Will Self

‘Stephen Gill’s photographs are devoid of sentiment or affectation – rather than showing the pigeon in our world, they take us into theirs. The lens noses in under bridges, squeezes through cracks and scopes out crannies. These are images that bestow on the despised flying rats that oft-trumpeted but seldom realised attribution: their dignity. Here are pigeons making their lives in a natural landscape, for whatever else humans may be, we are animals too, and as such our buildings are show more analogous to the earthworks of termites, and our bridges to the dams of beavers.

It’s this inversion of the anthropocentric view that makes Gill’s images so compelling. That, and another revelation – for fluffed-up and blinking in the dust and the grime and the rust and rime, we see those mythical beings: the young pigeons. I suspect it’s because we’ve entered this otherworldly realm that we find these juveniles to be arousing not of pity, but a grudging respect. Far from being scroungers or undeserving poor, these doughty birds survive and even thrive despite barbs and more barbs of outrageous human fortune. They are, like the urban foxes, the economic migrants of the animal world – forced into the cities to scratch a living as best they may – and before we condemn them, we would do well to ask ourselves this question: would we do as well were the tables to be turned?’ show less

Some thoughts on my first reading.

Last winter I happened to read Oliver Sacks’s [b:Awakenings|14456|Awakenings|Oliver Sacks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388274053s/14456.jpg|2755549] (see review), which is the urtext for Will Self’s new novel Umbrella. In the mid-60s Dr. Sacks famously gave L-DOPA, a relatively new drug mimicking the neurotransmitter dopamine, to dozens of post-encephalytic patients under his care at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, New York. These patients had show more been infected in 1918 by theencephalitis lethargica virus, or "sleepy sickness" (not to be confused with the Spanish Influenza of the same year). In Umbrella even where references to Sacks’s book do not appear — such as the World War I and present-day sections — it's clear the good doctor's classic collection of case studies serves as the novel's inspration.

Those patients who survived the virus were able afterwards to lead normal lives for many years, sometimes decades, until they were stricken with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease: locked postures that turned them into living statuary (akinesia), hurrying gait (festination), frozen skewed gaze (oculogyyric crises) and so on. These patients did not have Parkinson's proper, but since the virus reduced dopamine in their brains to about 10 or 15% of healthy levels, they experienced identical if somewhat more severe symptoms than actual Parkinson's patients. The only difference being that Parkinson’s is ultimately fatal, while post-encephalitics (“enkies,” affectionately) might live for the rest of their natural span with the symptoms. Such is the experience of Audrey Death, a main character here.

Self takes much from Awakenings that echoes the trials and tribulations of Dr. Sacks’s enkies--and Sacks himself--and inflates it into a grand fiction resembling the inspirational text very little. Here, the doctor, Zachary Busner, a psychiatrist of Jewish birth, is adrift in a vast English hospital called the Friern, known for its ½ mile or so of monotonous corridors. Many of the problems Sacks had in the 1960s — like pulling all the patients into a single ward, studying their hyper-slow movements via speeded up film, dealing with a highly political hospital administration, and other details — are dramatized here.

There are also large sections of entirely new invention in Umbrella. In one, we follow Audrey Death in her pre-war family life and war-time work as as a “munitionette,” preparing shells for the British army. We also follow two of her brothers: Stanley Death, a trench soldier, and the soi disant Albert De'Ath, who becomes a big-time government honcho. Stanley has an aristocratic lover, Adeline, who he must leave to fight in the endless and pointless war. One day he is brought to live amid a society of bisexual soldiers from both sides deep under that gap between the trenches known as No Man's Land. I suspect this subterranean world of tunnelers was in part inspired by Alasdair Gray's dystopic [b:Lanark|161037|Lanark|Alasdair Gray|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327948704s/161037.jpg|958496] (see review). Audrey's other brother, Albert, has Asperger's, and is a savant of Rain Man-like propensities, though much higher functioning. Audrey, during her pre-encephalytic days, was a staunch socialist while Albert was a conservative. These divergent political views lead to much conflict between them.

