An Examination of Novelist Will Self

Will Self is one of those authors whose vice of language histrionics and poorly developed characters is something that I admire greatly. It’s not such a stretch in saying that his characters occupy the same fictional space with one another. That is, the characters are admittedly flat, awash with dullness and calculated boredom. And then something stunning happens. Stunning, though, in a thoroughly post-modern construct. In “Conceit”, A doctor locates himself in an artist’s brain, only to discover distressing idleness and a lack of thought. “The North London Book of the Dead” finds a self-described “neutered bachelor” discovering his dead mother alive, thriving in North London, with the message that the afterlife is just as bureaucratically dull as it is on earth. In “Waiting” a malcontent refutes the dissertation of a celebrated psychologist about the art of ‘waiting.’ The novel The Great Apes features an artist waking up after a night of drugs and sex to discover the world around him completely ape – apes wearing cardigan sweaters, apes driving Volvos, apes standing in line for lunch. To quote Dr Zack Busner, a recurring player, about the constant Self made character, “His only interests are interests.” The characters are tropes to the 20th century gag that with more and more information, more and more access to the workings of the world, technology and culture, man is and always will be a dull animal. And the punchline of his stories take the joke further: What would happen if the innovations and discoveries, hundreds of years of progress and design, turned out to be just as dull as the innovator, the discoverer?

So how do he pull it off without coming across like some meat-grinder version of Sartre? Will Self does it with verbal wit and display. He is one of my early, early favorites. I’ve never cared that much about character (as a writer, I probably inherited this bad habit from Will Self). Maybe it’s because in real life there are simply too many interesting people – too many senses of humor, too many unique backgrounds, quirks, phrases, neuroses. I’m fed up with them! In turn, I like an interesting sentence. Here are a few of Self’s best gems:

-When I say the Ur-Bororo are a boring tribe, this statement is not intended to be pejorative, or worse still, ironic. The Ur-Bororo are objectively boringâÂ?¦ By extension every word in the Ur-Bororo language has a number of different inflections to express kinds of boredom, or emotional states associated with boredom, such as apathy, ennui, lassitude, enervation, depression, indifference, tedium, and so onâÂ?¦ In fact the expression that roughly corresponds to “now” in Ur-Bororo is “waste of time.” (“Understanding the Ur-Bororo”)

-His body looked as if it had been constructed out of pipecleaners dunked repeatedly in flesh-coloured wax. All his features were eroded and soft except for his nose, which was the droplet of wax that hardens as it runs down the shaft of the candle. There was also something fungoid about him, it was undefinable, but I always suspected that underneath his clothes Janner had athlete’s foot – all over his entire body. (“Understanding the Ur-Bororo”)

-Her final illness was mercifully quick, but harrowing. Cancer tore through her body as if it were late for an important meeting with a lot of successful diseases. (“The North London Book of the Dead”)

-Several hundred hirsute men and women sat on the edge of the seats for a full three hours while I went over the principal aspects of the theory. If the truth be told I could have gargled and the would have been just as attentive. I’ve now reached that rarefied position in academia where I have the cachet of a lecturing Miles DavisâÂ?¦ I would demystify the Quantity Theory myth, and in the process take a few clay idols down with me. (“The Quantity Theory of Insanity”)

-This living room is a bold testament to your struggle against anxiety. Everything seems to be right in its place, there’s nothing that jars the eye. The village of books, the chair set a precise angle, the wedge of newsprint, the fan of album covers, all good rugs of media. Nicely offsetting the restrained beige of the carpet. Magnolia may not be an inspired choice for wallcovering but it is restful. And as for the furniture, surely it is the right decision to play it down, keep it modern, but not tooâÂ?¦ After all, the shape of the room, the metal-divided, six pane windows, none of it would support anything but angularity and pastels. (“Mono-Cellular”)

This kind of writing exists as a visceral zoink. It is not supposed to be poetic or soft. It has no tendencies toward the Nabokovian prose-preciousness. And it is not interested in character justification – or more importantly, character justice. Instead, the language is charmingly abusive, betraying, and like the beginning stages of alcoholism – good, dark fun. The jagged verbs, the pre-occupation of disease and disease as characterization and simile, the punning and joking, the elevated punctuation – justify the idleness of his characters’ lives. The erudite jiggery-pokery of his language resembles the great jumble of his own familial and literary upbringing: His mother was American Jewish and his father was a Londoner; his favorite writers are Woody Allen and Nabokov. But make no mistake: He is his own voice, his own man.