I had a long train ride yesterday, and so brought along a book that was given to me by a student some time ago, Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro. I apparently mentioned in class that I was once a fan.
I was expecting it to be of the general quality of most of Cave's output since, say, 1999, so my expectations were pretty low. And Cave failed miserably to meet them. I guess I'm just not as impressed as I used to be with foul language, explicit descriptions of violent sex acts, and hackneyed Southern Gothic motifs.
I read half the Cave book, put it down, and began rereading Quine's Word and Object. Perhaps the fact that I had just been reading Cave has something to do with it, but this time around the Quine book struck me as a genuine literary achievement, enjoyable even.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I've read only half of the Cave book. I suppose I owe it to the guy to read the rest. Has anyone out there read the whole thing? Does it get any better?
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12 comments:
Haven't read it, but the Blood Meridian-inspired Australian anti-Western The Proposition, for which he wrote the screenplay, is well worth seeing.
Agreed on /The Proposition/. But the music has sucked for 10 years at least. And all the original members of the Bad Seeds have quit. No surprise to hear the novel sucks.
Having read neither, I applaud you for outgrowing that first shit, but condemn you for using 'quine' and 'literary' in the same sentence.
Novels by rockstars and celebrities are generally going to be a long shot (Beautiful Losers being a rare tolerable exception). My recommendation for next time: bring Geek Love, which Nick Cave ought to wish he'd written.
Criticism: counterfactual self-referential statements with false antecedents of remorse, metaphorically self-referred. Otherwise known as Spiros.
@ 10:37 --- care to explain that?
Spiros, as a philosopher-king, you must return to the Cave. Sorry.
As for Quine, there should be a radio station, WVOQ, devoted to on-air reading of his work ... by Billy Joel.
Nick Cave, these days, is second rate Tom Waits. Still, that better than first rate Nick Cave. I'm only talking about the music; haven't and won't read the work (despite hearing a writer I respect describe him as a genius last night).
I listened to the audiobook, with Cave reading, and with musical backing. Its main virtue is a Beckett-like consistency of tone, but if you didn't like the first half, you won't like the rest.
I thought Dig Lazarus Dig was a great album.
11:06: WVOQ is genius!
6:39: Thanks for the tip re the book. I think I'll skip the rest. I tried really hard to like *Dig Lazarus Dig*-- I even saw them live on that tour. But the album grew on me only a little bit, and the live show was a complete disaster. Blixa really was the core of that band.
He's pretty good in Grinderman.
Hated the Grinderman stuff...
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