Will Self is an acquired taste. In the past he has regularly made fun of death and unspeakable cruelty with an almost hysterical glee. His talent is certainly great. It has, however, to my mind, at times been exceeded by his ambition. So that no matter how good his books are, and the ones I’ve read are outstanding, he nonetheless always seems to outstrip it (his talent) by way of a stridency of tone (ambition). Subtlety of tone is not in Self's gift. His is always a full throttle, no-holds-barred kind of narrative propulsion. He doesn't dance elliptically around a subject, but always seems to bore to its very heart. This style leaves us with some very naked prose, a prose that doesn’t skirt its limitations, but is on the contrary quite open about them. I know readers who can't abide Self's deeply cynical trickster prose. So I'm happy to report that the cackling satire of Self's earlier work seems in abeyance here, in favor of something softer, something less shrill, more compassionate.

The story is rendered in an almost pitch-perfect Modernist style. I found this astonishing. How does Self pick up Literary Modernism and its attributes (stream of consciousness, abrupt transitions, multiple unidentified intersecting voices, etc.) and don it like a hat? The choice of style strikes me as perfect. I note in my review of [b:Awakenings|14456|Awakenings|Oliver Sacks|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388274053s/14456.jpg|2755549] how Sacks’s, by flipping from main text to footnote and back again, actually introduces a kind of novelistic discursiveness into his text that would not be obvious to those reading his book without the footnotes. It's an almost [b:Moby-Dick or The Whale|153747|Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|Herman Melville|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320]-like discursiveness. And I can’t help wondering if Sacks's discursiveness did not in part suggest to Self his neo-Modernist approach.

This is a complex book and a single reading will not satisfy those who wish to know it. On first reading I found some 20% of it utterly ambiguous. So I look forward to rereading it soon, though that will probably not render it more "coherent." A stunner and very highly recommended, especially for those who enjoy challenging texts. show less

".....human intelligence is by definition what humans naturally do.."

After a night of routine debauchery in London clubland surrounded by sycophants, artist Simon Dykes awakes up one morning from an uneasy dream to discover himself transformed into a giant ape and his world irretrievably altered. Worse, still his attractive girlfriend, Sarah, is now a sex-obsessed chimpanzee. Simon, not unreasonably, assumes that he is suffering a psychotic episode brought on by overdoing the drink and drugs show more but he finds himself carted off to a secure psychiatric hospital where a team of primate psychiatrists set about 'curing' him of his bizarre delusion; that he is human. Maverick psychiatrist and sometime television personality, Dr Zack Busner, takes an interest in Simon's case and decides to take him under his wing in the hope that here is a case that will finally make his name.

The London of 'Great Apes' is similar to our own. Its adults drive Volvos and are bankers or work in insurance, whilst their delinquent offspring either hang around on street corners, drinking Special Brew and smoking pot, or patrolling the streets looking for casual sex and violence. But at home their social structure is rigorously chimp: polygamous groups(where premature ejaculation denotes sexual prowess) which are maintained by a strict hierarchy and mutual grooming.Communication is by sign-language, supplemented by hoots and growls.

Self is original and very funny; here he satirises human masculinity, drugs, hospitals, academics, psychiatrists and is gruesomely vivid at times. However, the story feels like a long string of clever puns and in-jokes which ultimately don't seem to go anywhere and are overly drawn out. I found the first 300 pages or so of this novel an outrageous roller-coaster of a ride but unfortunately there were still a quarter of it to go. show less

I 1st read mention of Will Self in a text by Stewart Home. Home insulted Self as being something along the lines of a rich Oxford junkie who doesn't deserve his reputation as an underground writer. Since I'd never heard of Self before, he had no reputation w/ me at all. Knowing Stewart's tendency to publically degrade anyone who he perceives as competition, I didn't take the negativity as representative of any substantial critical take. After all, it seems that Home's usual intention is to show more discourage conformists & sycophants from even experiencing the work of the people he puts down by making experiencing such work 'uncool'. Thusly, idiots can automatically hate Self's writing on the basis of Home's word & never discover for themselves whether Self's writing might be more interesting than Home's.

W/ that in mind, when I finally saw this bk by Self I picked it up. Having just finished reading it, I have to wonder whether Self is a pseudonym of Home. However, after doing extremely cursory pseudo-research on the net, this appears to be not the case. The writing style is similarly somewhat simple-minded but I'd give Self credit for being a little more accomplished. Home's use of the same joking repetitive description of sex over & over in his 1st novel "Pure Mania" is somewhat akin to Self's running joke referring to his character Zack Busner's self-inflated self-definitions: "the maverick anti-psychiatrist - as he liked to style himself" eg. I can certainly see why the 2 writers wd be professional rivals.

