# Paul Grimstad
**Paul Grimstad** is an American writer, musician, academic, film composer, and actor. He is Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the [Humanities](https://www.edgepedia.org/humanities) program at Yale University, the author of *Experience and Experimental Writing: Literary Pragmatism from Emerson to the Jameses* ([Oxford University Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/oxford-university-press), 2013), and a composer of scores for independent films including *Frownland*, *Heaven Knows What*, and *The Sweet East*.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) • [2](https://assets.cambridge.org/97810096/88635/frontmatter/9781009688635_frontmatter.pdf) Born in the Midwest and based in New York since the 1990s, he came to wider public attention in 2025 through an acting role in [Paul Thomas Anderson](https://www.edgepedia.org/paul-thomas-anderson)'s *One Battle After Another* and the simultaneous release of three records.[3](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/26/add-to-playlist-the-70s-inspired-avant-pop-of-actor-academic-paul-grimstad-and-the-weeks-best-new-tracks)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Academic position | Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Humanities Program, Yale University[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) |
| Academic book | *Experience and Experimental Writing: Literary Pragmatism from Emerson to the Jameses* (Oxford University Press, 2013)[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) |
| Teaching prize | Sarai Ribicoff '79 Award for Teaching Excellence, Yale College, 2014[4](https://english.yale.edu/news/faculty-news/celebrating-english-faculty-excellence) |
| Film work | Scores for *Frownland* (2007), *Heaven Knows What* (2015), *Thirst Street* (2017), *The Sweet East* (2023), and others[5](https://www.filmcentrum.nl/personen/160523/paul-grimstad) |
| Acting | Charles in *Frownland*; Howard "Billy Goat" Sommerville in Paul Thomas Anderson's *One Battle After Another* (2025)[6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/frownland-vineland-paul-grimstad-playing-howard-billy-goat-sommerville-one-battle-after) |
| Records | *SONGS* and *Music for Film* released September 30, 2025 on Mysteroid[7](https://paulgrimstad.bandcamp.com/album/songs) |
## Academic career
He joined the Yale faculty in the fall of 2007 as an assistant professor of English, where at the time he was writing about experience and experiment in [American literature](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-literature).[8](https://english.yale.edu/news/faculty-news/september-2007) He later moved to the Humanities program, where he has served as Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) In 2014 he received the Sarai Ribicoff '79 Award for Teaching Excellence, given annually to a non-tenured humanities faculty member whose instruction reflects "independence, innovation, and originality."[4](https://english.yale.edu/news/faculty-news/celebrating-english-faculty-excellence) He has also taught literature and philosophy at NYU and Columbia.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad)
His scholarship centers on American literature and pragmatism. **Experience and Experimental Writing** (2013) treats literary pragmatism from Emerson to the Jameses and was the subject of a symposium in the journal *Nonsite*.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) He has contributed chapters to the *Oxford Handbook to Edgar Allan Poe*, *Melville's Philosophies*, *Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies*, and the *Oxford History of the Novel*, with chapters forthcoming in *The Jamesian Mind* and *The New Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson*.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) An earlier piece, "A Note on Fauvemann's Nachlass," appeared in the *Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature* in 2012.[9](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265957150_A_Note_on_Fauvemann%27s_Nachlass)
## Essays and books in progress
Grimstad writes regularly for *The New York Times*, *The New Yorker*, the *London Review of Books*, *The Paris Review*, *n+1*, *Bookforum*, *The Believer*, *The Baffler*, *The New Republic*, and the *Times Literary Supplement*, among other outlets.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) • [10](https://muckrack.com/paul-grimstad) His subjects range across literature, music, and culture; *The New Yorker* has carried his essays on [Jimi Hendrix](https://www.edgepedia.org/jimi-hendrix) and [Alan Turing](https://www.edgepedia.org/alan-turing).[3](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/26/add-to-playlist-the-70s-inspired-avant-pop-of-actor-academic-paul-grimstad-and-the-weeks-best-new-tracks) Recent pieces include writing on audiobooks, [Iris Murdoch](https://www.edgepedia.org/iris-murdoch) and linguistic philosophy, Thelonious Monk, and a conversation with Donald Fagen.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) His essay "Miles the Mercurial" was selected as notable in *Best American Essays of 2021*, edited by Kathryn Schulz.[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad)
