[bdj] Will the real Belle de Jour please stand up? — Jane Perrone emails Stewart Home to find out if he is Belle de Jour … Home on BdJ: ‘I’m no more interested in who Belle ‘really is’ than I am interested in who Jack The Ripper ‘really’ was. The endless speculation about the identity of such figures serves only to obscure any understanding of them.’
More on the Stewart Home / Belle de Jour Connection
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 12th, 2005 at 7:48 am and is filed under Belle de Jour, Books.
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Surely the point is that Belle de Jour ‘is not really’ anyone in ‘actual fact,’ in as much as ‘Severine Sevigny’ ‘was not really’ anyone in ‘actual fact.’
Regarding ‘Stewart Home’s’ claim that he is ‘no more interested’ in who ‘Jack The Ripper’ ‘really’ was, it is worth considering that he is disinterested enough to have written and published a tract on the matter as recently as February 26, 2004, entitled ‘Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton,’ in which his narrator, a prostitute by the name of ‘Eve,’ theorised that Henry James was in fact ‘Jack The Ripper.’
To appreciate ‘Stewart Home’s’ overarching ‘modus operandi’ it is interesting to consider his response to the following question, asked by Bill Drummond (a former member of the KLF) during a walk in the footsteps of ‘Jack The Ripper’ last year (a record of which was published by The Guardian, Tuesday April 6, 2004) http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4895889-99930,00.html
“We keep walking, cut through Liverpool Street station.
[Bill Drummond] “Question three: was Henry James Saucy Jack?” As theorised by Eve in Down and Out.
[Stewart Home] “No.”
He then went on about Henry James being an interesting writer because he straddled the pre-modern and the modern eras in novel-writing. And that although he himself had no interest in Jack the Ripper, he did have an interest in the fact that the Whitechapel murders are still a magnet for conspiracy theorists of all persuasions, and he fancied starting his own fictional theory that Henry James was responsible.”
It remains to be determined at exactly which point and to what extent Stewart Home became ‘interested/disinterested’ in ‘starting his own ‘fictional/non-fictional’ ‘theory/theories’ about ‘who’ ‘was responsible’ for ‘Belle de Jour.’
However, I put it to ‘Stewart Home’/’Shower Head’/’Skin Head’/’Suede Head’/’SH,’ that of all those individuals who have either been suspected of being ‘behind’ ‘Belle de Jour,’ or have engaged with ‘Belle de Jour’ by virtue of their professional endeavours as literary agents, literary editors, publishers, television executives, journalists, and book reviewers, ‘he’ ‘alone’ ‘appears’ to have the profoundest ‘interest/disinterest’ in who any of these ‘characters’ ‘actually are.’
All that remains to be seen is whether or not the ‘real’ ‘Belle de Jour’ has ‘in actual fact’ ‘really’ ‘stood up.’
“The endless speculation about the identity of such figures serves only to obscure any understanding of them”? I would contend that one can understand such figures only when you know who they are. Once you know who, you can tackle the interesting questions, such as why and how.
It’s Home.
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