A great lyricist might remind you of your favorite literary icon, and some lyricists might take that association as an outstanding compliment. But don’t go around telling Nick Cave he’s anything like Charles Bukowski, the former indicated in a recent blog post, emphasizing that he’s not a fan of the controversial author.
The exchange went down via a recent post on Cave’s website The Red Hand Files, after a fan named Simon wrote to him: “In my opinion you are one of the bonzerist geezers around, like Bukowski with a geetar. Thank you Mr. Cave.”
Cave had this to say in response: “Thank you for your letters but, I’m sorry, Simon, I don’t like being compared to Charles Bukowski. I appreciate you were trying to be kind and make me feel good and everything but I don’t like the man. This a well known fact. Now, if you had called me, say, the ‘Philip Larkin of the Joanna’ or the ‘Stevie Smith of the Ivories’ or the ‘All Singing, All Dancing John Berryman’ or ‘Langston Hughes of the Banger’, I’d be lot happier.”
Related Video
Though his prolific output of poetry and fiction is widely celebrated and often referenced today, Bukowski — who died in 1994 — has also been frequently criticized, largely for his misogynistic and overtly sexual depictions of women. Cave went on: “In my opinion, Charles Bukowski is the ‘Bukkake of Bad Poetry’, just blowing his junk around. I don’t like him. I just don’t. Not even a bit. No, not at all. Love, Nick.”
Just in case you were about to subject yourself to a potentially incriminating Google search: Bukkake is a trope in pornography that typically involves one woman, a group of men, and…you can imagine the rest. You don’t have to read much Bukowski to conclude that, yeah, he probably would’ve been down for that.
Cave must really, really not jive with Bukowski’s work, since he also wrote in a more emotional January blog post that “hatred stopped being interesting” after his eldest son Jethro Lazenby died at the age of 31 last May: “When my son died, I was faced with an actual devastation, and with no real effort of my own that posture of disgust toward the world began to wobble and collapse underneath me.”