Cunt (novel) - Commentary

Commentary

About his trilogy, Kelso says:

Like Chaucer and all other great writers, I embrace simplicity and directness of language. Nevertheless, my Countdown to Chaos trilogy will resist categorisation of any sort even if certain critics take it to be an example of the picaresque novel.

Apart from being some sort of travelogue, Cunt is of course a picaresque novel. Kelso, the first person narrator, also grants the reader some insight into his own character. Apart from being a sex-driven individual, Kelso is a left-wing intellectual who keeps commenting on the political and social situation of the places he visits. He also makes the reader believe that he is widely read in philosophy: He mentions, amongst others, Derrida, Baudrillard and Deleuze.

In many ways, what applies to Countdown to Chaos is also true of Cunt. On the surface level, the novel is a work of pornography, using explicit language and describing in detail various sexual acts. In this respect, one might believe it were targeted at dirty old men. This is also the view taken by one of the girls Kelso has sex with:

'What's your surname?'

'Kelso.'

'I've read some of your books, you write really horny pornography.'

'Actually, I consider it to be post-modern literature.'

On a deeper level, though, Cunt can be seen as an attempt to ridicule both machismo (with the man always willing, ready and able) and the whole genre of pornographic literature, the latter by the author's making use of exactly the same devices—a flimsy plot linking the various descriptions of the sexual act, the presentation of women reduced to "cunts" pleading to be abused, and filthy language everywhere. Home reverses the usual climax at the end of pornographic novels (which typically depict the kinkiest and most daring action) by introducing the altogether new element of Christian religion and ending his novel with a climax of a completely different kind. Cunt more or less starts rather than ends with a gang bang.

In their book Cult Fiction. A Reader's Guide (London, 1998), Andrew Calcutt and Richard Shephard are of the opinion that

now that everyone from gameshow hosts and television news producers to established novelists are busily 'subverting' and 'transgressing' genres, it does mean that Home's double take on trash is no longer as avant-garde as it used to be (pp132–134).

Cunt was published as a paperback original by The Do Not Press, London (ISBN 1-899344-45-4).