Clusterfolk

A few years ago, Nick Hornby - who wrote the novels High Fidelity and About a Boy and a small library of other things - submitted to McSweeney's Internet Tendency a short piece on the wake of creativity left by heartache. In the article, he cited Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker, and the song "Oh My Sweet Carolina" in particular, as examples of emotional pain giving rise to artistic wonderment. "Some people are at their best when they're miserable," Hornby wrote.