Australia’s favorite post-punk artist Nick Cave has revealed a full list of the literary influences that have inspired a run of emotional intensity to keep us creatively busy. “songs you can go in and out of, but a book… well, it can overwhelm you,” cave once said, and it’s that idea that we delve into.
cave, who studied art before leading his chaotic birthday party band, has seen his taste in music change and mature since the obscenely vibrant 1980s, a time when he moved to london, then berlin western. As the birthday party dissolved and the bad seeds were born, an ever-present moment of consistency has been Cave’s feverish desire to devour literature at a dizzying pace.
You are reading: Nick cave favorite books
See Also: Best Books to Read for Beginners: Develop a Reading Habit 2022 | Wakefit
Cave grew up in a small rural town in Australia, his father teaching English literature and his mother a librarian at the secondary school Cave himself attended. With the literature surrounding his childhood, the budding musician was introduced to classics like crime and punishment and lolita from an early age, and the creative spark within him was ignited. “The duty of an artist is rather to keep an open mind and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration,” he once said. “You always have to be ready for that little artistic epiphany.”
cave, who has often detailed his commitment to poetry, once described the art form as “part of my job as a composer”, before adding: “I try to read at least half an hour of poetry a day, before I start doing my own writing.”
cave continued: “it levers open the imagination, making the mind more receptive to metaphor and abstraction, and serves as a bridge from the reasoned mind to an uncanny state of alert, should that precious idea decides to drop.”
See Also: 20 Best Calculus Books in 2022 [Best Sellers Included] – Gaurav Tiwari
when asked what he thinks kids should read in school during an interview with rolling stone, cave replied, “they should read the bible, they should read lolita. They should stop reading bukowski and they should stop listening to people telling them to read bukowski.”
all the names mentioned above, bukowski, vladimir nabokov and fyodor dostoyevsky, have been compiled into a list of authors cave has named as vital influencers for his creative output. In a list that was curated by Radical Readings, having collected Cave’s comments and suggestions through years of different interviews, the Bad Seeds frontman cites the likes of W.H. auden, jill alexander essbaum, philip larkin and more as crucial reference points.
nick cave’s favorite books and authors:
- the bible
- in the belly of the beast by jack abbott
- thanks mist by w.h. auden
- flowers of evil by charles baudelaire
- collected poems by john betjeman
- murderous american ballads and their stories by olive woolley burt
- robert burton’s anatomy of melancholy
- alban butler’s lives of saints
- louis wain – the man who drew cats by rodney dale
- late victorian holocausts by mike davis
- crime and punishment by fyodor dostoyevsky
- the informers by bret easton ellis
- whore by jill alexander essbaum
- the undefeated by william faulkner
- here i am by jonathan safran foer
- homer’s odyssey
- tall windows by philip larkin
- selected lyrics by philip larkin
- william march’s bad seed
- karl marx’s kapital
- cormac mccarthy’s blood meridian
- cormac’s path mccarthy
- herman melville’s moby dick
- john milton’s paradise lost
- nad news a by william morris
- loli ta by vladimir nabokov
- wise blood by flannery o’connor
- the complete works of billy the kid by michael ondaatje
- the songs of ezra pound</li
- a book of flowers for the pocket of macgregor skene
- manifesto of the scum of valerie solanas
- w.h. Auden: A Spending Stephen Tribute
- The Complete Works of St. john of the cross
- the complete works of st. teresa of avila
- hell / from a hidden diary of august strindberg
Follow far out magazine on our social channels, on facebook, twitter and instagram.
See Also: PackBack Books – Shark Tank Blog