On Monday, August 1, the Earth bore witness to a miraculous announcement: Boys Don’t Cry, Frank Ocean’s highly anticipated follow-up to his landmark album channel ORANGE, would finally drop that Friday. Although his last release was four years ago, Frank Ocean still feels more relevant than most artists making music today. What song can break your heart like “Bad Religion” or take you on a an epic journey like “Pyramids?” What artist can reference cotton candy and DragonballZ in the same breath, as does Ocean in “Pink Matter?” At last, it seemed, we were going to hear more.
But the album never came. Like a library book long overdue, it was going to be late.
We have no way of knowing when the album will come, so we’re passing the time the only way we know how: reading Victorian novels. We’re also taking the NYPL’s Summer Reading #Read20 challenge, which asks us to make time for twenty minutes of reading every day. If we stick to our goal, we’ll probably finish all these books by the time the album is released. Victorian novels have the added benefit of reminding us of Ocean’s music: epic, detailed, and powerful stories about sexual politics as much as they’re about romance. So while we read, we’re also playing our seven favorite Ocean tracks: one for each novel. Here are our picks, and if you have any other reads to tide you over while you wait for Boys Don’t Cry, let us know.
For “Super Rich Kids”
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations tells the story of plucky young Pip, lifted from poverty by a mysterious benefactor who aims to make him a proper gentleman. Pip’s love interest, the cultured but unfeeling Estella, is basically a “super rich kid with nothing but fake friends,” making “Super Rich Kids” the perfect track to headbang to while you read this winding tale of intrigue and London high society. It’s a great beach read mashup – can’t you just picture Pip’s first etiquette lessons with “too many bottles of wine he can’t pronounce,” while Estella’s taking rides in Miss Havisham’s Jaguar?
For “Lost”
Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
Frank Ocean’s “Lost” tells the story of the protagonist’s lover, a cocaine dealer who suddenly gets swept up in the jet-setting lifestyle of selling drugs, as she loses sight of simpler things. Sounds like Becky Sharp, the ambitious, money-driven anti-heroine ofVanity Fair, who begins penniless and works her way up through society, gambling, drinking, and seducing all the while. Becky’s adventures don’t include hopping over to “Miami, Amsterdam, Tokyo, [or] Spain” to move product, but she does get involved in some pretty sketchy business, much to the chagrin of her foil, the goodly Amelia Sedley. This sweeping satire of English society, full of wit and scorn for the motivations and lifestyles of the wealthy, will totally hypnotize you – so go get “lost in the thrill of it all!”
For “Forrest Gump”
Agnes Grey, by Anne Bronte
This underrated novel of Anne Bronte’s tells the story of the eponymous protagonist, a poor governess who works for the English gentry. While under the employ of the wealthy Murray family, she meets Mr. Edward Weston, the local parson, and he immediately he starts “running on her mind.” Even when family tragedy and the machinations of the townsfolk separate Agnes and Edward, she refuses to forget him, much like how Frank Ocean can’t forget “Forrest Gump.” Mr. Weston doesn’t play football like Forrest does – that would be ungentlemanly – but he does pick Agnes some primrose blossoms from a high oak tree, which she can’t reach. “So buff and so strong!”
For “Bad Religion”
Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy’s final completed novel, Jude the Obscure, tells the story of a working-class stonemason and his family in Wessex, England. Jude and his beloved, Sue Bridehead, initiate an unmarried relationship as he raises a child from a previous marriage. Unfortunately, the narrow-minded religious community frowns on their illicit love, and they lead a life marred by death, illness, and abject poverty. It’s the perfect tragic accompaniment for “Bad Religion,” another song about forbidden feelings, broken love, and the conflict between religion and sex. In its time, Jude the Obscure was reviled by the public for its criticism of marriage and sexual mores. Some say the backlash forced Hardy into early retirement. Sound depressing? At least we didn’t recommend Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
For “Thinkin’ Bout You”
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
One of the best unrequited love songs of the 21st century just has to go with one of Victorian literature’s great unfulfilled romances. If you haven’t yet read Wuthering Heights, the story of Heathcliff and Catherine’s tortured relationship is a truly epic tale you won’t soon forget. We can see Heathcliff now, coming over the moors, now a wealthy gentleman.
And when Heathcliff flirts with Isabella to make Catherine jealous…
Catherine probably she wishes she’d thought a little farther ahead...
Images from Wuthering Heights (2011).
For “Swim Good”
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
We couldn’t do this list without Jane Eyre– nor without “Swim Good,” one of Frank Ocean’s pre-channel ORANGE hits. A Gothic meditation on heartbreak, loss, and escape, “Swim Good” feels like it was written about Jane’s flight from Thornfield Hall. After she discovers her beloved Mr. Rochester’s terrible secret – we won’t spoil it, but it’s one of the juiciest twists in English literature – she throws her broken heart in her Lincoln town car and makes for the moors. Well, not exactly. But Jane Eyre was the first novel to pin its narrative on the mental and moral tension within the mind of its protagonist, paving the way for interior novelists of the 20th century and beyond – sorta like how Frank Ocean’s cerebral, complex songs have opened the door for a new wave of psychological R&B artists.
For “Pyramids”
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
What could possibly equal “Pyramids” in scope? A ten-minute banger that sounds like a mashup of two completely different musical worlds, “Pyramids” covers sex, love, betrayal, war, race, the treatment of women, and oceans of time in space. The only answer Victorian literature has is Middlemarch, an immensely broad portrait of life in provincial England and a triumph of realist fiction. If you like your fiction detailed, intricate, sweeping, and totally arresting, go full “Pyramids” with Middlemarch. But be forewarned… If you finish Middlemarch, and the album’s still not out, you might be waiting in vain.
Are you doing this summer’s #Read20 challenge? Shout out what you’ve been reading in the comments, and if you have any other Victorian recommendations, let us know!