Nick Cave Talks About The Death Of Bunny Munro

09/30/09 5:30pm

by Liisa Ladouceur (CHARTattack)

It's been 20 years since Nick Cave put out a novel. And so there are 20 years of anticipation from two generations of fans snaking in a ginormous line around the Eaton Centre's Indigo bookstore waiting to get their copies of his new book, The Death Of Bunny Munro, autographed by the rock star author.

Two hours into this endless, orderly march of enthusiasts, Cave asks for a smoke break. He doesn't get one. Rather, he carries on signing long past the Indigo's closing time, accommodating everyone, including those brazen enough to break the "no posed pictures" and "no music memorabilia" rules.

This is why he is tired and apologizing for it when we meet for an interview the next morning.

You wouldn't know it to look at him as he swaggers, ever-dapper in his stripped Christian Dior suit, down the gleaming lobby of his five-star hotel. But the man (who's now 52) is feeling some fall-out from jet-setting around hand-shaking and hugging his legions.

The Death Of Bunny Munro is the follow-up to Cave's 1989 debut, the Southern Gothic story And The Ass Saw The Angel. It's a hallucinogenic roadtrip through the downward spiral of a sex addicted travelling salesman, son in tow, a wife/mother's suicide in their rearview mirror, and a serial killer on their heels.

Literate, lyrical, clever and filled with music and pop culture nods and quite a few vagina monologues (Bunny is obsessed with Avril Lavigne's in particular), it's easy to read and hard to forget. And for fans of Cave's music, there's a CD version with exclusive soundtrack by Cave and his Bad Seed/film scoring cohort Warren Ellis, which is not your auntie's audiobook.

Once he gets an English breakfast tea in him, Cave sits up wide awake enough to walk CHARTattack through the life and death of Bunny Munro, the Bible and Blixa Bargeld.

CHARTattack: The Bunny Munro project idea pre-dates this book, as a potential screenplay. At what point did you decide you were going to write it as a novel?
Nick Cave: Someone sent me And The Ass Saw The Angel, to sign. And I was reading it and thought, "This is alright, really. I just needed a bit of editing." So I thought maybe I'd do an audiobook of it.

I started talking to [Canongate] about that, and it got me back into the publishing world a little bit. I think I said, "Maybe I should just write you a new book," in an off-handed way. This was about a year ago. Then I just started writing it, on the road. It was kind of weird how it just happened.

It's been 20 years between books. All that time, did you consider yourself an author?
No. Anybody can write one book. I don't think it really makes you an author.

How many books does it take?
Two.

This book seems to be about manhood and aging. Is it somewhat an extension of the Grinderman record, which had similar themes?
No. It's not. It's written by the same person, but it's got very different concerns. There are issues of masculinity in there, but to me it's much about a father looking after his son, or not looking after his son, that relationship, really.

Bunny, Jr. has unconditional love for his father and so does his father for him, but there is abuse there as well. I've read that you admired your father a great deal. So where do you get your ideas of these types of dysfunctional father/son relationships?
I think [Bunny] has a warped kind of nostalgic vision of the ways things used to be. He was obviously physically abused as a child, and this can have devastating effects on a person.

So he seems to be on an epic flight away from love and intimacy and doesn't know how to cope with these kinds of things. So his greatest adversary is Bunny, Jr., because the boy loves his father.

Is this a book for men?
Not at all. A lot of women really like this book. Maybe it's a certain type of woman, but I've gotten a hugely favourable response from women.

It's about a kind of male disorder, but I think women see in this character something they’ve suspected in the male psyche all along. And most women kind of realize that I'm railing against that scene, that misogyny within the male psyche, the predatory side. And so I had some women suggesting that it's a kind of feminist novel.

Avril Lavigne's vagina is repeatedly referenced. Of all the words for girl's genitalia you use in the book you were kind to her, I think.
Well, it's because of the alliteration, really.

What parallels do you see between being a touring musician and a travelling salesman?
None, really. I mean, I know the scenerio. I know the hotel rooms, obviously. The hotel rooms I stay in are a little bit better than the ones he stays in, these days. But they didn’t used to be.

