7 Novels About, Or By, Folk Musicians

It’s easy to make fun of the folkniks—those mostly college kids in the late 50s and early 60s who suddenly turned to sea shanties, work songs, and banjos for their musical pleasure. At least, on screen they have served as reliable joke fodder. From the soporific earnestness of the cast in A Mighty Wind, to the pathetic bumbling of Inside Llewyn Davis, to naïve Greenwich Village scenesters in Mad Men, folk fans and their comrades have recurred as fools in modern day media portrayals, inflexibly committed to impossible ideals of authenticity.