Though revered for their prolific output as musicians, Nick Cave and Joe Pernice placed their respective careers on hold to craft books which, while disparate, deal with men coming to terms with their particular circumstances. Cave's reputed fascination with life's hard underbelly precedes him with The Death of Bunny Munro, the vivid story of a sex-obsessed travelling salesman who horrifically destroys his family to satisfy his carnal fantasies. Tellingly, Bunny's need for distraction might stem from his creator. "I'm basically a musician, a songwriter; that's what I'm primarily concerned with," Cave says. "Once I've made a record, it takes a lot out of me to do that and the desire to get as far away as possible is intense. So, I do something else ― write a screenplay or, in this case, a novel. That reignites my desire to get back into music again. Very soon after writing The Death of Bunny Munro, I went back into the studio and recorded a new Grinderman record. So, these other projects really keep the music alive."
In Pernice's excellent It Feels So Good When I Stop, a nameless, slacker indie rocker's inability to commit to love, or anything really, leads him to the very intimacy he's been fleeing from. "I started to recognize that themes in the book might not have been ones I'd grappled with before, and were coming from a deeper place in myself," Pernice explains. "That usually doesn't happen when I'm writing songs; they usually just happen and then they're gone with little reflection. But with this book, it was on my mind and, because I spent so much time examining characters, it was inevitable that I would see pieces of myself in these people."
To read a free preview of Nick Cave's novel The Death of Bunny Munro, click here.
Also, check out Exclaim!'s Conversation with Nick Cave here and with Joe Pernice here.
In Pernice's excellent It Feels So Good When I Stop, a nameless, slacker indie rocker's inability to commit to love, or anything really, leads him to the very intimacy he's been fleeing from. "I started to recognize that themes in the book might not have been ones I'd grappled with before, and were coming from a deeper place in myself," Pernice explains. "That usually doesn't happen when I'm writing songs; they usually just happen and then they're gone with little reflection. But with this book, it was on my mind and, because I spent so much time examining characters, it was inevitable that I would see pieces of myself in these people."
To read a free preview of Nick Cave's novel The Death of Bunny Munro, click here.
Also, check out Exclaim!'s Conversation with Nick Cave here and with Joe Pernice here.