Nick Cave in paperback

Equinox will publish a paperback version of my Nick Cave book in June 2013. At $25, it’s a bit more affordable.

 

A book outline, an engagement with my Cave book, and a job

Some stray notes, one concerning an item completed, and two to come:

1. Sacred Economy book outline, over at Political Theology. This is a biggie, offering a whole new model for the economies of the ancient Near East. Due out later this year.

2. A very thoughtful response indeed to my Nick Cave book by Anthony Paul Smith. It deserves a response, especially on the matter of total depravity. And in response to Anthony’s question, a paperback is slated to appear soon.

3. A job: this will be a research associate position, 0.4 ($30,00o per year) at the University of Newcastle. I’m looking for a specialist in Marxist economic theory, ancient societies, and the emergence of capitalism. Full details soon.

 

First review of Nick Cave: A Study of Love, Death and Apocalypse

Imaginatio et Ratio is first off the mark with a review, by Barry Taylor, of my Nick Cave book. A rather nice review it is too. All that before the paperback, which Janet Joyce from Equinox tells me will be out soon

 

Three new books (shameless self-promotion)

On Friday, the biggie arrived: Criticism of Heaven: The Author’s Cut.

How big? It weighs in at 765 pages – that’s 270 more than the abridged version from 2007:

In other words, the original text, with a shitload of detailed argument, is restored. I’ll soon have information on where this one can be found.

But I thought it should join its mates, two other books also published a couple of months ago:

More than 1300 pages of my verbiage this year alone, but who’s counting?

One more newie to go this year:

 

Some new books published

Some shameless self-promotion in a year that is becoming a little ludicrous in terms of books published.

The first book now available is Criticism of Earth: On Marx, Engels and Theology.

This is volume 4 of the ‘The Criticism of Heaven and Earth’ series. As the blurb puts it:

Criticism of Earth thoroughly reassesses Marx and Engels’s engagement with theology, drawing on largely ignored texts. Thus, alongside ‘opium of the people’, Hegel’s philosophy of law, and the Feuerbach theses, other works are also central. These include Marx’s early pieces on theology, continual transformations of fetishism, and lengthy treatments of Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. Engels too is given serious attention, since he moved beyond Marx in appreciating theology’s revolutionary possibilities. Engels’s Calvinism is discussed, his treatments of biblical criticism and theology, and his later writings on early Christianity’s revolutionary nature. The book continues the project for a renewed and enlivened interaction between Marxism and religion, being the fourth of five volumes in the Criticism of Heaven and Earth series.

Even though the euro is not doing so well these days, €99.00 is still a reasonable hit for a book. I must admit that Brill has a business model that has worked for over three centuries – it was established during the heyday of the first great capitalist power, the Netherlands. What to do? I suggest three or four strategies:

1. Dig a rich aunt for some cash, or request it as a birthday or Christmas present from your parents and/or children.

2. Order it for a library you know.

3. Wait for the paperback from Haymarket.

4. Wait for the pdf on one of those reputable Russian book sites.

The second book published is Nick Cave: A Study of Love, Death and Apocalypse.

I’m told the paperback should be out soonish, but otherwise see above. The blurb:

This study analyses the work of Nick Cave, a singular, idiosyncratic and brilliant musician, specifically through his engagements with theology and the Bible. It does so not merely in terms of his written work, the novels and plays and poetry and lyrics that he continues to produce, but also the music itself. Covering more than three decades of extraordinarily diverse creativity, the book has seven chapters focusing on: the modes in which Cave engages with the Bible; the total depravity of the worlds invoked in his novels and other written work; the consistent invocation of apocalyptic themes; his restoration of death as a valid dimension of life; the twists of the love song; the role of a sensual and heretical Christ; and then a detailed, dialectical analysis of his musical forms. The book draws upon a select number of theorists who provide the methodological possibilities of digging deep into the theological nature of Cave’s work, namely Ernst Bloch, who is the methodological foundation stone, as well as Theodor Adorno, Theodore Gracyk and Jacques Attali.

And a third one, although this is the paperback of Criticism of Theology: On Marxism and Theology III.

