69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess - Softcover

Home, Stewart

3.07

420 ratings by Goodreads

9781841953816: 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841953814 ISBN 13: 9781841953816

Publisher: Canongate U.S., 2002

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This is where the novel has a nervous breakdown. Anna Noon is a twenty-year-old student with a taste for perverse sex involving an enigmatic older man and a ventriloquist's dummy. Anna lives in Aberdeen, Scotland, and her sex life revolves around the ancient stone circles in the region. The sublime grandeur of the stones provides a backdrop against which Anna is able to act out her provocative psychodramas. This is a book about the body in which the carnal is a manifestation of consciousness: a book in which it is virtually impossible to distinguish the ancient from the postmodern. Drawing on literary and continental philosophy, as well as pulp appropriations, 69 Things suggests that schizophrenia may well be the only sane response to capitalism. "Home is hilarious, brilliant, annoying, and ... comes up with a new and original map for inventive readers." -- Lynne Tillman "Call it an anti-book, but what a strange and marvellous novel 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess is." -- The Times (London) "He is the most interesting writer to come out of England for quite a while." -- Harper's

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About the Author:

Stewart Home was born in south London in 1962. When he was sixteen he held down a factory job for six months, an experience that led him to vow he'd never work again. After dabbling in rock journalism and music, in the 80s Home switched his attention to the art world, and now writes novels as well as cultural commentary.

From Publishers Weekly:

British experimental novelist and cultural critic Home (Cunt) makes his American debut with his trademark fusion of highbrow theory and pulp pornography. Narrator Anna Noon is a randy 20-year-old living in Aberdeen, Scotland, having an affair with a mysterious older man named Alan, as well as the occasional threesome and foursome. Alan is obsessed with a cult book called 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess, whose author claims that he was hired to secretly dispose of Princess Di's body by dragging it around Aberdeen's ancient stone circles until it decomposed. Alan tries to test the author's story by dragging a carefully weighted ventriloquist's dummy around the stone circles. In between these experiments and orgies, Alan and Anna discuss postmodern literature. Alan offers a running commentary on novelists and theorists like Kathy Acker, Francis Fukuyama and Donna Haraway, tracing the evolution of experimental writing in the postwar era and weighing in with his own critiques ("Alan didn't like [Paul] Johnson's Intellectuals.... Rather than developing an argument, Johnson simply reiterated his irrational prejudice against critical thinking in a series of poorly schematised chapters"). The contrast between these erudite lectures and the sex scenes, which Home writes in the coarse argot of porn novels-complete with dozens of colorful synonyms for the relevant anatomy-is amusing, though the joke wears thin after a while. There are bursts of vivid descriptive prose, as well as moments of demented humor (including the ventriloquist dummy's hilarious turn as narrator). Both the sex scenes and the arch commentary are occasionally tedious, but fans of Acker or Robert Coover may enjoy the metafictional conceit.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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