Anything That Moves

by Jamie Stewart

Overview

From being caught having their first orgasm by their mom’s best friend to being stalked and propositioned by a fundamentalist pastor; from soliciting spanking dates over the Internet to scoring a coveted invitation to a threesome with some elf fetishist neighbors, art rock darling (Xiu Xiu) Jamie Stewart’s journey of fleshy self-discovery and queer awakening makes for an extraordinary, cringy, unputdownable epic in miniature, burning always with radical and often shocking self-criticism.

A one-of-a-kind exploration of abasement, depravity, joy, and embarrassment (and even joy in embarrassment), Anything That Moves is a series of comic, tragic X-rays of sex. It is funny, erotic, anti-erotic, honest, brave, icky, and hauntingly sad by turns. It demonstrates too how love and forgiveness can percolate around the edges of even the most traumatic relationships.

Stewart's band Xiu Xiu has been called “self-flagellating,” “brutal,” “shocking,” and “perverse,” but also “genius,” “brilliant,” “unique,” “imaginative,” and “luminous.” Readers can expect nothing less from Anything That Moves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913505585
Publisher:	And Other Stories Publishing
Publication date:	04/04/2023
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jamie Stewart is best-known as the singer and composer of the avant-pop group Xiu Xiu. Founded in 2002, the band has released 15 full-length albums to date. Stewart has also collaborated on several large-scale projects and concerts with the artist Danh Vo at the Guggenheim, Walker Museum, and at the Kitchen; and with the blessing and support of David Lynch, the band was commissioned by the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane to reinterpret the music of his landmark work Twin Peaks

Editorial Reviews

As I would have put it at the peak of my Xiu Xiu fandom: yesssssssssssssssssssssss.” —Emily Temple, Lit Hub

“A tragicomic depiction of how Stewart used sex to cope with deep—and even tragic—family dysfunction. At the beginning, Stewart offers a telling author’s note: ‘If we are related, please, for the love of God, do not read this book.’ A powerfully erotic memoir.” Kirkus Reviews

“Jamie Stewart has become my favorite literary figurine with their tasty memoir Anything That Moves. Move over Denton Welch and Monique Wittig there’s a new lovesexy kid on the block.” —Vaginal Davis

“Jamie Stewart smears themself across every page like a sexorcism on bad acid. Deviant. Down and dirty. Get your freak on. Then wash your hands.”—Lydia Lunch

“On its surface, Anything That Moves would appear to be a book about Jamie Stewart’s sexual history, but I found— as is the case in Jamie’s work with Xiu Xiu— that it is more of a delineation of the most hidden and forbidden parts of our subconscious, and the complicated and insane ways we relate to ourselves and each other.” —Owen Pallett

“Jamie Stewart wraps up the first kiss-and-tell story in this tome, ‘but I also put my dick into a vacuum cleaner hose, so being on thee fuck list didn’t mean much’. Damn! But after you dig in, it’s nowhere near as cold-blooded as that. Not exactly tender but so truthful and present in the timeline. Sexual antics try to kick off in very young pre-erection childhood, and there’s a polemic in daring express child hyper-sexuality in this reality where the specter of the child purity is held up. But possibly safe in the first person. How to tell your mother you feel odd because the neighbor child spunked in your butthole? Sometimes the deepest thinking is when the veil of allusion is lifted, and boners fail, third wheels are not as advertised. Sexual identity is fluid and casual, there is no poly-pan agenda. Stewart digs into the situations that are horny and evolve into meaningful relationships (or not), but doesn’t leave out the nugget of truth when hardcore masochism reveals itself to be unhinged self harm. Impressively this is revealed without judgement. Maybe one incident of anal brutality but always back to pleasure.  Not to give away the punchline but even my jaded self almost puked in a rimming encounter, ‘I’d licked a tapeworm out of her ass.’ Revelations and a deeper love and admiration for the man, I picked myself up and rinsed myself off. There are no Daddy Issues in these stories but if that chapter unfolds, it better fucking be me.” —Ron Athey

Booksellers on Anything That Moves

“An ecstatic ritual purging of all the weird sex, abject humiliation, visceral, bone-deep sadness, and sheer laughing-in-the-face-of-it-all that a human life can accumulate in the course of a few decades spent on this earth. For Stewart to have rendered so compellingly on the page an exercise as profoundly uncomfortable as this one is a remarkable feat, and I was absolutely here for it. One for the freaks.” —Ollie, Pages of Hackney

