The Story Behind the Story: “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” by Art Taylor

(Editor’s note: This is the 93rd installment in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. Its author is Art Taylor, a multiple award-winning short-story writer and associate professor of English at Virginia’s George Mason University. His fiction has appeared in publications such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Down & Out: The Magazine. Taylor penned the 2015 “novel in stories” On the Road with Del & Louise, as well as the 2020 short-story collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense. His latest book, The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, was released last month by Crippen & Landru. In the essay below, Taylor provides a bit of history behind that collection’s poignant eighth yarn, “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”)

The 2021 album I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground and Nico features a version of “All Tomorrow’s Parties” by St. Vincent with pianist Thomas Bartlett. More than a simple cover of the song, this version seems a complex reworking and reimagining, a technical tour de force.

In place of the insistent thrum and jangle of the original version, which appeared on the Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut album (the one with the banana), this one seems to build on patterns of echo and overlay. A jazz piano plays a melancholy tune, while St. Vincent’s voice navigates complex twists and turns: spoken word recitation of the lyrics here, a breathy whisper there, elsewhere a voice that’s been vocodered into electronic otherworldliness. Especially if you listen on headphones, the voices seem to come from various directions, oblique angles, sudden and unexpected, doubling and redoubling.

Reviews of the song have used the words ethereal, alien, bizarre, and spacey. I’d add haunted.

When I first heard St. Vincent’s take on the song, I kept hitting replay over and over again—not only because I felt mesmerized by it, but also on an intellectual level. With its layerings and shifts and complex melancholy, the song struck me as exactly the kind of thing I was trying to do with my story “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” inspired by the original Velvet Underground song and recently reprinted in my new short-story collection, The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, published in mid-February.

Listening to the St. Vincent version brought me deeper into my own story in other ways too—and into “the story behind the story,” as this feature promises, several layers to that as well.

* * *

While I’ve long been a fan of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, I only turned to Reed’s music for inspiration because I asked to.

Jon Ashley, a writer and editor based in Kentucky, reached out to me in early 2017 with an invitation to contribute to an anthology he was organizing for Gutter Books, a follow-up to Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Based on the Songs of Bruce Springsteen (2014), edited by Joe Clifford. It was Joe, in fact, who recommended me Jon’s way. As Jon explained in that first message, I’d have my choice of song, the guidelines called for 3,000 words, and the pay was $25.

I didn’t hesitate—told Jon I was leaning toward something from Reed’s album Magic & Loss, promised I’d get back to him soon. But as I started working my way through various albums, the song “All Tomorrow’s Parties” from that first Velvet Underground album was the one that kept calling me.

(Left) The 1967 album The Velvet Underground & Nico.

It wasn’t the lyrics only that sparked my imagination, though readers of my story can surely trace some direct connections from song to page: a poor girl who clowns and cries; the silks and linens of her past, her hand-me-down dress now, the blackened shroud ahead, and the idea of costuming generally; and then that repeated question “Where will she go, and what shall she do / When midnight comes around?”

In addition to those lines and phrases, I was also lured in by Nico’s monotone singing, nearly a chant, and then the relentless piano (paper clips entwined with the strings, I’ve heard) and that throbbing “ostrich-tuned” guitar lurking insistently around the edges.

The summer I wrote “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” I was also listening to Lorde’s extraordinary sophomore album, Melodrama (2017), and one track there, “Liability,” provided a second important inspiration, equally melancholy and introspective. After leaving a party where a man had complained about “dancing in [her] storm,” a young woman finds herself crying in the taxi, then returns to her home and to the arms of the one person who loves her, the one person she loves in return—“but all that a stranger would see / Is one girl swaying alone, stroking her cheek.”

The chorus echoes the title of the song: “You’re a little much for me / You’re a liability / You’re a little much for me.” And both the chorus and that image of a woman dancing with herself—that image in particular—joined with elements of the Velvet Underground song to point me in the directions I needed to go.

My story “All Tomorrow’s Parties” begins with the main character, Shayla, catching sight of her younger self wandering through a work party she’s attending—a younger self who is, in turn, watching her.

Shayla is recently divorced and estranged as well from her own young daughter. Both relationships have been undermined by Shayla’s alcoholism, and she’s trying desperately (emphasis on that word) to rebuild her life: a new apartment, a new job, and potentially a new love interest from the office. But everything still seems to be crumbling around her, desperation tipping into despair, and she’s set herself an ultimatum for this particular evening. In a twist on the Cinderella tale (a third inspiration), Shayla determines that she’s going to win over this new love interest before midnight, or else she’ll take her own life—and she’s even brought a gun in her purse to ensure she follows through.

Perhaps needless to say, things don’t go well for anyone, especially since Shayla pre-games the party with cocktails and then keeps drinking to stay loose and ready.

Despite the 3,000-word limit Jon had given me, my story ended up nearly double that length—necessary space to orchestrate (keeping a musical focus!) everything that I was trying to do: the forward momentum of the evening, drink after drink; the various memories haunting Shayla, literally with that vision of her younger self stalking through the rooms; the various observations on parties from the past, parties in general, and the promise of tomorrow’s too, if only …

I touched base with Jon after I was done—via Facebook Messenger—explained all this to him, apologized, told him I’d understand if he simply couldn’t use it at that length.

