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sophiefrancoiselucie's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
athingaboutjazz's review
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Minor: Addiction
amarofpatel's review
5.0
The mark of a book’s wisdom – in this book anyway – is the number of dog ears. Well, Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan collaboration Faith, Hope & Carnage has flappy ends galore because it has provided meaningful thoughts and lightning-bolt revelations front to back.
The fruit of a series of lengthy phone conversations between 2020 and 2021, it examines Cave’s loci of inspiration, open-ended practice, personal theology (an approach to religion he describes as “spirituality with rigour”) and his incredible resolve like never before. And that’s saying something, given the length of his career and all the interviews he’s given.
Cave is probably one of the most generous, open and articulate public figures in music, an artist whose creations are always intimate and true reflections of his being. Considered, even poured over. And yet he sees his work as incomplete in a sense. As a vessel into which others pour meaning. “What I do is entirely relational,” he says, “actually transactional, and has no real validity unless it’s animated by others.” Wisdom, in this regard, is knowing how far we have to go as Anthony Bourdain noted.
Cave puts himself out there. It’s a compulsion. He was the distraught father who took to the stage in a series of public ‘inquisitions’ (Variety called it “group therapy”) without having many answers to his own grief. Cave also attempts to address the curiosities, frustrations, ills and injustices of society through his weekly liturgical Red Hand Files, which have “created a kind of ever-creeping transparency by slowly prising me open”, he explains. “They freed me from myself”.
I and thousands of others across the world have come to rely on this correspondence, this antiquated exchange, to make sense of a world that tips ever closer into chaos and conflict on multiple fronts (a “collective lunacy”, in Cave’s eyes). Though he is also happy to answer the comparatively banal (“Who would you like to win Love Island?”) and silly (“Have you ever met Nicolas Cage?”).
Read more: https://www.imakesense.org/blog/nick-cave-talks-faith-hope-carnage-with-sean-o-hagan
The fruit of a series of lengthy phone conversations between 2020 and 2021, it examines Cave’s loci of inspiration, open-ended practice, personal theology (an approach to religion he describes as “spirituality with rigour”) and his incredible resolve like never before. And that’s saying something, given the length of his career and all the interviews he’s given.
Cave is probably one of the most generous, open and articulate public figures in music, an artist whose creations are always intimate and true reflections of his being. Considered, even poured over. And yet he sees his work as incomplete in a sense. As a vessel into which others pour meaning. “What I do is entirely relational,” he says, “actually transactional, and has no real validity unless it’s animated by others.” Wisdom, in this regard, is knowing how far we have to go as Anthony Bourdain noted.
Cave puts himself out there. It’s a compulsion. He was the distraught father who took to the stage in a series of public ‘inquisitions’ (Variety called it “group therapy”) without having many answers to his own grief. Cave also attempts to address the curiosities, frustrations, ills and injustices of society through his weekly liturgical Red Hand Files, which have “created a kind of ever-creeping transparency by slowly prising me open”, he explains. “They freed me from myself”.
I and thousands of others across the world have come to rely on this correspondence, this antiquated exchange, to make sense of a world that tips ever closer into chaos and conflict on multiple fronts (a “collective lunacy”, in Cave’s eyes). Though he is also happy to answer the comparatively banal (“Who would you like to win Love Island?”) and silly (“Have you ever met Nicolas Cage?”).
Read more: https://www.imakesense.org/blog/nick-cave-talks-faith-hope-carnage-with-sean-o-hagan
rmburke's review
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.25
The Q&A format lead to some repetition, that's why I knocked it down a bit ... despite its overall excellence.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death
One of the best books on grief I've read.sophie______a's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
schwarmgiven's review
4.0
Mr. Cave has become what few would have predicted. The most enlightened spiritual teacher in the realm of grief. He is not the saint we wanted, or needed, but the saint that we have. His recent albums of hymns continue to grow and mature--his art has never ever been better--and this book of personal reflections is fantastic. Honest. Down to earth. A new kind of 21st venture Paris Review type interview. Very worth reading for fans of Nick--people that I have recommended this to that did not know him, his work, or his story, were not as moved. Sometimes only believers can see the miracles, I guess.
thischarmingamy's review
5.0
This book was such a satisfying and fascinating read. I’m sad that I’ve finished it. Listening to the new Australian Carnage by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis now to soften the blow.
nledge's review
5.0
*Nick Cave bias in full effect here*
As an artist Nick Cave has had an immeasurable impact on my life. Reading him speak of his artistic methodology, his grief at the numerous losses he has had to overcome in the last few years, his faith and so much more meant something to me that I don't get from a lot of books. Perhaps it's just called fandom, but there are parts of this book that I relate to a lot more than I thought I would and that will stick with me for a long while.
And as Nick Cave most definitely does not say at the completion of a record...
That's that.
As an artist Nick Cave has had an immeasurable impact on my life. Reading him speak of his artistic methodology, his grief at the numerous losses he has had to overcome in the last few years, his faith and so much more meant something to me that I don't get from a lot of books. Perhaps it's just called fandom, but there are parts of this book that I relate to a lot more than I thought I would and that will stick with me for a long while.
And as Nick Cave most definitely does not say at the completion of a record...
That's that.