“I remember when I first heard Xiu Xiu over 15 years ago and from page one, reading Jamie Stewart's Anything That Moves brought me right back to that feeling. This book is honest, very funny and like all of Stewart's work, it holds both a tender vulnerability while also deeply, truly not giving a fuck what you think. Perfect.” —Liz Freeman, East Bay Booksellers

“An eternally underrated facet of Jamie Stewart’s oeuvre is his instinct for the nauseously hilarious, delivered with shocking candor, which comes through clearer than ever in Anything That Moves. It should be read while on the make, drinking continuously and irresponsibly.” —Michael Abraham, Book Culture

“Fans of lauded experimental band Xiu Xiu know exactly what they're in for with Jamie Stewart's memoir, but for the uninitiated—this book is an outrageous force of lunatic bravery. An onslaught of confessions about desire in all of its messy forms, it jumps effortlessly from caustic to tender, gross to hypnotic, straightforward to subversive. Like so much of Stewart's work, Anything That Moves dares you to blink first, but will reward you if you don't.” —Josie Smith-Webster, Greenlight Bookstore

Praise for Jamie Stewart and Xiu Xiu’s most recent album, the duets collection OH NO

“On each track, the singer Jamie Stewart’s voice quivers and throbs as he delivers brooding lyrics like an operatic prince of darkness, pulling his collaborators deep into an underworld of impenetrable synths, heavy industrial noise, and dramatic climaxes. The band member Angela Seo, who produced the record, joins him for the haunting ‘Fuzz Gong Fight’—proof that the album’s brightness lies in seeing a community of musicians create baroque soundscapes together.” —New Yorker

“Xiu Xiu’s style of vicious, black-hearted pop often sounds as if it were born in the darkness of a dark, isolated room. It’s refreshing, then, to see acidic frontman Jamie Stewart open his arms, if only slightly.” —A.V. Club

“They challenge you to turn away, yet reward the brave and patient listener with flashes of startling beauty.” —Dusted

“Jamie Stewart duets with more than a dozen indie, punk, and experimental music colleagues, and what results is a surprisingly sweet meditation on friendship, with nary a try-hard shock to be found . . . Stewart’s gifts as a vocal performer and sound arranger result in elegant, habitable art-pop . . . By not trying to shock us, Stewart actually surprises us, and OH NO makes it easier to be a Xiu Xiu fan than it’s been in years.” —Pitchfork

From the Publisher

2023-01-18
The singer and composer for the avant-pop group Xiu Xiu boldly dishes on the darkest corners of their desires.

As Stewart writes, their sexuality was anything but conventional. Their first childhood experiences involved being penetrated by a young male friend and taking pictures of a neighbor boy having sex with a stuffed unicorn. Later, the author became a voracious consumer of porn magazines without fully knowing “how jacking off worked.” They first came into contact with the waywardness of adult desire as a preadolescent when their mother’s attractive but “deep-end nutjob” friend absentmindedly fondled her thighs in front of them. At around the same time, Stewart was also experimenting with such actions as inserting knife handles into their anus and putting their penis inside vacuum cleaner hoses. They also experimented with girls, but the author did not meet their first girlfriend—who shaved Stewart’s entire body the first time they slept together—until much later in adolescence. Stewart’s adult sexual experiences have been wide-ranging and diverse, including uninhibited threesomes; relationships with both dominatrixes and female submissives; sex-club escapades with myriad gender identities; anonymous glory hole sex in adult store video booths; and one “unsuitable” relationship with a much younger woman who was “even crazier than I was.” Graphic and crudely humorous, Stewart’s book says little about the successful music career they managed to build at the edges of an unrestrained sex life. Yet their story, which will appeal to only the most adventurous of readers, is anything but a self-satisfied catalog of conquests. Rather, it is a tragicomic depiction of how Stewart used sex to cope with deep—and even tragic—family dysfunction that they hint at but never fully explore. At the beginning, Stewart offers a telling author’s note: “If we are related, please, for the love of God, do not read this book.”

A powerfully erotic memoir that may have a limited audience.

Kirkus Reviews