Faith, Hope and Carnage

by Nick Cave, Seán O'Hagan

Overview

A BOOK OF THE YEAR, ROLLING STONE, NPR, PITCHFORK, THE TIMES (LONDON), TELEGRAPH

“An astoundingly intimate book-length conversation on art and grief spanning the duration of the pandemic years . . . As with Cave’s music, you might flinch, but you will feel alive.”
― Pitchfork

Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave’s inner life.

Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with the journalist Seán O’Hagan, this is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity.

The book examines questions of belief, art, music, freedom, grief and love. It draws candidly on Cave’s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years.

Faith, Hope and Carnage offers ladders of hope and inspiration from a true visionary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374607371
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	79,368
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Nick Cave has been performing music for more than forty years and is best known as the songwriter and lead singer of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, whose 2019 album, Ghosteen, was widely received as their best work ever. Cave’s body of work also covers a wider range of media and modes of expression, including film score composition, ceramic sculpture and writing novels. Over the last few years his Red Hand Files website and “Conversation with” live events have seen Cave exploring deeper and more direct relationships with his fans.

Seán O’Hagan has interviewed many major artists, writers and musicians over the last four decades. He currently works as a feature writer for The Observer and is the photography critic for The Guardian.

Table of Contents

1 A Beautiful Kind of Freedom 1

2 The Utility of Belief 19

3 The Impossible Realm 34

4 Love and a Certain Dissonance 50

5 A Kind of Disappearance 70

6 Doubt and Wonder 78

7 A Radical Intimacy 111

8 A Sense of Shared Defiance 130

9 The Astonishing Idea 141

10 A Series of Ordinary Carnages 161

11 A Beautiful, Desperate World 191

12 Anita Led Us Here 200

13 Things Unfold 206

14 The God in the Cloud 227

15 Absolution 241

Epilogue 257

Afterword 275

Acknowledgements 279

Index 281

Editorial Reviews

★ 2022-08-03
The Australian alt-rock icon talks at length about the relationship between faith, death, and art.

Like many touring musicians stalled during the pandemic, Cave pursued an autobiographical book project while in quarantine. But rather than write a standard memoir, he instead consented to a book of extensive interviews with U.K. arts journalist O’Hagan, photography critic for the Guardian and a feature writer for the Observer. Cave chose this approach in order to avoid standard rock-star patter and to address grittier, more essential matters. On that front, he has plenty of material to work with. Much of the book focuses on his 15-year-old son Arthur, who died from an accidental fall off a cliff in 2015. The loss fueled Cave’s 2019 album, Ghosteen, but Cave sees the connection between life and art as indirect, involving improvisation, uncertainty, and no small amount of thinking about religion. “The loss of my son is a condition; not a theme,” he tells O’Hagan. Loss is a constant in these conversations—during the period when they were recorded, Cave’s mother also died, as did his former band mate Anita Lane. Yet despite that, this is a lively, engrossing book energized by Cave’s relentless candor—and sometimes counterintuitive thinking—about his work and his demons. His well-documented past heroin addiction, he says, “fed into my need for a conservative and well-ordered life.” Grief, he suggests, is surprisingly clarifying: “We become different. We become better.” Throughout, he talks about the challenges and joys of songwriting and improvisation (mostly around Carnage, the 2021 album he recorded with band mate Warren Ellis during this period) and about the comfort he gets answering questions from fans and strangers on his website. O’Hagan knows Cave’s work well, but he avoids fussy discographical queries and instead pushes Cave toward philosophical elaborations, which he’s generally game for.

A somber, sage book about art-making that deserves a readership beyond Cave’s fan base.

Kirkus Reviews

"In 2022, these intimate, revelatory conversations were neatly packaged into one thoughtful, moving memoir, Faith, Hope, and Carnage, in which Cave invites you into his innermost world – from his struggles with addiction to his explosive relationship with the Bad Seeds, through to grief and growth."
—Brit Dawson, GQ (UK)

“[An] extraordinary, intensely personal book . . . Through O’Hagan’s sensitive questioning, Faith, Hope and Carnage is one of the most powerful and affecting meditations on grief and loss published in recent years.”
—James Cook, ArtReview (UK)

