Fly leaf as fig leaf
Aug. 24th, 2009 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusSeptember is the big American month for our big American books. When I say "our", I mean Tao Lin, Nick Cave and myself, and when I say "books" I mean novels. Cave's sophomore effort The Death of Bunny Munro comes out in the US on the 1st, and on the 15th Tao Lin publishes Shoplifting From American Apparel. The same day, my debut The Book of Jokes comes out.
This morning I received finished copies of The Book of Jokes. My first impression was that they are made of paper, which is odd, because the book was put together on a computer screen, two years ago. Paper doesn't shine as brightly as a computer screen, you have to get used to that. There's a faint scent of paper and ink, of course. The back cover mentions Rabelais, Martial and Boccaccio as my peers and references, which is odd but nice. They're a sexy bunch, and so are Cave and Lin.
Without even bothering to dress, I snapped a couple of pictures of myself proudly holding my novel. I held it like a fig leaf, covering my genitals, because for me culture does that; it covers our genitals, blurs our primal instincts, softens our shove.
So now I have to think about promotion. I'm not nearly as inventive a self-promoter as Tao Lin, who's currently selling his stuff on eBay (including this nice moleskin journal) in a bid to draw attention to a novel about shoplifting he financed innovatively by selling shares (he raised $12,000 by selling six 10% shares at $2000 each).
Nick Cave, meanwhile, is issuing a 7-CD / DVD set of himself reading the whole of his new book. I actually was supposed to shrinkwrap a CD of some sort with the French edition of my novel, but talked the publishers out of it, because I wanted the book to stand on its own as a book, not as a side project from a musician.
[Error: unknown template video]
Nick Cave has already done a bunch of readings from Bunny Munro, and run excerpts in Vice magazine. Oh, wait, I've also done readings from The Book of Jokes! It's just that they happened so long ago it seems like another era, another life. Two years ago I read this one:
[Error: unknown template video]
And one year ago I performed an artier reading at Tranzit/Display Gallery in Prague:
[Error: unknown template video]
On September 17th I'll do a performance reading a bit like the Tranzit/Display one at Staalplaat Working Space in Berlin, too. Still deciding whether to wear clothes or not.
This morning I received finished copies of The Book of Jokes. My first impression was that they are made of paper, which is odd, because the book was put together on a computer screen, two years ago. Paper doesn't shine as brightly as a computer screen, you have to get used to that. There's a faint scent of paper and ink, of course. The back cover mentions Rabelais, Martial and Boccaccio as my peers and references, which is odd but nice. They're a sexy bunch, and so are Cave and Lin.
Without even bothering to dress, I snapped a couple of pictures of myself proudly holding my novel. I held it like a fig leaf, covering my genitals, because for me culture does that; it covers our genitals, blurs our primal instincts, softens our shove.
So now I have to think about promotion. I'm not nearly as inventive a self-promoter as Tao Lin, who's currently selling his stuff on eBay (including this nice moleskin journal) in a bid to draw attention to a novel about shoplifting he financed innovatively by selling shares (he raised $12,000 by selling six 10% shares at $2000 each).
Nick Cave, meanwhile, is issuing a 7-CD / DVD set of himself reading the whole of his new book. I actually was supposed to shrinkwrap a CD of some sort with the French edition of my novel, but talked the publishers out of it, because I wanted the book to stand on its own as a book, not as a side project from a musician.
[Error: unknown template video]
Nick Cave has already done a bunch of readings from Bunny Munro, and run excerpts in Vice magazine. Oh, wait, I've also done readings from The Book of Jokes! It's just that they happened so long ago it seems like another era, another life. Two years ago I read this one:
[Error: unknown template video]
And one year ago I performed an artier reading at Tranzit/Display Gallery in Prague:
[Error: unknown template video]
On September 17th I'll do a performance reading a bit like the Tranzit/Display one at Staalplaat Working Space in Berlin, too. Still deciding whether to wear clothes or not.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 11:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 11:28 am (UTC)You mean he's the Australia to my Europe?
We have a weird parallel history. He started on 4AD Records, so did I. He had an album called Tender Prey, I had one called Tender Pervert. Our names are pretty similar too. We've both lived in Berlin, and are both regularly accused of being "guided by what dangles between our legs". Cave was coaxed into novel-writing by editor Simon Pettifar of Black Spring Press, who also published my lyrics collection Lusts of a Moron at around the same time. And now Nick and I have novels out the same month.
I noticed Nick's literary talents early -- when I heard Peel playing The Friend-Catcher from the Boys Next Door album, in fact. I rushed out and bought the album, and, later, everything by The Birthday Party, and saw them live, and so on. The letter accompanying the first demo we sent to 4AD said "We'd love to be on the same label as The Birthday Party". And we were!
As for Nick Cave's solo career... hmm. I like Your Funeral, My Trial. I liked the Grinderman project. Sometimes he sounds too boring, too adult, too Christian, as if he's trying too hard to fit the Cash / Cohen "classic great songwriting" mold. Plodding piano ballads and so on. His lyrics are still pretty great, though. I didn't read the first novel, it seemed too much like a gush of goth. He's hot and horny, though, and I like that.
A Major News Outlet is preparing a feature comparing Nick's novel with mine and one other published recently by a musician, but I can't say more than that until it's published. These publications don't like you to jump the gun.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 11:40 am (UTC)I guess you both foreground the lyrics, both fetishistic, both accused of misogyny.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 02:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 11:56 am (UTC)And you make me teary with fondness for you when you mention him alongside Cohen and Cash, those would-be, 'to the heart of the thing!' rhymsters.
When was the last time you listened to a Birthday Party album? Please. They were dispensed with long ago and his best work, Your funeral, My Trial, is what might be quoted if one is called upon to recommend an album.
I should be very dejected if you were to insist that you and Cave are comparable.
I also note that one cannot see your head in the pictures. Still shy are we after our haircut?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 12:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-24 12:28 pm (UTC)Billy Joel's new novel, "Three-judge Sprawl"?
hard
Date: 2009-08-25 04:56 am (UTC)the sex tapes I've seen on the internet (from both nicks)... me thinks it would be hard for you not to be guided ... the size is fearsome... and monstrous. (I would be leaking sex vids too if I had such a proud member)
the other nick... though... gothic as he is... I would have to agree the pencil is mightier then the, er, sword in his case... the vid surely must have been put online to embarass or belittle...
Re: hard
Date: 2009-08-25 07:10 am (UTC)