Yesterday, it was Leonard Cohen. Today’s, it’s Hüsker Dü’s Grant Hart. In a post on Lit Hub, Seth Kaufman describes how he chose the name of the legendary punk rocker for his romantic lead.
“My big mistake was that I had already used Lance,” Kaufman says. While a minor character, Lance makes a deep impression on Kaufman’s heroine, and Kaufman liked her reactions too much to use a different name.
“I figured Hart would be a good last name for a true love,” he writes. “It was obvious, sure, but a rock-solid start. Now, I needed a worthy perfect first name. Then it hit me: Grant. Grant Hart.” More than a name, Grant Hart is a declarative sentence suggesting that love is on its way. “I admit it: I was very pleased with Grant Hart.”
Unfortunately, Kaufman soon realized that he’d stolen the name from a real person: Grant Hart, the co-founder of Hüsker Dü. “Other than his name, my fictional Grant Hart—who leaves the woman he loves when she asks him to and then thinks about her every day for years while he helps farmers in the developing world—has nothing in common with the real genius-and-drug-plagued musician,” Kaufman says. “When I realized I’d given my character the purloined name of rock hero—I wondered if I needed to find a replacement.”
He didn’t. Kaufman decided to keep the name when he remembered that Hart’s songs often included references to reading. The protagonist in his romance is addicted to romance novels. “Using the name Grant Hart in her story began to feel like a happy accident,” Kaufman says. “Thinking about this out-of-this-world romantic gesture, I realized there was no way I could change my fictional hero’s name. It was even more perfect than I had initially thought. It wasn’t theft; it was a tribute.”
