Abstract: This paper interrogates the links between Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro and Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto. It starts by situating Cave’s writing in relation to his status as an auteur, examines discourses of rock music and the murder ballad, before providing a close reading of misogynistic scenes in the novel. It offers several ways to read the novel and questions whether it can be labelled a parody, satire, or as scatological rhetoric. It concludes by drawing the discussion back to aesthetics and the intersection of literature and music in the audio book version of Bunny Munro and Cave’s success as a salesman.
Keywords: Nick Cave, The Death of Bunny Munro, SCUM Manifesto, Valerie Solanas, scatological rhetoric
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