Many thanks to all those who have already contributed. And if you haven’t donated yet, please do, even if its a small donation of $5-10. Every little bit helps and, as there thousands of people pitching in on this campaign, all the small contributions add up to a large amount of funds to support DWB’s efforts around the globe . Click here or on the image below to donate.

That image of the mini-tombstones, so like the cover of Metallica’s Master of Puppets, always stuck with me as a symbol of small-town religious lunacy. So when it came time to start writing No Tears for Old Scratch, a novel set in the Holiest Town in America, I had knew there would be a Graveyard of the Innocent in there somewhere.

As I wind down on the final rewrites for No Tears for Old Scratch, as if on cue, another Graveyard of the Innocent jumped into the public eye. This time it was a drawing by Scott Roeder, the man convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller because he performed abortions. As Bill Hicks said, “Pro-lifers murdering doctors, it’s irony on a base level, but I like it.” Apparently, supporters of Roeder decided to auction off some “drawings” from him on eBay (rendered in that wonderful 5th grade style). One of which showed a biblical David holding the severed head of a Goliath George Tiller (again death obsession). And sure enough, Roeder had drawn a Graveyard of the Innocent. Ironically enough, in a move that Bill Hicks would have cackled at, Roeder included the inscription, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” Like convicted murders and their Christian supporters perhaps.

Thanks to the good folks at Smashwords, all of my stories — The Love Book collection, “The Metronome Winds Down,” and “Job in Williamsburg” — are all now available as ebooks through Barnes & Noble. If you’ve never read an ebook on your iPhone or computer, B&N actually has a reader for both.

And of course, if you’re not a B&N person, you can still get all the stories in print or as ebooks through Amazon, Powells, Scribd, Smashwords, Lulu, and just about any other bookstore.

A Place To Be In Harmony from russel fong on Vimeo.

“Jacobs settled on a description that would endure for years to come: [a vibrant city neighborhood] was like a ballet. From morning into night, her neighbors and the shopkeepers and the workers all seemed to be part of an improvised dance, she observed, ‘in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of a good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always complete with new improvisations.”
Having seen my share of American cities, I always felt the more horrific ones were places that had no neighborhoods within the city center. In the worst cases, the hub of these cities was nothing more than a business center that shut down at 5pm everyday, leaving the city desolate and lacking in any rhythm (contrary to Jacobs’ theory). And one block radius of bars does not a vibrant city make. The Gas Lamp district in San Diego doesn’t save it from being a ghost town. Nor the Flats in Cleveland. In my older younger days, I would’ve said this was due to the fact that those cities, well… just suck. But in my older wiser days, I’m a little more understanding. Those cities suck, because the city planners and real-estate developers never fostered the type of neighborhood living that gives a city its life.

]]>I’m still reading through Anthony Flint’s excellent book on the battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses over the fate of New York City’s neighborhoods in the 1960s . Last night, I reached the chapter where Jacobs is struggling to write her definitive work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The biggest [...]http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/22/what-makes-a-vibrant-city/feed/0http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/22/what-makes-a-vibrant-city/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KenWohlrobsToilet--OfficialSiteForTheWriter/~3/Qsyb673pr9A/book reviewsAnd the Ass Saw the AngelNick CaveThe Death of Bunny MunrokwohlrobWed, 14 Oct 2009 19:46:36 PDThttp://kenwohlrob.com/?p=870What a difference twenty years makes. Nick Cave’s first novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, which was released in 1989, opens with:

“Three greasy brother crows wheel, beak to heel, cutting a circle into the bruised and troubled sky, making fast, dark rings through the thicksome bloats of smoke.”

His new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, released in 2009, strikes a slightly more minimalist note with its first sentence:

“I am damned, thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die.”

Much like comparing his dark, brooding, classic early music to the simpler, more straightforward approach of his later albums, the author’s two books really are the work of two completely different Nick Caves. How can you possibly match the younger songwriter who so perfectly channels the final anguish of a condemned man on “The Mercy Seat” with the sarcastic older gent who has a laugh at the expense of the Bible’s most notorious zombie on “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”? It would be an exercise for the Cave-obsessed and does the man no justice. To expect the author to write in the same style as he did in 1989 makes no sense.

So what does Cave deliver with The Death of Bunny Munro? The style of this new book strives to keep it simple, tell an engrossing story, and not beat the reader over the head with its themes. They’re easy, obvious, and yet engrossing. You get hooked right away. And in some ways, this story becomes classic Nick Cave – a simple ballad of a disastrous end.

