Euchrid Eucrow, the protagonist in Nick Cave’s debut novel And The Ass Saw The Angel, has penned a touching reply to a 10-year-old fan who wrote to the character asking for advice.
“Dear Euchrid,” wrote the boy, “all that my idiot schoolmates listen to is chart music and the only books they own have been written by that camp bloke off Little Britain. Many of them still believe in Santa Claus, the cretins, and they write to him regularly. But I believe in you, Euchrid, so I am writing to ask if you have any advice for me? Mummy says the only reason I’m disruptive in class is because I’m cleverer than all the other children.”
Eucrow’s empowering response can be read below:
As ah dictate this here letter, ah am up to mah feeble chest in quicksand and so ah believe ah had better make this a brief consultation, most unlike mah creator’s first novel. As ah am certain you are already aware, ah am a mute who speaks in a southern states dialect so our two situations are rather different. Come to think of it, how does a cottonpickin’ mute even begin dictating a letter? Anyhow. Mah pa was a cruel man and like most women mah momma was a drunken bitch-whore... Like you, ah was always different from mah fellow townsfolk and to cut a very long story short, here ah find mahself in a patch of God’s own sinking sand awaiting mah unfortunate fate.
Advice? Blessed advice. Mah chief instruction is to scribble down material inspired by the Old Testament. Pen lyrics about murdering females in the most cowardly way. Glamorise criminals, thieves, ruffians, villains, rogues, scoundrels, executioners, and Kylie Minogue. Form a troupe of wandering minstrels. Attack members of your own audience. They’ve paid you to busk, and they can goddamn pay again... with a suckerpunch to the temples! Embrace opium; it is a well-known creative aid and helps maintain a strict routine. Write an incomprehensible novel about a no-good mute such as I. Follow it up with a dark sex comedy set in the old country about a bedraggled old pervert who's obsessed with Avril Lavigne’s pert buttocks. How old did you say you were, again? Photograph your wife as naked as the day she was born for an album cover, while you stand fully suited in close approximation of the sleeve to Spinal Tap’s Smell The Glove. The world is waiting for you, kid.
As for me, death’s delights are a-coming and ah had better prepare mahself for mah almighty reckoning. Oh, and don’t forget to befriend Will Self. Amen!
