What a difference twenty years makes. Nick Cave’s first novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, which was released in 1989, opens with:
“Three greasy brother crows wheel, beak to heel, cutting a circle into the bruised and troubled sky, making fast, dark rings through the thicksome bloats of smoke.”
His new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, released in 2009, strikes a slightly more minimalist note with its first sentence:
“I am damned, thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die.”
Much like comparing his dark, brooding, classic early music to the simpler, more straightforward approach of his later albums, the author’s two books really are the work of two completely different Nick Caves. How can you possibly match the younger songwriter who so perfectly channels the final anguish of a condemned man on “The Mercy Seat” with the sarcastic older gent who has a laugh at the expense of the Bible’s most notorious zombie on “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”? It would be an exercise for the Cave-obsessed and does the man no justice. To expect the author to write in the same style as he did in 1989 makes no sense. Read the rest of this entry »
