In the Time of Nick
There was much rejoicing in the Revelatorium when we learned that Nick Tosches is at work on a new novel entitled The Book Of Going Forth By Day. He’s posted a sample or two in the blog section of his myspace (see blogroll). On the same site you’ll find audio of Johnny Depp reading the opening section of In The Hand Of Dante.
Here’s Steve Earle (no mean writer himself) raving about the man in an interview we did last September:
“Nick Tosches is the one guy that started out writing about rock ‘n’ roll that became a great novelist. I think Jon Landau could’ve (too), he was that good, but he stopped writing. Probably my second favourite book of the last 20 years, after (Michael Ondaatje’s) Coming Through Slaughter, is Tosches’s In The Hand Of Dante. That’s a mind-blowing fucking book. I can always read whatever Tosches writes and I’m really glad he writes a lot. Some of the stuff I don’t go around recommending to people, but In The Hand Of Dante…Of course he’s gonna lose women about ten pages into it – he starts the book with his gun to the head of a girl with his dick in his mouth, and it’s all over with most women at that point, and that’s unfortunate, ’cos that’s a ridiculously original piece of work. It’s funny, we’re kinda neighbours now, and I bump into him now and again. It’s a very big deal, I mean, I live in Greenwich Village and I ran into Sam Shepard and some pretty impressive people, but Tosches, I almost got run over one time ’cos I saw him. And I’m an Emmett Miller freak, so Where Dead Voices Gather is one of my favourites, a classic example of journalism and fiction simultaneously.”