I actually spent a lot of time in exactly those kind of hotels in Brighton, which is like about one hour away from London, and I would go there to get away from the temptations of the big city and lay in one of these rooms for three days.

There's nothing quite like cleaning up on a circular bed with a mirrored ceilings. These hotels were basically designed for the dirty English weekend. I'm not sure they're like that anymore. They've tried to make Brighton a little more upmarket.

Do you write every day?
No, not today.

Do you read every day?
Yes.

Who else do you most enjoy reading?
I'm interested in those writers that use a high literary style to create worlds that are at once recognizable but distinct from the ones we already live in. These are not just authors but filmmakers and songwriters. I'm talking about people like John Updike, David Lynch. Some of Nicholas Roeg's movies. Herman Mellville. John Berryman's poems. These kinds of people who create hyper-real dream worlds.

The first line in your book is "I Am Damned." Do you believe in damnation?
What does that actually mean? You mean going to hell after you die?

I mean cursed to eternal suffering for actions beyond one's control. Was there a point when Bunny could have made a decision that affected his fate?
I think that there are obviously right and wrong decisions you can make in life that can affect your life in some way. There are those of us who seem to be fatally flawed to make the wrong decision all the time. But being damned in a religious sense, I don't really buy that.

Does Bunny?
What I really meant in that first sentence, it was more a blip on his consciousness. The idea that something else is going on has momentarily raised its head above the parapet of his libido. And then it quickly disappears, and he's left, as I said, in his underwear with his appetites.

This is really important to this character — these occasional twinges that he isn't living his life the right way — but they dissolve very quickly back into the reason why he's been put on this world: to fuck chicks.

Let's talk about the audiobook side of the project. It seems like you've really taken it to the next level, with music score...
I'm really, really pleased with all that. Every time I talk about the audiobook I feel like I'm doing a plug for it. But I'm genuinely excited about it.

But I feel that Warren and I, along with Iain Forthsyne and Jane Pollard — who are the artists who helped produce it — along with the company that spacialized it and did the kind of sonic wizardry, have done something that's never been done before.

The problem with audiobooks is that nobody ever buys them. So nobody puts any money into making audiobooks. There's a kind of rolling of the eyes knowing it will be in a back bin in some bookshop somewhere.

I personally love listening to audiobooks, being told a story. I thought that I could do an incredible audiobook, I thought I could do something tripped out with the whole thing. It's really beautiful what we’ve done.

How do you feel about [ex-Bad Seeds bandmate] Blixa Bargeld reading the German version?
I'm really excited by that. I'm really very, very pleased that Blixa wants to do it. It means, I assume, that he likes the book, which means a huge amount to me.

I see Blixa off and on, you know, but I get a chance to kind of work with him again. In regards to the Bad Seeds, people have come and gone but the one thing that was really difficult for me was Blixa leaving.

Because even though Blixa wasn't doing that much interesting stuff on the guitar for the last couple of records, he was a hugely important within the Bad Seeds. He was ruthless in terms of what we should do, or what he would do and not do. The the actual sound of the Bad Seeds for the early records is really about him. Other members will say it's about them, but it was very much about Blixa and what Blixa demanded of the music in general, not just what he played on guitar.

It's a whole different thing now, changed into something else. But he was hugely important.

Well, those records will exist forever. And I do love Warren Ellis.
Well, Warren is the opposite. They both do very sonically challenging things, but Warren has a huge uncynical love of rock 'n' roll. He just loves rock 'n' roll as a thing, and it comes out of everything that he does.

And Blixa hates rock 'n' roll. Blixa would never play a guitar solo or do anything rockist in any way. So both of those people have had a huge influence on the music.

Do you still love rock 'n' roll? Or will you give it up for writing? You've said writing the book was easier, after all.
No, I love rock 'n' roll. I'm having a ball with the whole thing.

Can you tell me anything about the new Grinderman record you mentioned last night?
I'm not supposed to, actually. Warren was very excited about it and told journalists about it, and there was this flurry of emails from the press agent saying not to talk about it.

It doesn't come out 'til next year. It's very, very different. We're very excited about it. And it's allowed Grinderman to be a growing concern, not just some project that shut itself down as soon as it opened itself up. The new record is fucking great.