LONG PLAYERS

A story of heartbreak, (ex)stepparenthood, and the limitless grace of pop song.

Have you ever fallen in love - exalting, wracking, hilarious love - with a song? LONG PLAYERS is a book about that everyday kind of besottedness - and, also, about those other, more entangling sorts of love that songs can propel us into. We follow Peter Coviello through his happy marriage, his blindsiding divorce, and his fumbling post marital forays into sex and romance. Above all we travel with him as he calibrates, mix by mix and song by song, his place in the lives of two little girls, his suddenly ex-stepdaughters. In his grief, he considers what keeps us alive (sex, talk, dancing) and our many interwoven ways of falling in love: with books and bands and records, with friends, with lovers, with the families we make.

Scored with warmth and humor, LONG PLAYERS considers grief and the things that keep us alive--namely: sex, talk, and dancing. Above all, it is about all the different ways we have of falling in love: with bands and songs and books, but also - through them - with our friends, with our lovers, with the families we imagine and the families we make. LONG PLAYERS is a book for anyone who has loved a record like their life depended on it.
LONG PLAYERS is for readers of Nick Hornby, Rob Sheffield, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, and music journalism. Music lovers of all ages will relate to Coviello's references to songs by The Jackson 5, Jawbreaker, Elvis Costello, Gladys Knight, Bob Dylan, Superchunk, Steely Dan, and Yo La Tengo, among others. And, while the emphasis in this book is on music, Coviello, an English Literature professor, offers a nuanced mix of memoir and criticism, providing insight through references to Henry James, Charles Dickens, and many others, making this an even richer read.

Peter Coviello has written about Walt Whitman, Mormon polygamy, Steely Dan, the history of sexuality, queer children, American literature, stepparenthood, and Prince. This work has appeared in The Believer, Frieze, Avidly, Raritan, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as in several book. He was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He lives in Chicago.