Stewart Home – The Easy Way to Falsify Your Credit Rating (Sabotage Editions, 0954006380)

By my reckoning this booklet, published on 31st December 2005, is the 15th released by Sabotage Editions. It is part of a trilogy released to commemorate the demise of the International Standard Book Numbering system. Like many of its precursors it collects diverse articles, reviews and other writing by Stewart Home. So, as usual, a mixed bag – and all the better for that.

The highlight of this booklet is an extensive review of Horace Ove’s film Pressure which has recently be released on DVD by the British Film Institute. Ove’s film was I think the first attempt by a black director to show the black experience in London. It is fanatastic, not least because of the attention to detail in its documentation of the city’s people and places in the 1970s – all changed beyond recognition now. Home’s review places the film in its proper context – that of black power struggles in the UK, and of the institutionalised racism faced by its protagonists.

Melvin Peebles’ film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song (often credited as the first blaxploitation film) is given a similar, but much more critical treatment.

Stewart interviews writer Lynne Tillman at length about her work and the limitations of self-publishing vs being published.

“Pornographic Coding” is a joint paper by Home and Florian Cramer which covers the use of the word “fuck” in linux source code, sex in Stewart’s novels, the explosion of niche porn since the advent of the internet and calls for a shamanic, open source pornography. It is fucking mental.

Other contents include book reviews, an article on 9/11 and there is even some information of dubious value regarding the title of the booklet.

This is a great read and comes highly recommended to anyone whose interested was tweaked after reading this interview with Stewart which has been bigged up by bloggers such as Loki, Psychbloke, Effay et al.

64 pages. Available for £3.75 plus p&p from: BM Senior, London WC1N 3XX, England, UK.