wet kiss with the folks from McSweeney’s. For this second installment of Field Recordings, created exclusively for eMusic, the venerated indie book and magazine publisher has combed its archives to create a seductive story collection subtitled Sweet Nothings and Essential Slow Jams. So think of this audiobook as a literary mixtape, one that strikes the perfect balance of tender, brainy and lusty tracks, a combination designed to make both the mind and the pulse race.

McSweeney’s creates an intimate mood by delving outside the impersonal confines of a studio: the five storytellers record their pieces in locations of their own choosing, an effect that allows them to inject their own personalities into their readings. Sheila Heti takes narrative freedom to new heights, bringing a fresh perspective to two of her jarring fairytales. From her New York City apartment, Heti first makes a gleefully NC-17 proposal to read while engaging in other more, um, athletic activities with her boyfriend. Her plan, however, quickly devolves into something totally different, making for the first time in audiobook history that a narrator interrupts her reading in order to bicker with her significant other. What better way to frame a pair of stories that challenge the concept of happily-ever-after than by catching a slice of the author’s own romantic travails on tape?

Pia Erhardt also uses setting to great effect, recounting her heartwrenching story from the Katrina-wracked shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The sound of the lake lapping beneath Erhardt’s confessional narration could almost be an ambient nature effect on a meditation record. But the water carries a threatening undercurrent; the story, titled “How It Floods,” details the efforts of a woman to prepare for an approaching hurricane even as she tries to navigate her own tumultuous love life.

The collection’s most romantic piece is Tony D’Souza’s “The Man Who Married a Tree.” The story is just as the title implies: a pseudo-oral history documenting the intense connection between a plant and the man who loved her. D’Souza’s astounding performance finds him assuming the roles townspeople, animals, inanimate objects, even God. Try not to sob when the title character’s sister reveals, “I loved an elm. Loved him my whole life.”

To narrate “After the Disaster,” Ben Ehrenreich sits in the relative calm (with the exception of a passing helicopter) of Elysian Park in Los Angeles. His peaceful location provides a sharp contrast to his post-apocalyptic tale of two lost souls and the giant squid they rescue from the Museum of Natural History. After carrying the mollusk through the ruined streets of Manhattan, Bruno and Mildred’s fates and bodies soon become as entwined in each other as they are in the squid’s tentacles.

Be sure to stick around for comic relief from Chris Bachelder, who reads his epistolary story perched near a mailbox. “My Son, There Exists Another World Alongside Our Own” is a hilarious missive from a father who attempts to teach his sexually curious son a valuable lesson beyond birds and bees: “there exists a parallel universe precisely identical to ours, but for the fact that its inhabitants engage in frequent, vigorous and thrillingly filthy congress.” His advice? Go forth into this other world where people are actually engaging in sexual activity rather than just imagining it: “Enter it. Penetrate it. . . Seek asylum, citizenship on the other side.” The second volume of Field Recordings echoes that advice, encouraging immersion and citizenship in the amorous, and offering a hint of what might happen when that occurs.

McSweeney’s liner notes for Notes from the Field are available as a .pdf here; a hi-res version of the cover is available here