A lot of domestics are our place are caused by either Will Self or smoking.
My husband Will loves Will Self. I don’t love him so much as read him, which is a more intimate and long-term proposition. Reading an author means you end up in bed with him for hours, after all.
My husband Will also likes to smoke, which drives me insane. Our little chats titled Why Don’t You Just Give Up and Will Self isn’t a Novelist, He Just Writes Extended Conceits never end well. Usually they end with Will heading, affronted, out into the garden with a Will Self book in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
You can imagine my delight in finding a Will Self book on the topic of smoking…
The Butt is yet another extended conceit, but with some special features that intrigued me. The flimsy premise is that an American tourist, Tom Brodzinski, chucks the butt of his final cigarette over the balcony of his holiday apartment, where it hits another man on the head. In a series of Kafkaesque repercussions, this means he ends up facing tribal justice and a charge of attempted murder.
Intriguing special feature number one: the book is about Australia. Other reviewers have claimed it is about ‘the colonial experience’ or ‘a combination of Iraq and Australia’. Nonsense: it is about Australia. Will Self is the king of the thinly disguised real; this was blatantly inspired by, and perhaps written on, a holiday to FNQ or NT. He isn’t capable of a genuine synthesis. It is about the weirdness of the traditional Aboriginal laws that try to coexist with the laws of Australia.
Special feature number two: the book draws heavily on the story of Ted Strehlow, the anthropologist of the Arrernte people of Central Australia who was controversially made the final custodian of Arrernte traditional law by elders in the 1930s. Other reviewers (fools!) have imagined it is Kurtz from Heart of Darkness who is the mad anthropologist at the apex of the book. But that is just a reflex reference. The beating heart of the inspiration for this is blatantly TGH Strehlow. (You can read more about him here).
The nightmarish Australia of the book contains some insurance-derived badlands. ‘Tontine’ insurance is a policy under which the last living policyholder is entitled to a payout, causing the local tribes to indulge in an orgy of degenerate killings. This is how Strehlow came to ‘own’ the Arrernte traditions he wrote about: “In accordance with the Aranda rules of tjurunga inheritance, these traditions would be regarded as becoming my personal property after the deaths of their original owners.”
Will Self’s use of language is HOT. No one does flesh-crawling metaphors like Will Self. It is worth reading his books just for these gems – and I do.
His use of actual narrative and character, on the other hand, are RUBBISH. The only good novel he has written, in my opinion, is How the Dead Live. That one is good because, like all transcendent satire, it contains some humanity – it is about his relationship with his mother and other family members. A naff topic that makes for an awesome read.
The story of The Butt is stupidly long and exhausting. Many have remarked that The Butt’s description of a roadtrip through a hot featureless desert is similar to embarking on such a roadtrip oneself. Similarly, its description of a labyrinthine legal system is not unlike reading labyrinthine legalese for real. Neither are much fun. However, I was giving this book the benefit of the doubt until page 301, when it seems like Self just got bored and hastily scribbled the unsatisfactory – in fact downright irritating – ending.
My husband still smokes. We still argue about his smoking. We did manage to agree, however, that The Butt really lets itself down in the last 50 pages, coming to an incoherent and rather silly conclusion.
If this book was a person, it would be my husband Will, promising yet again to give up while sneaking up to the shop ‘to buy some milk’….In a nutshell: in a nightmare that looks a lot like Australia, a bumbling tourist chucks away the butt of his final cigarette and unwittingly becomes the butt of a series of hideous legal consequences.Planet 8 scores four chocolates with pretty wrappers that turn out to be slightk
My husband Will loves Will Self. I don’t love him so much as read him, which is a more intimate and long-term proposition. Reading an author means you end up in bed with him for hours, after all.
My husband Will also likes to smoke, which drives me insane. Our little chats titled Why Don’t You Just Give Up and Will Self isn’t a Novelist, He Just Writes Extended Conceits never end well. Usually they end with Will heading, affronted, out into the garden with a Will Self book in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
You can imagine my delight in finding a Will Self book on the topic of smoking…
The Butt is yet another extended conceit, but with some special features that intrigued me. The flimsy premise is that an American tourist, Tom Brodzinski, chucks the butt of his final cigarette over the balcony of his holiday apartment, where it hits another man on the head. In a series of Kafkaesque repercussions, this means he ends up facing tribal justice and a charge of attempted murder.
Intriguing special feature number one: the book is about Australia. Other reviewers have claimed it is about ‘the colonial experience’ or ‘a combination of Iraq and Australia’. Nonsense: it is about Australia. Will Self is the king of the thinly disguised real; this was blatantly inspired by, and perhaps written on, a holiday to FNQ or NT. He isn’t capable of a genuine synthesis. It is about the weirdness of the traditional Aboriginal laws that try to coexist with the laws of Australia.
Special feature number two: the book draws heavily on the story of Ted Strehlow, the anthropologist of the Arrernte people of Central Australia who was controversially made the final custodian of Arrernte traditional law by elders in the 1930s. Other reviewers (fools!) have imagined it is Kurtz from Heart of Darkness who is the mad anthropologist at the apex of the book. But that is just a reflex reference. The beating heart of the inspiration for this is blatantly TGH Strehlow. (You can read more about him here).
The nightmarish Australia of the book contains some insurance-derived badlands. ‘Tontine’ insurance is a policy under which the last living policyholder is entitled to a payout, causing the local tribes to indulge in an orgy of degenerate killings. This is how Strehlow came to ‘own’ the Arrernte traditions he wrote about: “In accordance with the Aranda rules of tjurunga inheritance, these traditions would be regarded as becoming my personal property after the deaths of their original owners.”
Will Self’s use of language is HOT. No one does flesh-crawling metaphors like Will Self. It is worth reading his books just for these gems – and I do.
His use of actual narrative and character, on the other hand, are RUBBISH. The only good novel he has written, in my opinion, is How the Dead Live. That one is good because, like all transcendent satire, it contains some humanity – it is about his relationship with his mother and other family members. A naff topic that makes for an awesome read.
The story of The Butt is stupidly long and exhausting. Many have remarked that The Butt’s description of a roadtrip through a hot featureless desert is similar to embarking on such a roadtrip oneself. Similarly, its description of a labyrinthine legal system is not unlike reading labyrinthine legalese for real. Neither are much fun. However, I was giving this book the benefit of the doubt until page 301, when it seems like Self just got bored and hastily scribbled the unsatisfactory – in fact downright irritating – ending.
My husband still smokes. We still argue about his smoking. We did manage to agree, however, that The Butt really lets itself down in the last 50 pages, coming to an incoherent and rather silly conclusion.
If this book was a person, it would be my husband Will, promising yet again to give up while sneaking up to the shop ‘to buy some milk’….In a nutshell: in a nightmare that looks a lot like Australia, a bumbling tourist chucks away the butt of his final cigarette and unwittingly becomes the butt of a series of hideous legal consequences.Planet 8 scores four chocolates with pretty wrappers that turn out to be slightk
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