This one is very affordable via those nice lefties at Haymarket Books. The blurb:

Criticism of Theology provides a detailed and critical commentary on the continued fascination with religion by yet more significant Marxist philosophers, historians and critics: Max Horkheimer, E.P. Thompson, G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, Michael Löwy, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Antonio Negri. Simultaneously critique and construction, Criticism of Theology carefully analyses their work through close textual readings, with a view to locating hidden gems that may be developed further.

Soon to come, but available for pre-order, is The Earthy Nature of the Bible: Fleshly Readings of Sex, Masculinity and Carnality.

I have just received the cover image:

And the fourth one for this year, Criticism of Heaven: The Author’s Cut. This one has the full original text, with 250 pages and the original cadences restored.

 

Due out soon – Nick Cave: A Study of Love, Death and Apocalypse

Coming out shortly with Equinox (paperback a few months later). New title; new cover design by Jeff Iffe:

 

Change of pace: Cave Droppings book cover

I have been discussing possible covers for one of my new books – on Nick Cave – with Jeff Iffe, who also designs CD covers. The outcome of Jeff’s creative work:

The book will out with Equinox early next year.

 

Nick Cave and Religion to come out with Equinox

I have just received word that my book, Cave Droppings: Nick Cave and Religion (completed on the Trans-Siberian) will come out with Equinox in their ‘Popular Music History‘ series. Chris Partridge tells me some designer whizz, who also does CD covers, is getting to work on the cover.

So I guess a Table of Contents is in order:

Introduction

Chapter One: Searching the Holy Books

Synopsis: Nick Cave and the Bible

The Life of Nick

The ‘Word’ of Cave

Conclusion, or, Strategies of Containment

Chapter Two: The Total Depravity of Cave’s Literary World

Cave World

That House on the Edge of Town

A Slug of White Jesus

Rain in the Valley

Bible

Lamentations of Woe

The Calling of Eschatological Madness

Conclusion: The Dialectic of Redemptive Depravity

Chapter Three: Some Routine Atrocity, or, Apocalyptic

Three Modes

God’s Anger: The Flood

Murder, Mayhem and Atrocity

Glimpses of Redemption

Conclusion

Chapter Four: Death

From Form to Content: The Sinister Song

Death Inflicted

Death Suffered

Individual Annihilation

Collective Destruction

Death Overcome

Conclusion: Death Is Not the End?

Chapter Five: God, Pain and the Love Song

Secular Soppy Songs: No Pain, No God

Painlessly Divine: No Pain, With God

Painfully Secular: With Pain, No God

Brutally Divine: With Pain, With God

Chapter Six: Jesus of the Moon, or, Christology

Volume and Noise

Sex and Seduction

Heresy

Conclusion

Chapter Seven: Hearing Round Corners: Nick Cave Meets Ernst Bloch

Hearing around corners

Concerning the Wandering Path of the Note, or, Forms of the Song

Anarchy …

… and Discordancy

Transition

Hymn (and Lament)

Sinister Song

Dialectical Song

Voice

Conclusion: The Dialectics of Theo-Utopian Hearing

Conclusion: Gates to the Garden: The Search for Redemption

 

New article on Nick Cave

It is on his love songs and published in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.

 

Lenin on anal sex

One of the pleasures of setting out on a grand journey like reading Lenin’s Collected Works is that you stumble across unexpected gems – this one on anal sex. Let me set the scene: in the midst of a detailed demolition job on the French economist, Sismondi, he notes Sismondi’s argument that the church is failing in its task of condemning impudent and lusty marriages. According to Sismondi:

Religious morality should teach people that having produced a family, it is their duty to live no less chastely with their wives than celibates with women who do not belong to them.

Three kids and then no more humping, according to Sismondi (or, as Nick Cave puts it in ‘Worm Tamer’: ‘she calls me the Loch Ness monster; two humps and I’m gone’). Fuck yeah, says Lenin. We all know how successful the French peasant is at such ‘chastity’ , let alone priests in the church. In fact, as Proudhon argued, ‘chastity’, or indeed Malthus’s ‘birth control’, is really

the preaching of the connubial practice of … a certain unnatural vice.