''Note: On 17 August 2003 User 172.185.179.167 added rather a long text (not wikified) which will have to be merged with the existing biography. --KF 18:02, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Stewart Home (born 1962) is an Afro-Celtic writer and artist. His first book was: The Assault on Culture : Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) ISBN 094851888X.
His other works have included;
- Cranked Up Really High (an 'inside account' of the history of punk rock)
- What is Situationism? A Reader Ed., (AK Press,1996) ISBN 9781873176139.
- Green Apocalypse (a critique of the magazine and organisation Green Anarchist) with Luther Blissett.
- Mind Invaders Ed. (Serpent's Tail London, 1997)
Stewart Home is infamous in European, particularly British, counter-culture as a media prankster, although he has also made his mark in America and Canada. He is reknowned as something of a scholar with what can appear to be an encyclopaedic range of knowledge, particularly of esoteric literature, avant-garde art movements, original British punk rock bands, the minutiae of disputes and feuds between obscure political sects, and the whole of Hegel's 'Aesthetics'. All of these interests inform and expand his prolific publishing history across fiction and non-fiction.
It is also rumoured (and admitted by Home himself in his 1997 'Suspect Device' anthology published in the UK by Serpent's Tail) that 'Stewart Home' is not an individual but a collective identity used by a number of writers.
There are a number of interests and agendas pursued and pushed by Home whose declared aim is 'to reinvent world culture in its entirety'. One of these interests is the process of historification by which fabrications and rumours become printed facts and enter history as truth. The first Home book, The Assault on Culture : Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) ISBN 094851888X is, at face value, a useful scholarly work, providing an introduction to a range of cultural currents which had, at that time at least. been under-documented. Upon closer analysis (and Home's own admission), the book is merely a vehicle for his own historification of Neoism, a 'movement' that Home salvaged, (and ultimately savaged) from the hands of a group of mail artists mainly based in Canada and which continues to expand from his helping, mythologising, documenting hands. His 1995 novel "Slow Death" fictionalises and ridicules this process of the historification of Neoism, (including the planting of archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum which recently occurred in actuality when Home sold the V&A his own archive on Neoism) as if to give his own game away but, typically with Home, as soon as one agenda has, apparently, been exposed, whether Home's own or one 'at large', the game moves on so that Home constantly forces readers into a position of 'Should I believe any of this?'
The Home take on that question is always that 'Belief is the Enemy' and this and other slogans such as 'Demolish Serious Culture' , although not Home's own, represent 'shortcuts' through the highly energised, hilarious and often disturbing path that Home weaves. From leftist politics, the occult, popular and unpopular culture, music, art and whatever else 'he' has an opinion on (just about everything), Home makes sure that he cannot and will not be ignored, without sacrificing his own manic approach and without kow-towing to established edict. A cult writer who is also something of a cult to write about, the Stewart Home canon can seem marginal and esoteric one year only to become prophetic and vital the next before receding into marginality again. (Most of his works are out of print at the time of writing but this will undoubtedly only provide an opportunity for a freshening relaunch.)
With his most recent published novel '69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess' (Canongate, Edinburgh 2002), he has finally got the British literary press sitting up and taking notice, ironically, of a book which carries his most acidic and astute condemnations of the literary and cultural establishment.
NOVELS:
- 69 THINGS TO DO WITH A DEAD PRINCESS (Canongate, Edinburgh, 2002).
- CUNT (Do-Not Press, London 1999).
- COME BEFORE CHRIST AND MURDER LOVE (Serpent's Tail, London 1997).
- BLOW JOB (Serpent's Tail, London 1997. Finnish translation, Like, Helsinki 1996. Greek translation Oxys Publishing, Athens 1999. German translation, Nautilus, Hamburg, 2001).
- SLOW DEATH (Serpent's Tail, London 1996. Finnish translation Like, Helsinki 1996)
- RED LONDON (AK Press, London & Edinburgh 1994; Finnish translation Like, Helsinki 1995).
- DEFIANT POSE (Peter Owen, London 1991. Finnish translation Like, Helsinki 1995. German translation, Nautilus, Hamburg 1995).
- PURE MANIA (Polygon, Edinburgh 1989. Finnish translation Like, Helsinki 1994. German translation Nautilus, Hamburg 1994).
STORIES:
- NO PITY (AK Press, London & Edinburgh 1993. Finnish translation Like, Helsinki 1997).
- CONFUSION INCORPORATED: A COLLECTION OF LIES, HOAXES & HIDDEN TRUTHS (Codex, Hove 1999).
- THE HOUSE OF NINE SQUARES: LETTERS ON NEOISM, PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL TREPIDATION (Invisible Books, London 1997)
- CRANKED UP REALLY HIGH: GENRE THEORY AND PUNK ROCK (Codex, Hove 1995, new edition 1997. Italian translation Castelvecchi, Rome 1996).
- NEOISM, PLAGIARISM AND PRAXIS (AK Press, London, Edinburgh 1995. Italian translation Costa & Nolan Genoa 1997).
- NEOIST MANIFESTOS (AK Press, Edinburgh 1991).
- THE ASSAULT ON CULTURE: UTOPIAN CURRENTS FROM LETTRISME TO CLASS WAR (Aporia Press, London 1988. New edition AK Press, Edinburgh 1991. Polish translation, Wydawnictwo Signum, Warsaw 1993, Italian translation AAA edizioni, Bertiolo 1996. Portugeuse translation, Conrad Livros, Brazil 1999).
- WHIPS AND FURS: MY LIFE AS A BON VIVANT, GAMBLER LOVE RAT by Jesus H. Christ (ATTACK! books, 2000)
- SUSPECT DEVICE: HARD-EDGED FICTION (Serpent's Tail, London 1998).
- MIND INVADERS: A READER IN PSYCHIC WARFARE, CULTURAL SABOTAGE AND SEMIOTIC TERRORISM (Serpent's Tail, London 1997).
- WHAT IS SITUATIONISM? A READER (AK Press, Edinburgh and San Francisco 1996).
- MARX, CHRIST & SATAN UNITED IN STRUGGLE (Molotov Records 1999).
- PURE MANIA (King Mob, London 1998).
- CYBER-SADISM LIVE! (Sabotage, London 1998).
- COMES IN YOUR FACE (Sabotage, London 1998).
- TORK RADIO (1998 organised by Cambridge Junction, funded with lottery money).
- MONGREL (1998 organised by Graham Harwood & Matt Fuller, funded by the Arts Council).
- VERMEER II, workfortheeyetodo (London July to September 1996).
- HUMANITY IN RUINS, Central Space (London February/March 1988).
- UT PICTURA POESIS (1997, 35 mm, part of project organised by Cambridge Junction with Arts Council funding). Numerous videos including promos for books COME BEFORE CHRIST & MURDER LOVE (1997), RED LONDON (1994) & NO PITY (1993)