He said he’d look at it, asked if I’d be OK with him trying to cut. I told him sure, I’d be open for suggestions, glad to see what we could do.

I e-mailed him my Word document early that same afternoon—September 13, 2017.

I don’t know whether he ever read the story. For many reasons, I hope he did not.

Later that evening, Jon ended his own life.

* * *

I never met Jon (shown on the right), didn’t know him well at all—only had our exchange about the story he’d commissioned from me, a couple of handfuls of IMs, that was it. But I learned a lot about him from the posts on his Facebook page after his death and from talking with Joe Clifford later on: Jon’s persistent struggles with addiction and depression, which I hadn’t known about; his brilliant creativity both as a writer and a musician; his work as a bookstore owner at Second Story Books in Louisville; his “amazing” efforts (to quote his students) as an adjunct English instructor at Jefferson Community and Technical College, also in Louisville; and then the tremendous love and empathy and esteem which so many people felt for him, pouring out in the wake of his death at age 35.

Heartbreaking, all of it—then and now too.

* * *

The anthology that Jon had begun did come out: Dirty Boulevard: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Lou Reed, edited by David James Keaton, another writer and editor I greatly admire, and published in September 2018 by Down & Out Books. The collection has a terrific introduction—Patrick Wensink paying tribute to Ashley—and a powerhouse group of writers: Ashley’s own “Ride into the Sun,” along with stories by Rusty Barnes, Reed Farrel Coleman, Alison Gaylin, Lee Matthew Goldberg, Cate Holahan, Gabino Iglesias, David James Keaton, Erin Keaton, Ross E. Lockhart, Tony McMillen, Richard Neer, Chris Orlet, J. David Osborne, Rob Pierce, and Eryk Pruitt.

You can read more about it on Down & Out’s Web page for the book. All the profits from sales of that anthology benefit suicide prevention.

* * *

You’ll notice that my own name isn’t among the collection’s list of contributors—which is another part of the story behind the story here.

When I’m presenting talks or serving on panels about short stories, the question of markets often comes up—writers seeking guidance about how to find the right venue for publication, how to sell their work—and the assumption has often been that it’s easy for me, but honestly that’s not always the case. My submissions have been rejected as not a good fit for the publication (time to find another) or as not quite done (more revisions), or perhaps just rejected without comment. No matter the success a writer might’ve had in the past, rejection is something all of us face.

And so it was with “All Tomorrow’s Parties”—in this case a lesson in word counts.

After he’d taken over the anthology, Keaton reached out to me about including the story, but it did indeed prove too long, and I simply wasn’t able to cut it down to the required word count without sacrificing too much of what I was trying to do.

I offered to write another one—did that too, in fact: “Sunday Morning, Saturday Night,” based on “Sunday Morning” from that same first Velvet Underground album. But this second story failed the word count in another direction—only 1,000 words, too short, and I couldn’t see stretching it out Procrustean-style to fit what was needed.

(Left) Author Art Taylor.

I’ll admit I’ve missed other opportunities for similar reasons, trying right up to a deadline to judge where and how to cut a story further, and then the deadline passes. It’s not that I’m against cutting a draft—even tremendously, in fact. In one instance, the story “Mrs. Marple and the Hit & Run” (also included in The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions), my original draft was around 10,000 words, which I cut to a little over 2,000—nearly 80 percent of the first draft gone. And I’ve also been very fortunate to work with first readers and final editors who’ve helped me trim and tighten a story at various points along the way—outside perspectives a godsend!

It’s a process—drafting, workshopping, revising, working with editors—to find what the story needs and what it doesn’t, whether it’s a novella or a piece of flash fiction, and following it to its best final form.

All that said, I was sorry not to be included in Dirty Boulevard, but I was grateful that both stories I wrote for the anthology found publication elsewhere.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” appeared in the 2020 Chesapeake Crimes anthology, Invitation to Murder. Before submitting it there, I made only the minor change of adding an invitation to the party Shayla attends—a gesture toward the book’s theme—and I’m grateful to editors Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley for their guidance in bringing the story into its final form.

“Sunday Morning, Saturday Night,” appeared in Down & Out: The Magazine in 2018, with some very thoughtful editing by Rick Ollerman—gratitude again.

As I mentioned earlier, “All Tomorrow’s Parties” is now part of the new collection, The Adventure of the Castle Thief, and “Sunday Morning, Saturday Night” is also being republished in conjunction with this same release; it’s the bonus pamphlet included with the signed and numbered cloth edition of my book.

Both stories should work well on their own without any background regrading the various texts that inspired them. But I hope these extra stories behind the stories might add a bit of context and weight for readers inclined that way. And I’m grateful to the late Jon Ashley for that original message—his idea for the anthology, his invitation for me to submit a story, his confidence in my work.

Without Jon, neither of these stories would be out in the world today.