The Butt

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)I hate to admit this, but before this week, the last time I had read a book by Will Self was all the way back in 1992, with his early hit Cock & Bull; and that's a shame, because on the other side of the Atlantic he's sort of known as the British Chuck Palahniuk, the author of a whole string of slightly speculative novels that are as equally funny as they are creepy, and which like Palahniuk makes Self one of the most commercially successful "bizarro" authors on the planet right now. (Of course, in this case it helps that Self is also a high-profile newspaper columnist in England, as well as a mainstay on such British "quiz panel" shows as Have I Got News For You.) So when I stumbled across his latest the other day at the library, 2008's The Butt, you can be sure that I snatched it right up; and I'm glad I did, because it turned out to be exactly what I was hoping it would be, a deeply weird but highly enjoyable parable of the Bush years and the West's misguided adventures in the Middle East in the 2000s, which in a roundabout way becomes an indictment of all Western disasters in the developing world, stretching all the way back to the various imperial endeavors of the great European powers of the 1700s and 1800s.And in fact, Self keeps things deliberately vague here in his own story of Caucasian arrogance, in order to comment on all efforts of colonialism made over the centuries; although it's implied, for example, that our main "anti-villain" Tom Brodzinski is American, it's never flat-out stated, and the exotic regions of "Vance" and the nearby "Feltham Islands" where our story takes place cleverly combine elements of Africa, the South Seas, the Caribbean and Australia. It's a place with its own colonial past, with a still sizable "Anglo" population who live in relative unease with the various aboriginal tribes from the area (the main one in our story being the Tugganarong); a place where do-gooder liberals are trying to bring about a multicultural society by honoring as many details of native life as possible, which among other absurdist details allows for half-naked tribal "magic men" to be legally required in such locations as hospitals and courtrooms, and which has resulted in a draconian anti-smoking policy within the Anglo cities, so to not offend certain tribes who believe cigarettes to be literally the work of the devil.Our arrogantly oblivious narrator Tom, then, starts the novel by smoking in what he believes to be a safe zone, on the balcony of his high-class faux-native luxury tourist hotel room, although accidentally burns his downstairs neighbor when flicking away his cigarette's still-burning butt; but upon further inspection, it turns out not only that the butt briefly passed through a non-smoking section during its downward path, but that the injured Anglo is a converted Tugganarong by marriage, making the entire thing in the tribe's eyes a deliberate act of criminal malice, and for which they insist that Tom be prosecuted for attempted murder. This then serves as the rabbithole for the evermore dark and bizarre tale we learn on each passing page, as Tom is sentenced to deliver by hand across the desert a "village recompensation package" to the Tugganarong as his official punishment, and forced to travel the distance with the maybe-British fellow criminal Brian Prentice (who may or may not be a child-molesting "sex tourist"), a surreal journey that raises more and more mysterious questions with each subsequent chapter, questions like: Why does his half-Danish lawyer's second cousin look exactly like his estranged wife? What's inside the enigmatic package she's asked him to deliver to the Tugganarong on her behalf, which looks curiously like a wrapped human head? How is it that the strange-acting unofficial American consul liaison in this region knows that Tom's favorite drink is Scotch on the rocks? And what exact Heart of Darkness weirdness is going on anyway with the Nazi-like anthropologist and amateur surgeon Erich von Sasser out among the desert villages, whose brother Hippolyte is so far the only Anglo in history to write a comprehensive guide to the native population, and whose nonsense-filled tome is the official bible from which all urban Anglos get their information about these distant tribes' cultures?Like I said, obviously a big part of this novel existing is to be a comment on the Bushist international disasters of the early 2000s (there's a reason, after all, that this book's subtitle is "An Exit Strategy"); but one of the reasons that Self is so popular to begin with is that a book like this is both more and less than just an attack on Bushism, coming around to its points through startlingly unique facets that only indirectly correspond to real events from the news. Just to cite one brilliant example, look at the so-called "Tontine Townships" that Tom and Brian are forced to travel through on their existentialist cross-country drive, where actual tontine insurance policies are given out to the dirt-poor villagers (in which only the last person alive gets to claim the policy's monetary award), turning the entire region into an ultra-violent place of anarchy where it's barely safe to even stand on a public sidewalk; this could be a metaphor for any number of humiliations forced on native populations by Westerners over the years, making it a much more effective statement than to actually pick any of these specific real examples, and especially when you add to the novel that it's a common occurrence for white tourists to buy out a tontine participant's share for a pittance and then simply go home, virtually guaranteeing that they'll be the last one alive when the violence is finally over, and turning a tidy profit on their literal blood-money investment.It's for details like these that one reads a Will Self novel, outrageous yet sadly plausible concepts that say more about our current society than any direct reference to real events could; and that's why The Butt has reminded me recently that it's more than time for me to finally add Self's old oeuvre to my "Tales From the Completist" wish-list, starting with the much-loved 2006 novel The Book of Dave (in which 500 years in the future, a post-apocalyptic religion is founded on the bitter, racist, semi-coherent blog entries of a down-on-his-luck loser from our own times -- or at least, that's what the dust jacket makes the book sound like). His work comes highly recommended to fans of so-called "gonzo" fiction, a great example of someone in that genre reigning things in a bit in order to make their stories much more palpable to a mainstream crowd, but who is still weird enough for any fan of the underground to be delighted. I'm looking forward to sharing more of Self's book catalog with you here as the years progress.Out of 10: 8.6

