I recently reread Izumi Suzuki’s I-novel (私小説), Set My Heart on Fire, for a review for Mad Women Book Club. This work is necessarily steeped in the cultural context: Tokyo’s 1970s underground club scene. Everything is a reference. For example: the title of the book itself, which is taken from “Light My Fire” by The Doors, was instead translated literally to capture the essence of the story. More such gems abound! With pages of notes, I thought it would be helpful to compile my findings for other curious readers & audiophiles. Here’s a soundtrack of the book:
Chapter titles, which all reference a song:
This Bad Girl — The Golden Cups
I’m Your Puppet — James & Bobby Purify
She’s Got Us Talking — The Tempters
Honmoku Blues — The Golden Cups
Three in the Morning — The Golden Cups (cover)
Nights in White Satin — The Moody Blues
Gimme Little Sign — Brenton Wood
Time of the Season — The Zombies
Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes — Ten Years After
Loveless World
I’ve Got a Mind to Give Up Living — Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Keep Me Hangin’ On — Vanilla Fudge
Please, Time Machine
Songs*
In The Year 2525 — Zager & Evans
Mamy Blue — Pop-Tops
Shotgun — Vanilla Fudge
Walking Blues — The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Lucille — Everly Brothers
Can’t Buy Me Love — The Beatles
Diana — Paul Anka
Chain of Fools — Aretha Franklin
St. James Infirmary — Louis Armstrong
California Dreamin’ — The Mamas & the Papas
Transistor Radio — RC Succession
Sneaker Blues — Kyohei Tsutsumi
Bands/artists
Roxy Music
The Tigers
The Dynamites
The Jaguars
Mike Bloomfield
Kenji Sawada
Miyoko Asada
Agnes Chan
The Monkees
The Doors
T. Rex
Masahiko Kondo
Seiko Matsuda
*disclaimer: some of these versions are my best guess based on the time period/region as they’re not referenced in their entirety in the book