A book on polymathy, *Interested in Everything and Nothing Else: On the Polymath*, is under advance contract with [Princeton University Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/princeton-university-press).[1](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad) *Cultured* magazine reported in 2026 that his first novel is forthcoming.[11](https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2026/04/23/film-paul-grimstad-yale-one-battle-after-another/)
## Film scores
Grimstad began composing for film with *Frownland*, Ronald Bronstein's 2007 debut, on which he was also cinematographer Sean Price Williams's collaborator and appeared as the character Charles; he and Bronstein had been roommates in [Brooklyn Heights](https://www.edgepedia.org/brooklyn-heights).[6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/frownland-vineland-paul-grimstad-playing-howard-billy-goat-sommerville-one-battle-after) • [12](https://filmmakermagazine.com/95801-19th-century-poetry-the-stooges-and-psychedelic-intensity-composer-paul-grimstad-talks-with-nathan-silver/) Over the next fifteen years his songs and scores appeared in films by the [Safdie brothers](https://www.edgepedia.org/safdie-brothers), Nathan Silver, Jessica Oreck, Albert Maysles, and Williams, including *Heaven Knows What*, *The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga*, *Stinking Heaven*, *Tired Moonlight*, *Thirst Street*, *Jobe'z World*, and *Actor Martinez*.[13](https://bandy-collection.pubpub.org/pub/xvm38987/release/1) • [5](https://www.filmcentrum.nl/personen/160523/paul-grimstad)
Ryder has said that working with Grimstad on the song brought her back to music.[14](https://elpais.com/smoda/placeres/2024-09-01/talia-ryder-daria-lo-que-fuera-por-haber-crecido-sin-redes-sociales.html) Grimstad has described film composing as working inside "a soup of different media" in which a single piano chord can define a scene's mood, and has compared music's volatility to uranium: mishandled, it can turn gravitas into farce.[12](https://filmmakermagazine.com/95801-19th-century-poetry-the-stooges-and-psychedelic-intensity-composer-paul-grimstad-talks-with-nathan-silver/)
## Acting
Grimstad's acting career is unusually sparse. Nearly twenty years elapsed between his role as Charles in *Frownland* and his return to the screen as Howard "Billy Goat" Sommerville, a French 75 radio coordinator who appears opposite [Leonardo DiCaprio](https://www.edgepedia.org/leonardo-dicaprio) in Paul Thomas Anderson's *One Battle After Another* (2025), a loose adaptation of [Thomas Pynchon](https://www.edgepedia.org/thomas-pynchon)'s *Vineland*.[6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/frownland-vineland-paul-grimstad-playing-howard-billy-goat-sommerville-one-battle-after) • [15](https://unspooledpodcast.substack.com/p/one-reference-after-another) He also has a small part in [Josh Safdie](https://www.edgepedia.org/josh-safdie)'s *Marty Supreme* (2025).[3](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/26/add-to-playlist-the-70s-inspired-avant-pop-of-actor-academic-paul-grimstad-and-the-weeks-best-new-tracks) In interviews Grimstad has been dismissive of the acting label, telling *Filmmaker* in 2015 that he is "really not an actor at all."[12](https://filmmakermagazine.com/95801-19th-century-poetry-the-stooges-and-psychedelic-intensity-composer-paul-grimstad-talks-with-nathan-silver/)
## Music
Songwriting predates every other part of Grimstad's working life: he has written songs since about age eight, and film composing came "maybe in my late twenties."[16](https://headstuff.org/entertainment/film/film-interviews/paul-grimstad-on-thirst-street/) For years he released almost nothing. He estimates a catalog of more than 500 self-composed, self-recorded, and self-produced songs, circulated mainly among a small circle of film-world friends; he has written roughly 25 to 30 songs a year and describes himself as a "cut-up songwriter" who assembles verses, choruses, and instrumental sections from scraps of different vintages into collage-like structures.[16](https://headstuff.org/entertainment/film/film-interviews/paul-grimstad-on-thirst-street/) • [6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/frownland-vineland-paul-grimstad-playing-howard-billy-goat-sommerville-one-battle-after)
Before academia he had a brief conventional music career, touring in his early twenties, recording the "The Trillionaires" seven-inch single for Saddle Creek, and releasing records including *The Other's Buzz* on the small Brooklyn label Genuine Particle; he quit touring and, as he puts it, decided to "bring on Kant's First Critique," pursuing the Ph.D. that led to his academic day job.[17](https://talkhouse.com/paul-grimstad-and-sean-price-williams-have-been-careering) • [6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/frownland-vineland-paul-grimstad-playing-howard-billy-goat-sommerville-one-battle-after)
