It begins with a photograph of Cave’s father, Colin, a teacher, who, in one uncharacteristic and transformative act, read aloud to his nine-year-old son the opening paragraph of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. It is also a map – messy and impulsive – of a creative life that for a long time was pursued with a ferociously self-destructive intent, and, latterly, with a singular acceptance and grace. This is the raw (in every sense of the word) material out of which his songs and stories have emerged. Cave calls it the “peripheral stuff”, which is “the secret and unformed property of the artist”, but here on the page it takes on a life of its own, revealing his often compulsive way of working, as well as his abiding interests and obsessions: desire, faith, sin, despair, redemption, grief, love, and the transformative thrust of language itself.
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