James Galvin

What is an Irishman but a nigger turned inside out?

I have been looking forward to this one ever since it got the Sigla thumbs up, it was well worth the wait. I love all of these Australian movies, Mr. Reliable, The Castle, Rabbit Proof Fence… even Wolf Creek although it scared the bejesus out of me.

The Proposition is a gritty Australian western, set in the outback of the 1880′s, following a family of outlaws reminiscent of the Kelly gang. Ignoring the inconsistent Irish accents all-round, Guy Pearce was well cast in the lead role as Charlie Burns, Ray Winstone as “Captain Stanley” was excellent, Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) looks perfect as the villain. Some great characters, the film was really well done, and I would recommend it if you don’t mind seeing a dead body protruding spears “like one of your English hedgehogs”.

The best thing about this film is Nick Cave’s unique stamp. The savage murderer Arthur Burns, who knows his poetry and is so loyal to his brothers. The crazed bounty hunters. The dark fantasy overlay – the badlands where Arthur has made his hide out “the blacks won’t go there”, and the aborigines howl like dogs as they speak of the Arthur’s alleged shape-shifting ability. If I had a million euro, I would commision Nick Cave to write a book. 19th century Australia is the only possible setting for the wildness and brutality in his work, and I have usually associated his songs and stories with this place and time, even if they are supposedly set elsewhere.

I’m reminded of And the Ass Saw the Angel – a book which makes The Wasp Factory resemble a Ladybird Classic. Take all the bad stuff from the settlement in One Hundred Years of Solitude make it ten times worse, and populate it the worst kind of hypocrite Bible freaks that you can find, a few filthy hobos and some scum-of-the-earth drifters and you have something like Ukulore Valley – the setting for Nick Cave’s first and only novel to date.

I have always been horrified but fascinated by some of Nick Cave’s more brutal songs – in particular the likes of “The Mercy Seat” and “Stagger Lee” – these are windows into the world inside Nick Cave’s head that he further reveals in this book. My dog has since eaten the book, but I managed to salvage a couple of quotes.

In 1859, Jonas Ukulore, a Welsh convert to the baptist faith, announced that he was the “Seventh Angel” prophecied in the book of Daniel. Excommunicated, narrowly escaping death, the Prophet Jonas flees with his brother and sets up residence in a secluded valley. Planting sugar cane, they prosper and build a devoted settlement in Ukulite Valley.

The story follows a mute boy Euchrid, born in a burnt out Chevy beside his parents’ junk yard shack. His mother is a vile alcoholic who ties him to a chair and swats him with a fly swatter. His father “has hill in him” – a twisted, inbred man who sets dozens of traps daily, and each evening places the maimed animals into a tank to fight to their death. He fled the “Black Morton Range” where most of his kin was hunted down and killed – If you haven’t read the book, peruse the extract below, an account of one of the Morton clan, and it will give you a good idea as to whether or not this novel will appeal to your taste.

Investigation into the disappearance of the Black Range travellers (the ‘Morton’ was added to the name officially in 1902), led to the discovery and subsequent disposal of one Toad Morton, or as the press-gang tagged him, Black Morton. A low-minded, wart-worried giant, Toad had been driven from the Morton clan by his own kin, after they had found the faimily hog dead in its pen, covered in flies and human teeth marks – its back leg had been bitten clean off. Finding Toad covered in pig-shit and sucking a trotter, they had chased him out of the Morton’s valley to roam the gullies and gulches of the out-hills, a sore Goliath shunned by his own blood, without friend or companion save the league of demons that rubbed and itched amongst the crags and sunless cracks of his bad, mad and unholy brain.

Crouched in ambush on that tricky eastern road, Toad plucked at his pleasure lone-riders befitting his own infernal usage.

Found in a small stone cave bitten from the roadside, stitch naked save for his great outsized boots and a plague of flies …. Toad squatted in the slitted stomach of a warm child, eating loudly the face of her hapless headless father, who sat a good foot off the ground impaled up the ass on a pointed post.

Looking up at the search-party silhouetted in the glare at the mouth of the cave, the great lonely oversized Toad said, gesturing at the carnage, ‘Brothers, ah am found! You have come to bring me home! Pull up thy stool!’ Then a hot tear broke upon each cheek and he smiled warmly up at them, his green teeth filed to wicked points.

BEWARE! MORTON’S MURDER MILE
O world-weery Pilgryms, unburden thy lode
Nowither a Doome mor horrid I know
Than that wich awaits Thee down bluddy roade
Prey! Bewar ol Black Morton. The murdress Toad!

Euchrid’s life has its ups and downs… actually it doesn’t really have any ups, but I’m not going to summarise any of that here. I think by now you will know whether or not you should read this book. Any fan of Nick Cave’s music should not miss it, as some light is shed on the darker offerings that he has produced over the years. “From Her to Eternity” is very much echoed in these pages, and at times we are given momentary vision through the eyes of the killers in the Murder Ballads, and the madness of the Lyre of Orpheus and the Mercy Seat. We see, through the twisted haze of Euchrid’s disturbed mind, the moth as it tries “to enter the bright eye”, the man with the letters tatooed on his knuckles, the place where the wild roses grow, and other familiar flashes here and there which clear at least some of the mystery behind Nick Cave’s dark lyrics.

Despite each of the 312 pages frothing with a sickening kind of horror, this is not one of those Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer experiences. This can only be attributed to the mastery with which Nick Cave presents the subject matter. Consider the lyrics of “Stagger Lee” – some lines could be considered so offensive that I couldn’t echo them here in my blog or I would probably have Blacknight knocking on the door. But each horrible event is wrapped in the darkest kind of humour. This is what I like best about the book – this antidote to the underlying unpleasantness:

“The sun rose and waked the cock. The cock a-doodled and waked the wild dog. The dog gave a ho-o-o-owl and waked the crows, who took to the air, flying low, going ‘caw-caw-caw’ and not stopping till the whole fucken valley was woke. Little wonder every season is open season on crows.”

Perhaps the most enduring impact of the novel is the warped interpretation of the fire-and-brimstone bible. Here is a quote from the novel, as Eucrid looks on from afar as the villagers swarm around the burning church:

“The Ukulites, armed with torches and hay-rakes, looked like ants from where ah was poised, on the rise, near the shack. They barked and chanted and fanned the flames. Ah wondered how they must look to Him, these ants, these frantic specks down below. Ah held out my hand. They were no bigger than mah thumb. Stretching wide the fingers of mah hand, ah saw that it spanned with width of Glory Flats and ah slowly folded mah fingers in, crushing them all, fire and all, in mah fist.
Ah laughed and the valley trembled, ringing with it.”

Here is a quotation from the bible which was the inspiration for the title:

“And the ass saw the angel of Jehovah, and she lay down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with his staff.”

To be honest, I don’t know which is freakier.