**The 2025 releases.** On September 30, 2025, Grimstad released *SONGS*, his first full album, alongside *Music for Film*, a 32-track compilation of his scores, and the live EP *Live at Baby's All Right*, recorded in December 2024.[7](https://paulgrimstad.bandcamp.com/album/songs) • [18](https://paulgrimstad.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-film) • [19](https://paulgrimstad.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-babys-all-right) *The Guardian* described *Songs* as "a maniacal odyssey of prog, jazz, boogie rock, psych and pop" paying homage to 1970s art-rock such as [Todd Rundgren](https://www.edgepedia.org/todd-rundgren)'s *A Wizard, a True Star*, rarely staying in one genre for more than a couple of minutes across its 16-track, 40-minute runtime; it was performed, produced, and engineered almost entirely by Grimstad himself.[3](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/26/add-to-playlist-the-70s-inspired-avant-pop-of-actor-academic-paul-grimstad-and-the-weeks-best-new-tracks) He sequences his songs on an Akai MPC-2000 bought around 1997, a machine he praises as the most intuitive sequencer for programming changing time signatures.[6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/frownland-vineland-paul-grimstad-playing-howard-billy-goat-sommerville-one-battle-after)
## References
1. [Paul Grimstad, faculty profile, Yale Humanities Program](https://humanities.yale.edu/profile/paul-grimstad)
2. [Front matter, Cambridge University Press volume naming Paul Grimstad as Senior Lecturer in Humanities at Yale](https://assets.cambridge.org/97810096/88635/frontmatter/9781009688635_frontmatter.pdf)
3. [Add to playlist: the 70s-inspired avant-pop of actor-academic Paul Grimstad, The Guardian, September 26, 2025](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/26/add-to-playlist-the-70s-inspired-avant-pop-of-actor-academic-paul-grimstad-and-the-weeks-best-new-tracks)
4. [Celebrating English Faculty Excellence, Yale Department of English, April 23, 2014](https://english.yale.edu/news/faculty-news/celebrating-english-faculty-excellence)
5. [Paul Grimstad filmography, FilmCentrum](https://www.filmcentrum.nl/personen/160523/paul-grimstad)
6. [Frownland to Vineland: Paul Grimstad on playing Howard "Billy Goat" Sommerville in One Battle After Another, Screen Slate, October 1, 2025](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/frownland-vineland-paul-grimstad-playing-howard-billy-goat-sommerville-one-battle-after)
7. [SONGS, Bandcamp release page, Paul Grimstad](https://paulgrimstad.bandcamp.com/album/songs)
8. [Faculty news, September 2007, Yale Department of English](https://english.yale.edu/news/faculty-news/september-2007)
9. [Paul Grimstad, "A Note on Fauvemann's Nachlass," Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 58 (2012)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265957150_A_Note_on_Fauvemann%27s_Nachlass)
10. [Paul Grimstad journalist profile, Muck Rack](https://muckrack.com/paul-grimstad)
11. [An Actor, a Novelist, and a Yale Professor Walk Into a Room. They're All Paul Grimstad., Cultured, April 23, 2026](https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2026/04/23/film-paul-grimstad-yale-one-battle-after-another/)
12. [19th Century Poetry, The Stooges and Psychedelic Intensity: Composer Paul Grimstad Talks with Nathan Silver, Filmmaker, September 25, 2015](https://filmmakermagazine.com/95801-19th-century-poetry-the-stooges-and-psychedelic-intensity-composer-paul-grimstad-talks-with-nathan-silver/)
13. [Conversation with Paul Grimstad, by Robert Barsky, Bandy Collection, January 10, 2025](https://bandy-collection.pubpub.org/pub/xvm38987/release/1)
14. [Talia Ryder interview, El País Smoda, 2024](https://elpais.com/smoda/placeres/2024-09-01/talia-ryder-daria-lo-que-fuera-por-haber-crecido-sin-redes-sociales.html)
15. [One Reference After Another, by Paul Scheer, Unspooled, 2025](https://unspooledpodcast.substack.com/p/one-reference-after-another)
16. [Interview Exclusive: Cult Film Composer Paul Grimstad Talks Collaborations, Influences and His Secret Vault of Tracks, HeadStuff, 2018](https://headstuff.org/entertainment/film/film-interviews/paul-grimstad-on-thirst-street/)
17. [Paul Grimstad and Sean Price Williams Have Been Careering, Talkhouse, October 14, 2025](https://talkhouse.com/paul-grimstad-and-sean-price-williams-have-been-careering)
18. [MUSIC FOR FILM, Bandcamp release page, Paul Grimstad](https://paulgrimstad.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-film)
19. [Live at Baby's All Right, Bandcamp release page, Paul Grimstad](https://paulgrimstad.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-babys-all-right)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Music › Musicians and ensembles › Individual musical biographies*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license