If you like the darkness in the films of David Lynch but think they tend to be too complex with too many surreal elements and too many layers, you might enjoy the book: The Death of Bunny Munroe” by Nick Cave. It was originally written as a screenplay and it shows. It is wonderfully scenic, indeed; filmic.
The title gives away the plot as the book ultimately ends with the death of Bunny Munro. On the way towards the end – the books and Bunny’s – we keep company with an ominous atmosphere; we can almost hear the gloominess, giving away the death that awaits.
The story is about Bunny Munro (how is that for a porn-name?!!), a traveling salesman in lotions and creams. Bunny is a devourer of women – so much so, that his lonely wife commits suicide out of desperation of his constant fucking around. This leaves their 9-year-old son, Bunny Jr. in Bunny’s care. Haunted by the ghost of his wife in a series of flashbacks from when they were happy (and to endless “indiscretions”, such as the time he raped some girl after drugging her), he cannot stay in their apartment. He then takes Junior out of school to ”teach him the ropes” in the school of life. In a binge of drugs, alcohol and sex on Bunny’s part, we follow the duo on the road; with Junior waiting in the car, hallucinating about his mother and reading his beloved encyclopedia, and Bunny doing his thing, selling lotion and fucking bitches.
Sex, masturbation, rape and plain thoughts about pussy are the epicenter of Bunny’s thought activity and he comes across as highly unlikable, involuntarily comical and just as an all-round gigantic asshole. Some passages are pretty ”train-wrecky” – where you want to look away but are so mesmerized by the horrificness that you cannot – and then we are given little moments of comic relief. All along the book, we get how Bunny sees himself as such a ladies man, a charming, handsome lover, but we also hear about his leopard-spotted underwear and in several scenes, he tries to pull his ”magic” on women, who give him away as totally ridiculous by laughing or scorning him – or in one instance – kicking his ass.
It is a tight little story in scope and in the way it is written. There is a parallel story of a serial-killer, dressed up as a devil, that seems to be metaphoric; yeah, he could have left that bit out.
From a psychological perspective, I am fascinated with Bunny’s sex-dependancy. In one scene he masturbates himself raw; he leaves his wife’s (horrific!) funeral to go jerk off, he fucks a girl, who is dying, and he never strays: it is never about tits or ass: always just the pussy. If one wanted to read a really interesting case about a man with the same symptoms, I recommend Irving Yalom’s: “Existential Psychotherapy” – in an ALL together different genre!
A haunting and dark read, I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.ca/Death-Bunny-Munro-Nick-Cave/dp/1847675476
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