Last October, I shared some thoughts on Nick Cave’s novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, from the point of view of a person who’s been a Cave fan for 15+ years.

he has written a pretty good story, but 278 pages chronicling the life of a piece of human garbage gets old faster than a three minute song.

Now, as I sit here with the sun shining into my room — opposed to the choking gray of Autumn — I’m going to go ahead and revise my statement, and say that Bunny is in fact a really fantastic book, and  I was too much of a pussy to admit it seven months ago.

I reread the book after a day spent listening to the 2007 album by Cave and his Bad Seeds side project, Grinderman.   I loved the record so much when it came out, I burned myself out on it and had not played it in a few years.  As I sat there and listened to Cave & Co. chant visceral mantras that sounded like they were written by an aging Lothario who was becoming disillusioned with age, I began to think, “this is the fucking soundtrack to Bunny!”

After that, I went and reread Zac Smith’s piece over at HTMLGiant about the book:

Book critics like Roberto Bolano because book critics look like Roberto Bolano (or his characters, or his voice, whichever): scholarly, neurotic, bibliophilic, unfairly overlooked, eager to somehow find a way to believe that literature is always only a step away from revolution and crime and violence and other more macho and less-bespectacled occupations.
Book critics do not look like Nick Cave

This all got me to thinking that I needed to give the book a second chance.  I did, and now I realize that I was wrong.  I’m not going to give you 1,000 more words as to why I was, I’m just going to admit that I was mistaken, and beg you not to hate me.