69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess [Paperback]

Stewart Home (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 2003

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. Drawing on literary modern and recent continental philosophy, as well as pulp appropriations, 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess suggests that schizophrenia may well be the only sane response to capitalism.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

'Read the book as high brow Jackie Collins and the joke's on you for not appreciating Home's piquant, plain-spoken scholarship.' -- Metro Times, 1 March, 2003

'Stewart Home is one of our most important and interesting novelists.' -- New Statesman, April 1, 2003

'The British writer Stewart Home, champion of 'proletarian' postmodernism, is a surprisingly easy read.' -- New York Times, 12 January, 2003

'This is an author with ... an envious skill for describing harsh landscape sparingly and beautifully. Keep it unreal Mr Home.' -- The Guardian, January 25, 2003 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (January 13, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841953539
• ISBN-13: 978-1841953533
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,190,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ehhh.., December 8, 2003

By 

"jupiter0131" (Crappsville, missouri) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (Paperback)

i wasnt that impressed---i admit, although the sex scenes are pretty explicit, the rest of the book went on forever- i agree with the first guy: home sounds like he wants to be a critic, because the humor of Alan's character got old really quick. home is over-indulgant and doesnt know how to keep things moderate (over does the sex, over does the book criticism, over does a lot of things); i think he tries too hard to make Anna apathetic and modern.

however, if you take a million steps back and look at the story itself, its interesting--i just think home could have gone a better route of writing it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book., April 27, 2010

By 

DA - See all my reviews

This review is from: 69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess (Paperback)

I realize that I am in limited company in loving this book. It is very strange and mixes (intentionally) poorly written pornography with rambling discussions of avant-garde literature, descriptions of the Scottish countryside, and ventriloquist's dummy who can think. There is sex and books and then more sex and more books. The plot is hilarious: a book within the book by a man who drags Princess Diana's corpse to ancient stone circles, a pair who drag a weighted ventriloquist's dummy to said circles to test the validity of said book.

I write this positive review knowing that almost every reader will dislike this book. I eagerly await the day I meet someone else who loved it.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pretentious literary reviews disguised as porn, May 22, 2006

By 

A. Knowlton (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess (Paperback)

If it hadn't been a book for my English class, I never would have touched it. The very cover is repulsive, the sex scenes are grotesque, mechanical, explicit, and detached, and anything that isn't a sex scene (which is about 98% of the book) is high-brow literary criticism of books no one really cares about. The characters, even the female protagonist, lack depth and even Alan seems like an author-insert. This kind of trash belongs on a website with "pretentiousXXX" in the URL, not in bookstores.