Before he became a famous literary author, Darin Strauss used to play in a band called Supergroup with indie singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton. Last night, after Strauss read a chapter from his new novel, More Than it Hurts You, at NYU’s Lilian Vernon Writers House, and Coulton played two solo numbers, the guitarists reunited for a two-song set that included the Neil Diamond classic “Sweet Caroline.”
Watch for “minor television celebrity” John Hodgman on the “ba, ba, ba” parts! Hodgman (who was Strauss’s literary agent back when he did that sort of thing) also read a segment from his as-yet-unpublished More Information Than You Require about Thomas Jefferson and mole men. The audience was packed with writers, too, including Helen Ellis, Hannah Tinti, Marisa Silver, and Daphne Beal…