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Will Self.


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I recently finished Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe. It'd been sitting on my tbr pile for some time, and I think I was put off reading it because I didn't enjoy How the Dead Live, which was the last of his I read. Shouldn't have worried though, as I found it perfectly twisted and grimy.

 

Anyone else here like Self?

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Yes and no. I picked up How the Dead Live off a friend who couldn't get through it, with few expectations, and really liked it. That was my first Self in a while, after I had previously got through a string of his earlier stuff - Quantity Theory of Insanity, Cock & Bull, My Idea of Fun, Grey Area - with slowly declining enjoyment. I have Great Apes at home but haven't bothered with it. Dorian is supposed to be good though. Any takers for The Book of Dave?

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I'll be getting The Book of Dave. Dorian's OK, but drags a bit. Great Apes I thought was an amusing bit of twistyness. Is that a word? It is in this post anyhow.

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Haven't read any full novels but have come across one or two short stories (as Dr Mukti... is?), and read his PsychoGeography in the Independent, which is quite interesting.

 

Yes - Mukti is shorts. However, the first story is more of a novella.

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I love to see interviews with Will Self. In person I think he is charming, witty and enormously original.

 

I tried to read Grey Area and hated it from the start. It just seemed so pretentious and self-important that I didn't even get through the first story. I was so disappointed that the man I so admired could have written such a book! :grr:

 

One of my friends has offered to lend me Cock and Bull, but I've not yet taken him up on the offer. What if I hated that as much as Grey Area? At the moment I've still got a smidgen of a soft spot left for the guy - if I forced myself to read another book like Grey Area I could see myself growing to hate him!

Anyone got any views on Cock and Bull?

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I know what you mean, Sarahrob. Self is much more likeable and amusing in person or in interview than he can be on the page. As I mentioned above, it was Grey Area which finally ground me to a halt with his stuff (though there was some stuff I liked in it, like the story Scale).

 

Having said that, Cock & Bull is definitely his most accessible and entertaining. I would recommend it, far more enjoyable than Grey Area. (Or the first part of the first story anyway :wink: )

 

At the same time, even when he's not at his most entertaining, there's always a bracing cleverness to his writing. To me, it's nice to feel that sort of infusion of intelligence from above, knowing the author is much cleverer than I could ever hope to be.

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My Idea Of Fun was quite good, although felt very derivative - if you tried to write a Martin Amis book with Irving Welsh's attitude, it's where you'd end up. I tried the short stories (can't remember what they were called) and found it was more of almost exactly the same, which doesn't work if your trick is to shock.

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  • 1 year later...

There is no mention of this literary genius on this site so I'm presuming that nobody has heard of him. Check him out if you like a surreal read (he has a Novella -A **** an' Bull Story- about a woman who grows a penis an' rapes her husband, and a man who grows a vagina in his knee-pit an' is seduced by his Dr.).

I recommend also 'Book of Dave','Great Apes' & 'My Idea of Fun'.

 

p.s. keep a Dictionary by your bed for Mr. Self.

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I enjoy reading his journalism, but when I read My Idea Of Fun, and a collection of short stories whose name I forget, it felt a bit too much like he was deliberately trying to shock, as a toadying acolyte of Marint Amis and Irving Welsh and Brett Easton Ellis.

 

Which was frustrating, as the writing was good and the ideas fascinating, if a bit unpleasant. It all felt a bit like reading SF, though. It was all about the idea, and not about the characters. It's setting entire novels on the basis of cleverness, rather than being about people.

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