Earlier yesterday morning, Amazon sent an e-mail declaring the on-again-off-again book about Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine would finally arrive on April 1.
The publisher, Continuum Books, confirms it now has a manuscript, but says it won’t be released until August or September.
The book is part of the 33 1/3 series, a collection of volumes about or inspired by classic albums. The author is Youngstown native Daphne Carr, who lives in Brooklyn and edits Da Capo’s Best Music Writing series.
The Amazon product description says, “This is the story of the depraved, no-future land called the American Midwest in the 1980s, and of a boy who rose from a dismal town (population 2,300) to become one of the biggest selling musicians of the 1990s. A kid from a broken home, and a college drop-out, Trent Reznor wrote the material that would become Pretty Hate Machine while a janitor at a studio where he tinkered after-hours ...
Carr's book will fill in the background of Trent Reznor's early years in Mercer, Pennsylvania ... This book not only tells the story of the birth of Nine Inch Nails, but also gives voice to a peculiarly American subculture that — especially since the Columbine shootings- - has been widely vilified: Mall Goths, of whom Trent Reznor is undoubtedly the patron saint.”
Don’t let that talk about P-A worry you: Carr told C-Notes the book will have plenty about Reznor’s years in Cleveland, where he made the album and launched the band: “The book spends quite a bit of time on Cleveland both as part of Trent's personal history and as part of a larger history of suburbanization and industrialization/deindustrialization. There is a chapter specifically devoted to Cleveland history, and within the other chapters there are interviews with a number of Cleveland NIN fans, Cleveland musicians and people involved in the Cleveland music industry. Of course there is also a chapter that traces Reznor's time there working and recording.” —D.X. Ferris