"Our current best outsider" • 25 April 2007 • The SnowBlog

"Our current best outsider"

          

In Saturday's Guardian, Nicholas Lezard wrote a long piece on 'the counterculture', citing such authors as William S. Burroughs, Céline, J. G. Ballard, and the Marquis de Sade in his argument that "Today's counterculture becomes tomorrow's culture: you have to snap it up quickly."

But who should Lezard pick as the prime example of a contemporary author destined to follow in such footsteps?

"Our current best outsider is Stewart Home, who puts a spoke in the wheels of success not only with his scorn for the conventional niceties of plot and character but also by giving his novels titles like Cunt. Stewart Home is easily the example you reach for first as a contemporary "alternative" writer - but he is so observant, so dedicated to his work, so usefully enraged by mainstream ethical considerations, and personally gentlemanly to boot, that he, too, willy-nilly, will end up becoming respectable one day."

Read the whole article here. Stewart Home's latest book, Memphis Underground, published by Snowbooks, is in all good bookshops from tomorrow. More information...

Stewart will be reading tonight in South London, and it would be great to see some Snowbooks fans there. Here are the details:

FLIXATION Underground Cinema Club

Wednesday 25th April
Miller of Mansfield
96 Snowsfields, London SE1 3SS
8pm £4/ £3 concs

A smorgasbord of no-budget underground cinema, digital jiggery pokery, modernist pop, DIY performance and music.

Short films featuring nerve shredding thrills in Len Combest's Untitled 27 (2004), drug soaked hallucination in Replica Knife by Mo Alhazred (2007) and the ultimate episode of the acclaimed Paul and the Badger Quartet (Paul Tarrago 2006).

The compere will be Caroline 'El Spectro' Kennedy and on the vinyl spiral a DJ clash Gene Splicer vs Tar Baby.

(Tip o' the Snowdome to Buzzwords for the details.)