A tale to sing

By Hazel Sheffield

John Darnielle has written 525 songs under the name the Mountain Goats, each of them meticulously catalogued at themountaingoats.net. His nerdiness is prized by a cult of fans, who find solace in his tales of mental illness, religion, love and loss, told with poeticism that has earned him a reputation as one of the best lyricists of his generation. Darnielle’s songs sound like short stories, so it seemed natural when he published a novel last year. “Wolf in White Van”, which was later nominated for a National Book Award, is about the rich interior life of a horribly disfigured man. The character was inspired as much by Darnielle’s own struggles as by the patients of a psychiatric unit in California where he worked after finishing school.