If there’s one thing John Darnielle can do, it’s write. The Mountain Goats frontman has long been beloved for his ability to pen vulnerable, off-kilter anthems about grappling with human pain, and though his voice is an unmistakable, plaintive bleat, and his knack for a melody is almost unfathomable, it’s the lyrics that really make Mountain Goats songs. Naturally, when he announced he was writing a second novel called Universal Harvester, the music world rejoiced.
But it turns out, the publishing world was equally amped.
In a piece today for Publishers Weekly, which notes that the publication already gave Harvester a starred review, the writer breaks down Darnielle’s career, both as a prolific musician — the Mountain Goats’ sixteenth album is due later this year — and as an extremely serious, talented, and award-winning writer.
Darnielle’s first novel, 2014’s Wolf In White Van, was longlisted for the the National Book Award for Fiction, and given that prior track record, Harvester is even more anticipated. Interestingly enough, Wolf In White Van wasn’t even the first thing Darnielle published. That honor goes to a a 33 1/3 book of music criticism about Black Sabbath’s Master Of Reality.
His 33 1/3 is what led Chris Parris-Lamb at the Gernert Company to urge Darnielle to show him any other manuscripts he might have, and Wolf In White Van came next. The rest of that story, along with plenty of other background on Darnielle is all covered beautifully in the lucid, thorough Publishers Weekly profile. He talks about the difference between songwriting and fiction, lays out the framework for his forthcoming novel, which centers around a VHS rental store, and takes place in a small town in Iowa similar to the one he lived in with his wife, Lalitree, for a time.
The profile also notes that Darnielle’s publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, have already signed Darnielle to two more novels, so expect more prose coming from him in the near future. In the meantime, Universal Harvester is out next Monday, February 7. Get it here and read the full profile on Darnielle here.
