It may be true, as Michael Hearst claims, that “all writers want to be rock stars.” But do they truly have rock within them? That’s one question posed by this Carl Wilson feature in the weekend Globe and Mail. The new album by Hearst’s band, One Ring Zero, features lyrics by a variety of fiction writers, including Rick Moody, Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, A. M. Homes, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), and our own Margaret Atwood. Although accusations of dilettantism can surely run both ways, Wilson’s piece largely avoids the phenomenon of rock stars who want to be writers, thus sparing us the unpleasant task of contemplating novels like Bob Dylan’s Tarantula or Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel.

Related links:
Carl Wilson on singing writers in The Globe and Mail