Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Nick Cave: Mercy on Me by Reinhard Kleist

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thebiophone's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

2.5

If you're interested in a fantastical, gritty mythology of Nick Cave, this book might be for you.

However, if you're interested in a complex, more detailed Nick Cave biography, you'll want to give this one a skip.

The biggest downfall of this title is the lack of primary research. Kleist cites only other biographers and documentarians as his sources in the "acknowledgements" section at the end. As a result, the novel feels incomplete—beyond authorial intentions.

For instance, the authors reduce Anita Lane to Nick's girlfriend and muse. In real life, she was Nick's girlfriend, but she was also one of his serious artistic collaborators. She was even in the Bad Seeds for a time, a fact the novel excludes.

Another example is the depiction of Blixa Bargeld. The novel only really uses him to
extoll the virtues of West Berlin to Nick (and to emphasize the theme of fantasy over reality)
; aside from that, he is a minor character. In reality, Blixa was hugely influential on the Bad Seeds' musical direction and one of Nick's closest friends.

That's not even getting into the erasure of BIPOC that worked with Nick. People like Barry Adamson (part-time Birthday Party member and founding member of the Bad Seeds) and Kid Congo Powers (former Bad Seeds member) are nowhere to be found, despite their importance in Nick's career. Black people only show up
in a fantasy sequence in the final chapter
. Apart from that sequence, the only time we see a person of colour in a plot-relevant capacity is when we see Mark Chung for a panel or two. These treatments probably won't register with the casual reader. Still, to people familiar with Nick's work, they're questionable treatments at best.

Between the downgrading of certain significant people in Nick's life and the outright erasure of others, the narrative is a lot less robust and engaging than it could have been. Case in point: in the first chapter, Nick is hesitant to perform Rowland S. Howard's lyrics on the basis that he feels uncomfortable singing someone else's songs. It would have been great to see that contrasted with Nick's attitude toward "Stranger Than Kindness". In real life, Nick cites that one as one of his Bad-Seeds favourites because he did not write it. However, because Anita and Blixa—the people who wrote it—are essentially one-note characters, there's simply no room for "Stranger Than Kindness". There is no room to show this growth in Nick's character.

All of these criticisms are not to say that the book is terrible. Nick's early life scenes make him empathetic, and the Elisa Day subplot is incredibly poignant. Instead, my point is that this novel could have been so much better. Primary research could have made this novel way more interesting.

Again, if you like the image of Nick Cave as a gruff, tortured soul, you might like this book. For a more comprehensive portrait of Nick, though, many other biographies and documentaries better suit the bill.
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