Tom is on a vacation with his family where he decides to quit smoking. On the balcony of his hotel, smoking his last cigarette, he flicks the burning butt over the edge and it lands on the bald scalp of a fellow Anglo who is married to a native of the land. Tom's troubles begin from this point onwards. As is the ritual of this unknown country the punishment of any crime is not just imprisonment but the perpetrator has to make up to the tribe whose member he has harmed. Hence Tom has to travel thousands of miles to the tribal home to make his repayment. This is supposed to be a satirical novel. It's set in a unknown country very much like Africa. The humour is crude and racist and the author just makes up rules as he imagines them and to suit his purpose. This is my first novel by Will Self, a twice Booker prize nominee and it was a great disappointment. A two star read.

Intriguing dystopia with lost guy going on an enforced Quest. Plenty of W Self's peculiar brand of misanthropy; well-drawn galere of depressing rogues, superbly read on my CD by ??. Rendering of a nightmare world, part Australia, part Brave New World. gets a bit lost once journey's end is reached where a mastermind German (Konrad Lorenz cum Platonic philosopher king cum Don Cipriano of the Plumed Serpent) explains how he and his dad have invented the whole thing. The protagonist then loses touch with whatever reality there might be and it all gets a bit confusing and inconclusive.

I once switched off a radio interview with Will Self because I was feeling sorry for the interviewer. I gave this book a go, though, in the belief that being irritating and writing great literature don’t have to be mutually exclusive. So it turned out, up to a point: this is very well written, original, and possessed of a sort of bleak sarcasm all of its own.It’s set in a huge country – a Southern Hemisphere island continent where colonialism has marginalised the indigenous population; it has an arid and inhospitable interior and men wear ‘strides’. Sound familiar? Well, it’s not Australia. In this curious country there exists a farcical legal system in which a tourist who drops a cigarette butt off his hotel balcony is subjected to legal proceedings because it lands on another person’s head.I guess I was expecting something a bit more light hearted than this turned out to be. It felt like being trapped inside some bizarre dream – probably intentionally – and though it was clearly a high-functioning satire on something, I couldn’t for the life of me work out what. I’m pinning my hopes on a reviewer on here being able to fill in the gaps for me. It did get me thinking about satirical literature in general – the way that it can deploy all the irony it likes, but unless the perspective lines of that irony cross somewhere to focus the reader on the question, moral or otherwise, that is being posed, many readers are just going to miss the point. I don't know what the point was, in this novel - you could pick from any number of possibilities (the anti-smoking movement, multiculturalism, tourism, or maybe - just maybe - it's an emperor's new clothes-style joke being perpetrated on the reading public).Ultimately, I was glad to reach the end of this novel; the bits I liked reminded me of John Fowles’ ‘The Magus’, the bits I didn't just reminded me that I don't much like Will Self.

I really did not like this book. I thought the premise of a flipped cigarette butt, an intentional last smoke, causing an accident leading to a political situation was funny, but overall I just found the whole story and the characters to be emotionally lacking and generally ugly and mean. I read through to the end to see how the story would be resolved, but this doesn't inspire me to read more by the author, which is a shame as I generally like his television and general media presence.

Social satire should be funny and incisive, making us take a long, hard look at ourselves and the society we live in, while giving us a good laugh in the process. Unfortunately, The Butt, by Will Self, does none of these things. Tom Brodzinski, presumably an American--although his country of origin is never named, is on vacation with his wife and four children in a Third World, apparently African, country. The action in the novel is precipitated when Tom decides, while smoking what will be his last cigarette on the balcony of the family's hotel room, to quit. Not finding an ashtray in which to dispose of the smoldering butt, he flicks it off the balcony, flinching--but not thinking much more about it--when it lands on the bald pate of an elderly resident sunbathing on his own balcony.As it turns out, the victim of Tom's crime (there are believed to be no accidents in this country), while an Anglo, is married to a native woman and so is protected by the laws of his adopted country. Tom, presumed guilty, is sentenced to deliver restitution--two good hunting rifles, a set of cooking pots, and ten thousand dollars--the the man's tribespeople thousands of miles away.The feel of the novel is Kafkaesque--a sentence out of proportion to the nature of the crime, a judicial system which everyone except Tom seems to understand, an undercurrent of foreboding throughout--but in the end seems hollow, devoid of any particular meaning. And, while it seems as if it wants to be funny, it just isn't.

I have always been a massive fan of Will Self. It was on reading 'Design faults in the volvo 740 turbo' that got me back into reading and subequently, writing.There are few writers outside the science fiction genre (which in the Ballardian sense you could almost consider Self to be in) that craft their alternate universes with such painstaking and obsessive detail. In Self's last novel 'The book of Dave' this attention to detail ended up hindering the overall enjoyment of the novel and pace of the plot. However in this novel his creation of a strange barren land that is part Iraq, part Australia, is a complete triumph. Whilst the novel is an allegory of colonialism and liberal conscience post 9/11, it is best to enjoy the story in its own right rather than search for parallel meaning; the meanings behind the story subtly reveal themselves without conscious attempts at interpreting them.