I was looking at a lot of pornographic photos, too. Bronwyn Adams, from the band Crime and the City Solution, gave me a copy when I was beginning the book and it had a big effect on me. One of the first photographers to do Biblical portraits, photographs of people in Biblical costumes with props. NC Rather than Bosch, I'd prefer to say that if there were certain images that I used when I was writing the book, they would be Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs-I put one on the cover of the book. The visual texture is so rich, so dense, so resonant of Bosch-vermin, snakes, crows, rats.
LS I'm pursuing this to give the readers some idea of the texture of the book. NC These kinds of parallels are all relevant, but Bosch certainly wasn't in my mind at the time. How does Hieronymous Bosch strike you as a parallel? The Garden of Earthly Delights? LS I constantly thought of parallels: Spenser, Swift, Tristram Shandy, Fielding. A lot of things are hinted at that aren't disclosed in detail. NC There are certain parallels to different things, which are either evident or not. LS We shouldn't be searching for meanings beneath. Euchrod has the saddest face in the world-which Dave has. Do you know Dave Mason? He's slightly hunchbacked, a queer face, a lot of teeth, big smile, long greasy hair. NC He's based on the singer of The Reels. LS After reading the book, I still didn't have a good physical picture of Euchrod. NC It's basically Euchrod in woe with the world. LS During Book II there are several "Lamentations"-yet another form. The final book is Euchrod's monologue which runs to the climax. The voice then changes between the narrator's truth and Euchrod's delusionary truth. Once this is done, the actual story begins. It includes documentary, poetry, maps and charts, in very short chapters. When you read a novel, you have to wade through the setting up of the scene before the story starts. When I first started the book there were certain elements I wasn't interested in writing about. NC There are a number of voices in the book: first person narrative by Euchrod, third person authorial voice, quotations usually from the Bible, either real or ersatz, constant changes in tone or approach to language, depending on who is talking. I wanted the book to have a voice that was recognizable in the same way as Nabokov has his. NC I was primarily concerned with the language. You think it must relent, particularly the language, but it just doesn't stop. Nick Cave It was a very solitary project. Lindzee Smith The Ass Saw the Angel-your first novel-was it as good for you to write it as it was for me to read? Its hero is a hunchback mute with the most woeful face in the world. His current band is Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and their new album, The Good Son, has just been released.Ĭave recently turned his talents to writing, not lyrics or poetry, but a full-length novel: The Ass Saw the Angel, a picaresque story set in a mythological valley, based on Cave's perception of an American South he has never visited. He left Australia to live in London and subsequently Berlin where he became a part of the burgeoning rock scene which then included Nina Hagen, Lene Lovich, and Blixa Bargeld. His first band, The Birthday Party, built an international reputation. Nick Cave was born near Yarrawonga in South-Eastern Australia in 1957.
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