Novel Influences 1

Nick Cave

Thank you for joining me on the journey through Love in the Fall. If you’ve found yourself drawn in by Chapters 1 and 2, I can assure you, you’re really going to like how the story continues to unfold.

In the next chapter, Daniel and Susan will have a significant conversation. But before that, Daniel has an early-morning walk in Washington, D.C., from Dupont Circle to the National Cathedral and back. His accompaniment is the album No More Shall We Part by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He makes this selection from a small assortment of cd’s that he is carrying with him in his suitcase, to tide him over for a few weeks until his entire record collection arrives on his doorstep in Oxford.

As I hope you will see as the novel progresses, No More Shall We Part is significant to Daniel’s experience of coming to terms with the ruinous but not altogether forsaken landscape of Western culture. More importantly, he will hear themes in Cave’s lyrics that evoke contemplation about loving relationships and the prospect of long-lasting romance.

No More Shall We Part came out in April 2001, a few months before our story begins. It would have been in heavy rotation on Daniel’s stereo at the end of his last semester of college and, of course, in the years beyond. Elsewhere in the novel, Daniel thinks about another Nick Cave song that is not on No More Shall We Part, indicating he is a serious fan. Nick Cave’s art has helped shape the man we meet as he tries to make his way in Washington and, soon, across the Atlantic Ocean in the United Kingdom.

For my own part, I did not cultivate a deep appreciation of Nick Cave until several years after 2001. I had long known about him and would have said I liked him; but it was not until 2004 when my then-girlfriend (now wife), Amber, gave me the double album Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus that I really began to explore, and then fall in love with, Cave’s music. Additionally, I came to regard Cave, the man, as a multi-faceted artist and seeker after Truth that belonged alongside just a few guiding lights I have kept in my sights for many years.

Eventually, I came to regard No More Shall We Part as Nick Cave’s finest work, placing the album in the conversation as one of the most important pieces of contemporary rock music. Even though I was not devoted to the record in 2001, it retrospectively captures many of the hopes and fears I felt during that time. I was listening to the album heavily during 2023 and early 2024 when I began to think seriously about the characters and plot elements that would come together to form Love in the Fall. There was no good reason why I wasn’t listening to it alongside the other major albums that I relied upon heavily during my college years. Hence, I wanted Daniel to know it and loved it in its element, as I should have.

I have published two articles about Nick Cave in years past. The one, which proved to be my last review essay for Word on Fire, discusses Cave’s extraordinary little book Faith, Hope, and Carnage, in which, in a series of interviews with Sean O’Hagan, he discusses his faith journey, the artistic process, and the deep grief he has experienced. I note how Cave has for many years been an encouragement to me in difficult times, including all the time I spent with his album Ghosteen while jogging outdoors and thinking about so many things during the worst of the COVID madness.

In this article for the Catholic Herald, I review Cave’s most recent studio album, Wild God, which I liked very much. As I was creating Daniel’s character in Love in the Fall, I wondered to myself whether any sensitive young man like him would dial up Wild God on his phone today before setting off on an urban exploration. Sadly, I suspect it would only be a middle-aged man like me - someone a bit like the grown-up Daniel!

I am delighted to say that my wife and I finally had the chance to see Nick Cave live in Dallas, Texas in October 2023. It was an almost solo show, in which he was accompanied on the bass by Colin Greenwood of Radiohead. That’s a band we’ll hear about in Chapter 3 as well! And we may even meet a member of that band later in the novel…stay tuned.

There are quite a few important musical influences at work in Love in the Fall, and I will provide similar behind-the-scenes access to some of those, as I am doing here. Likewise, there are a number of cinematic, literary, and religious figures and works that helped shape my book, and I may pause from time to time to say something about them. It’s all part of the fun of publishing my work here.

For God is in this hand that I hold.

As we open up the gates to the garden.

Thanks for reading and listening.

Chapter 3 is coming on Wednesday. It’s quite a bit longer than Chapters 1 and 2, and there is a lot of engrossing stuff in it. Enjoy! And please tell someone else about Love in the Fall. I would love to share it with as wide an audience as possible.