“The soft-spoken, knowing voice of a wise man whose youthful excesses inevitably led him to a quiet life of meditation and art . . .There is a fly-on-the-wall sense that when Cave speaks, he has a particular audience in mind: the silently grieving.”
— Lauretta Charlton, The New York Times Book Review

“An astoundingly intimate book-length conversation on art and grief spanning the duration of the pandemic years . . . As with Cave’s music, you might flinch, but you will feel alive.”
—Jenn Pelly, Pitchfork

“This beautiful book is a lament, a celebration, a howl, a secular prayer, a call to arms, a meditation and an exquisite articulation of the human condition. It will take your breath away.”
—Rachel Clarke, The Guardian (UK)

“Brave and brilliant . . . Illuminating reflections on loss and ‘the terrible beauty of grief.’”
—Éamon Sweeney, The Irish Times

“Occasionally deeply harrowing … [but] ultimately enriching, a story suffused with love, teeming with ideas, a document of an artist’s journey from holding the world ‘in some form of disdain’ to a state of empathy and grace.”
—Alexis Petridis, The Guardian

“All this speaks of a desire for connection — communion, even — that wildly transcends the traditional hierarchies of rock stardom . . . These are delicate things to discuss amid the proudly godless world of rock’n’roll, but Cave articulates them with care and openness.”
—Victoria Segal, The Sunday Times

“Faith, Hope and Carnage stands, at once, as a loving tribute to his late son, and ultimately to God – a book that fuses his humour, intellect, wit and passion into one long philosophical meditation on living and dying.”
—Barry Egan, The Irish Independent

“Speckled with wisdom and rich in ideas. It is an entirely unpretentious stroll by two friends through matters big and small.”
—Euan McColm, The Scotsman

“This is a book you could dip into if you had no knowledge of Cave at all, just to find someone unafraid to ask all the big questions: what is grief? What is forgiveness? . . . Everyday carnage has brought forth a book of hope and freedom and life.”
—Suzanne Moore, Telegraph (UK)

“Wide-ranging and intimate, revealing the depths of an artist’s soul.”
—Lauren Christensen, The New York Times

“An intimate and extremely candid exploration of Cave’s life from his childhood to the present day, touching as it does so upon matters that range from loss, grief, vulnerability, and freedom to the kindness of strangers, as well as providing remarkable insights into the almost prescient elements of his songwriting processes.”
—Simon Godley, God is in the TV Zine

“Cave is one hell of a writer . . . An extraordinary, one-of-a-kind book . . . Cave is a miraculously fluent talker, incapable of a dull line.”
—Dorian Lysnkey, Unherd

“Anyone hoping to gain a deeper understanding of Cave’s music and the places he has journeyed to find that music will enjoy this thoughtful book. For those not familiar with Cave’s work, Faith, Hope And Carnage is still an enlightening glimpse into the nature of artistic creation.”
—David Griffiths, Buzz Magazine

“Remarkably candid…the culmination of a prolonged and moving period of reflection.”
— George Eaton, New Statesman

“[An] intimate alternative memoir.”
— Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today

“From love to grief, addiction to God, Faith, Hope and Carnage is as much a story of personal transformation as a musical one . . . offering a thoughtful and generous glimpse into the internal life that has fuelled an undeniably extraordinary output.”
—Emily Watkins, iNews

“Keen to understand what’s really going on in. . . Nick Cave’s mind? His new book, Faith, Hope and Carnage, written in collaboration with journalist Sean O’Hagan, is your chance to find out.”
—Joanna Taylor, Evening Standard Magazine (UK)

“The Australian alt-rock icon talks at length about the relationship between faith, death, and art . . . This is a lively, engrossing book energized by Cave’s relentless candor—and sometimes counterintuitive thinking—about his work and his demons . . . A somber, sage book about art-making that deserves a readership beyond Cave’s fan base.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“What makes the book something other than a peephole on catastrophe is the frank and human questioning of O’Hagan and Cave’s willingness to face up to it all. This ex-addict has come up with an addictive book – the reveals come thick and fast, as does the wisdom. Meanwhile, the insight into Cave’s songwriting is profound, and he is thoughtful on the contrast, thematically and structurally, between then and now.”
—Danny Eccleston, Mojo

“A book that’ll stay with you forever.”
—Francesca Brown, Stylist

From the Publisher