“In a rather different vein, Stewart Home’s Mandy, Charlie and Mary-Jane (Penny-Ante Editions), part scabrous and hilarious assault on cultural studies, part vision of madness and hell, is as gloriously offensive as anything this author has done before.” Read the whole of Nicholas Lezard’s Guardian best paperback books of 2013 article here.
Vlog about about British cult author Stewart Home’s novel Mandy Charlie & Mary-Jane published by Penny-Ante Editions (with a bit at the start about flat-packs)…
Under the influence of Kenneth Goldsmith and ‘uncreative writing’, the fabulous Michael Roth reworks his original review of Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane by running the words in alphabetical order!
“& 69 2005 7/7, a, a a a, a a a a a a a a a a a a a a about about academia, academic achieve action afterlife against all all Allen along. Always always an an an, and and and and and and and and and and (and) and and and and and and and and and and/or, Andre Ann any anyone appropriately are are, are art art’s artists as as as as as. As as as ascension. At at at at at avenues bath be be, be, be becoming begins being believed believes believes. Belle de Jour Belle de Jour beyond Bites Blair blank-faced, blogger blood bombing, bombings bombings Bombings both (brilliant brilliant) brought Buddhist but but by campus Cannibal Canon, carry caught (cell Charlie Charlie Charlie Charlie Charlie). Charlie Charlie Charlie Charlie Charlie’s City class classes classic, “Classics Coldplay comes completely, comprised concludes…”
Above: A photo to prove that Mandy, Charlie and Mary-Jane appeals to readers of all ages!
“…an ‘uneducated’ guy like Stewart Home, who never got his degree, can produce more cultural studies provocations, more Deleuzian Bodies without Organs, more Hegelian paradoxes per page, in short – more cultural impact than any credentialed, tenured cultural studies lecturer I’ve had the misfortune of having to sit through…” Read the complete review here.
Above Stewart Home and a close friend enjoying a dirty weekend in Brighton on the English south coast.
“Stewart Home maybe my favorite London novelist in the 21st Century, and I am saying ‘maybe’ because i haven’t read every novel by him…. yet. But nevertheless his new novel “Mandy, Charlie, and Mary-Jane” is a superb piece of work.” Read Tosh Berman’s full review here!
Photo above: Tosh Berman and Stewart Home with writers Maxi Kim and Jarett Kobek (who had books in the Semina series of experimental novels Home edited for Book Works and Home also had a book in this series). Tosh Berman’s father Wallace Berman edited the legendary Semina magazine which inspired beat novelist Alex Trocchi’s Sigma publications (and Home’s first novel Pure Mania was published by Polygon in 1989 in their Sigma series inspired by Trocchi – so what goes around comes around). “The Semina Gang – writers drinking coffee and juice” at Alcove Cafe & Bakery on Hillhurst Avenue, Los Angeles, CA on 4 March 2013.
“The word anti-novel is always used when a novel by Home is reviewed, talked about, considered, analysed (and he is reviewed in erudite journals and newspapers; the London Review of Books, the Guardian, the New Statesman to name a few, he must be famous, egotistical notoriety is probable his second name, his not intrinsic nature). But what is the anti-novel? It is a question that is vexing….”
“…So what is the message, unless one casts the book aside after the first page, but then the message has already sunk in (literally), this reader is already the zombie that Home describes, the living dead reading to pass the time, reading because a good story satiates limitation, for this reader there is no message, this reader is the message? And if one does not cast it aside, one ponders and thinks, what one finds is that the anti-novel is an insolent challenge to everything that one knows; a work filled with plagiarism and appropriation, it flouts a society that cherishes the notion of individuality and originality…”
Read Barbara Adair’s full review for Sensitive Skin Magazine here!
“The works of Stewart Home are often morally devoid. This isn’t something the author particularly aspires towards, they’re just by-products of the avant filters he applies to his art… When Glass meets him, he isn’t the anarchist dynamo that we expected but more of a taciturn conjuree of arcane knowledge – a socially awkward tidal wave of obscurity. Face to face, there is not a glimmer of the sardonicism or Bacchanalian free-falling of his despicable characters.” Read the full piece here (but note the transcript of the conversation is in places inaccuarate).
Above: Stewart Home at El Saler-Estany del Pujol between the forest and the little lake. In the 1990s Valencia was the centre of rave culture in Spain… lots of illegal clubs were running right across the weekend in the area just south of the city of Valencia (now a national park and also a European rice growing area)… partying for the whole weekend entailed lots of drug use and rumour has it there are still many bodies, a lot of cash and also pills and dope hidden in the forest…. This was known as the Ruta del Bakalao AKA Ruta Destroy. Stewart Home went to investigate and research with the photo above being taken on 12 April 2013.
Eugenie Krafft reviews Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane for Richardson Magazine: “Stewart’s Home’s new book, Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane, follows Charlie Templeton, a crack-smoking and possibly schizophrenic lecturer in cultural studies at City University of Newcastle on Tyne (CUNT). Between conducting rubbish seminars on Cannibal Holocaust and the Beverly Hillbillies, Charlie finds time to make love to his sleeping wife (Mandy) and unconscious mistress (Mary-Jane), bungle numerous attempts at date rape, put down a local terrorist cell, and expel the only student in his department insolent enough to complete assignments on time.”
Above Stewart Home headstand reading in Los Angeles 3 March 2013. Stewart Home reading from Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie at Human Resources, 410 Cottage Home Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012-1415. Home also read from Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane and Defiant Pose and shredded a copy of his novel Down & Out In Shoredtich and Hoxton. Also on the reading bill were Jarett Kobek and John Tottenham. The band Babes played after the readings.
FINBOW: All great artists have a famous doppelganger. If that’s correct, who is yours? Who is the anti-Stewart Home?
HOME: I think that’s false because the idea of great art is ridiculous. But if it was true I guess my doppelganger would have to be Pamela Anderson, who is seriously hot but shows no interest whatsoever in creating a new world without art or any of the other elitist garbage that characterises the reigning society…
Above Stewart Home and his old friend the novelist Peter Plate in San Francisco on 28 February 2013.
“Of course, it’s a masterpiece. Throughout there’s a process of shedding the scales of his insides in an act of hilarious, up-beat and hay-making desquamation. The names dropped are the pieces of wood pulp that he turns into the paper, the fine particles that end up as the final word. And if ‘Zombie Sex Freaks’ doesn’t curl your hair some, then a) you need to check your pulse and b) go away. Home’s writing is the sexiest around.” Richard Marshall at 3AM Magazine.
“Mandy, Charlie and Mary-Jane certainly doesn’t disappoint, and, equally importantly, it’s perverse, it’s funny and, put simply, a cracking read.” Christopher Nosnibor at Christopher’s Headspace.
mister coilon 