Bunny Munro is a louse who is no good to himself, his family, or any of the unfortunate women who cross his path. A traveling salesman of women’s cosmetics, he is, shall we say, vagina-obsessed. Every waking of the minute of the day, if he is not trying to get his hands on his own clients, he is at least fantasizing about them, or about Kylie Minogue, or Avril Lavigne, both of whom he has a running obsession with. In fact, it’s safe to say Bunny is more obsessed with the female sex organs than the females themselves, based on the parade of both anonymous and well-known vaginas he often pictures in his mind. Obviously, this causes havoc for Bunny’s marriage, especially when his wife calls it quits by hanging herself in their bedroom, leaving Bunny with his namesake, a young boy he barely knows or speaks to. Luckily, Bunny, Jr. sees none of his father’s faults, having an almost inflated image of his dad as the greatest salesman on the planet. Unsure of what to do with the kid, Bunny takes him on a road trip. Why? Well, Bunny is horny. His wife’s death has left him mentally adrift (even if at first he ignores the signs), driving Bunny to seek solace in a hit-list of female clients he views as easy targets. However, things, like life, don’t go as planned.

What follows is at turns hilarious, violent, dark, disturbing, and often very sad. Bunny runs into a carnival of living, breathing characters that are richly rendered. Most notable amongst them is a nasty chap, dressed in a devil’s costume, who goes about murdering women in the neighboring towns and streaking through the local shopping malls. With out overtly stating it, Cave makes the subtle comparison between the horned-devil and the horny devil.

As Bunny’s mental state deteriorates, we watch a character who has zero redeeming qualities to begin with, spiral even further downward — with a child in tow to boot. And this is where I think most readers lose the book. To read it just as a sexual romp or a mean-spirited attack on male misogyny, is to sell the book, and Cave’s skill as a writer, short. They are so focused on the salacious aspects of the novel, that they miss the bigger story. This is the tale of a father who has no business raising a child, trying to redeem himself in the most absurd and stupid way imaginable. The heart of the novel really is in Bunny Jr., who midway through the book starts to see his father for the child that he is (even if the younger Munro suffers from condition that affects his eyesight). We realize that Bunny Jr. is the better of the two and all we can do is hope he makes it through in better shape than his father.

As I’ve seen many people mention, in several reviews, Bunny has no redeeming qualities. And I don’t think Cave intended him to have any. We’ve become so accustomed to anti-heroes, characters for whom we feel as much attraction as repulsion, that we had forgotten the allure of a good-old-fashioned bastard who just makes your skin crawl. There is no Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego, in Bunny Munro. We’re not supposed to like him. And this case, it works. In spite of Bunny’s sick behavior, you can’t help reading further to see how much farther he’ll drop – and he does, rock bottom in the worst way imaginable when his vagina obsession gets the worst of him. But again, Bunny’s fate is foretold, no big spoiler there based on the title. What happens to Bunny Jr. is ultimately what we really care about. Can he rise above all the mayhem and carnage?

After finishing the book, I couldn’t help but think of the Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! album. Often maligned and disrespected, it is just another side of Cave and his cohorts in the Bad Seeds. And yet many of the hallmarks of his style are there. The same can be said of The Death of Bunny Munro. Give Cave the leeway of an open mind and you’ll find some surprising things in this book.

]]>What a difference twenty years makes. Nick Cave’s first novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, which was released in 1989, opens with: “Three greasy brother crows wheel, beak to heel, cutting a circle into the bruised and troubled sky, making fast, dark rings through the thicksome bloats of smoke.” His new novel, The Death of Bunny [...]http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/15/book-of-the-week-the-death-of-bunny-munro-by-nick-cave/feed/0http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/15/book-of-the-week-the-death-of-bunny-munro-by-nick-cave/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KenWohlrobsToilet--OfficialSiteForTheWriter/~3/3RUOFHUz76M/causesBe There 1stDoctors Without BordersMedecins Sans FrontiereskwohlrobWed, 07 Oct 2009 05:14:12 PDThttp://kenwohlrob.com/?p=800It’s a great organization and a very important cause. I have a ton of respect for the work they do and the dangerous situations they face in order to help the poorest people in the most devastated regions of our planet. Click here or on the image below to donate.

]]>It’s a great organization and a very important cause. I have a ton of respect for the work they do and the dangerous situations they face in order to help the poorest people in the most devastated regions of our planet. Click here or on the image below to donate.http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/07/raising-funds-for-doctors-without-borders/feed/0http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/07/raising-funds-for-doctors-without-borders/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KenWohlrobsToilet--OfficialSiteForTheWriter/~3/zddmR3H-nSg/no tears for old scratchphotographyworkspacekwohlrobSat, 03 Oct 2009 05:03:53 PDThttp://kenwohlrob.com/?p=753Still cranking away on rewrites for the final chapters of No Tears For Old Scratch.

]]>Still cranking away on rewrites for the final chapters of No Tears For Old Scratch.http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/03/workspace/feed/0http://kenwohlrob.com/2009/10/03/workspace/