Stephen O’Connor’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel We Want So Much to Be Ourselves

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. Stephen O’Connor’s novel We Want So Much to Be Ourselves powerfully explores the personal price of fascism. Publishers Weekly wrote of the book: “O’Connor offers a lucid and chilling view into the rise of fascism. . . . It’s a knockout.” In his own words, here is Stephen O’Connor’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel We Want So Much to Be Ourselves: When I was in middle school, my mother, distressed that I read almost nothing but science fiction and comic books, handed me the Modern Library edition of Selected Stories of Franz Kafka, published in 1952, the year of my birth. She recommended I start with “The Metamorphosis,” presumably because she thought a story about a young man who has…