Cunt

One day Stewart Home read three or four of Richard Allen’s infamous seventies skinhead novels and “I could do that!” This is his latest attempt in proving that pulp fiction is not as easy to write as it seems. David Kelso, whose fictional journal we are reading, is a writer who only writes about what he does. All he does is travel around the country having rather graphically described sex with every woman he meets. Novelist Iain Sinclair has “It’s an exercise in futility to complain that Home’s novels lack depth, characterisation or complex that is the whole point.” To suggest that while Home is gifted, clever, amusing, archly (post-) postmodern he has also proved to have only one joke and nothing new to add to what he has previously said, is to get a little nearer the point. Invoking Bukowski or Richard Allen seems inevitably the way to situate Home’s writing but to “situate” Home also misses the point. Home is not making a joke about literature he is making a living by writing joke books. His skill in self-promotion and his preposterous politicking only add to the charm of this underground entrepeneur. Read Cunt if you want to see how entertaining badly written, repetitious, name-dropping pornography can be. — John Davidson