ANYWAY, I started reading this & at 1st took it to be a sign that the once-great Grove Press had deteriorated from its days as the publisher of William S. Burroughs & Jean Genet. Despite a promising alternate reality premise, I quickly got bored w/ what strikes me as a malaise of post-censorship writing: too much sex & drugs for sensationalism's sake & as a substitute for genuine incisive examination.

HOWEVER, that eventually changed & I became engrossed. "Great Apes" begins w/ an "Author's Note" in wch the author presents himself as a chimpanzee perversely writing about humans as if they'd become the dominant species instead of chimps. Then the main character, Simon Dykes, a British painter, is introduced. We follow Simon's night & sex & art life as a human for awhile until he has a breakdown & finds himself in a world in wch chimps ARE the dominant species & in wch he's one too.

From then on, the world is described w/ many references to modern-day human conditions but w/ chimps substituted for humans. Simon ends up in the doctoral care of Zack Busner & the reader follows the steps he goes thru to regain his "chimpunity". I assume Self did some research into chimpanzee studies b/c it's all fairly convincingly presented. "Arse-Lickers" definitely takes on a highly socially defined meaning here.

In the process, Self manages to give the reader a refreshing take on humanity - esp in relation to hierarchical posturings of the art & scientific worlds. Take this paragraph:

"'Of course, Zackiekins "chup-chupp", I am honored that you acknowledge my ascent up the hierarchy. Now, as I was signing, the reputations of these artists - if that's what they are - are also so arguable, that they require continual interpretation and "gru-nnn" adjustment by a large party of critics "grnn". The critics have their own hierarchy, and the hierarchy that exists between them and the artists' party is also highly fluid - subject to continual flux. That's why "chup-chupp" they're all dressed up, and displaying and presenting and grooming and mating, for all the buggers are worth "h'hee-hee-hee"!'"

In the above excerpt the main text is being signed by Simon & the things like "chup-chupp" are being vocalized - in a sortof reversal of human communication in wch the hands are used gesturally & the voice as the main communicator - something I assume to be accurate in chimps.

All in all, I ended up liking this alot. I've been preoccupied for many a yr w/ humans as animals. As a child, I was raised w/ the common notion that humans are distinguished from animals by various cognitive abilities that supposedly make us superior. As a teenager that seemed like a crock of shit & I've always stated that we ARE animals. Not such a radical idea, of course. I never had a problem w/ being an animal. Oddly, though, these days I DO have a problem w/ being one. Not b/c being an animal is something I consider to be 'bad' but b/c I'm a bit sick of the conflicts between instinctual behavior & intellectual behavior.

Sex between humans is a constant struggle between instincts & thoughts. I use the term BOD (Biological OverDrive) to refer to what propels us into sexual contact. The idea's obvious: we're driven to mate to further our DNA's quest for new forms. Men try to impregnate, women try to be impregnated. Perhaps gays & lesbians try to create a Third Mind. At any rate, the body cooperates w/ this process by making sexual contact a form of pleasure to be lusted for w/ great frequency. Such an acknowledgement of biological drives is almost taboo amongst political activists who prefer to emphasize social hierarchies entirely.

But back to chimps & humans. Chimpanzees have Alpha Males - males who dominate &, therefore, fuck the most females. These males use violence, displays, to maintain this position. This has preoccupied me for a long time. Humans parallel chimps in this & many respects. Alpha Male Humans rule for a while & are eventually overthrown when they get too weak to effectively use violence against the up & coming. This is instinctual. But humans have complex intellectual & social codes that temper this. The male instinctual drive may push toward impregnating as many females as possible, but the intellectual deterrents might include a lack of desire for producing children, & a desire for using sex purely for pleasure. Social deterrents might be that producing children usually carries w/ it the responsibility of taking care of them - a responsibility that the fe/male might abhor.

I often say that being in bands is just the human form of mating displaying - trying to attract a mate or mates. There's not often a strong musical impetus behind it - even if lip service is pd to music or other purposes the mating display seems like the strong, & usually underacknowledged, undercurrent. Males, esp, have bands when the members are in their 20s & then gradually fade out of the music biz after the attraction factor has served its purpose somewhat.

"Great Apes" is a good exploration of parallels between chimp & human behavior. Throughout it, there are carefully implanted references to such purposes - such as when the use of humans as cute cuddly animals in chimp society representations are alluded to, eg. show less