‘We all secretly want to be rock stars,’ the 2022 Booker Prize-winning author Shehan Karunatilaka said recently. By ‘we’ he meant novelists, and he was more or less right.
Most authors want to be rock stars, just as many rock stars aspire to bookish credibility. The former crave a whiff of glamour and instant gratification; writing offers precious little of either. Musicians seek gravitas and some wider recognition that they possess the tools to extend their literary genius beyond three verses and a killer chorus. Both parties tend to discover that they do what they do as a day job for a good reason.
Morrissey tried his hand at long form fiction and came up with the abominable List of the Lost
‘There are very few things I’ve regretted more than deciding to write a full-length novel,’ Steve Earle told me, prior to the publication of his 2011 novel I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. ‘It’s so damn hard.’ Morrissey – a remarkable lyricist in his day, however dim and distant that day might be – tried his hand at long form fiction and came up with the abominable List of the Lost. Bob Dylan’s Tarantula, meanwhile, isn’t really the stuff of Nobel Prize winners. Other musicians have fared rather better. Nick Cave, Willy Vlautin, Josh Ritter and Colin Meloy have all carved out credible alternative careers as novelists. Mat Osman – bassist in Suede, brother of the billion-selling Richard – has recently joined the fray.
Fair enough. As Karunatilaka suggests, the equation works both ways. The proud possessor of five guitars, drum kit and keyboards, the Sri Lankan novelist is a veritable one man band. Though he has yet to unleash his music on the public, plenty of his peers have, even if few have carved out an entirely convincing alternate career.
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