REVIEW ESSAY: A Survey of Substantial Scholarship on Nick Cave to 2012

Abstract

As I am writing this review of scholarship on Nick Cave (with a focus on Karen Welberry and Tanya Dalziell’s edited volume Cultural Seeds, and Roland Boer’s, Nick Cave), news hits that Cave is performing at the Sydney Opera House. A certain whiff of hysteria passes through my group of (mostly atheist) friends as we prepare to fight it out online for tickets. One friend has a new bloke in her life, he knows something or someone, and our anxieties are allayed. We have the tickets a day before they go out to the general public. The next morning we learn that the ticket system crashed from over-demand and tickets to both shows were gone in less than an hour: a rare honour for an Australian artist. But just to give you additional flavour to what is going on, I should also add that this friend has a tattoo of Cave’s face on her upper left arm. The man himself was rather appalled to see it there when she finally got to meet him; nevertheless he duly signed his name under his own face gazing up at him from her skin. Friend then had the signature traced and tattooed over as well. Her upper arm is now a tribute page to Cave. Additionally, another friend who will be attending the concert with us spent most of 2008 completing an honours thesis on Cave. I add all this to alert the reader that this review comes from a very special social bubble that may provide some (slight?) bias to this review.