Rating: 
Summary: A casual, erudite stroll down the blind alley of insanity.
Review: Back in college in the late 60's I remember talking witha philosophy professor about Roman Polanski's early film"Repulsion." He said that it helped him to understand that when some of the mad and troubled people he worked with (no, not his philosophy students) said that they saw monsters outside, hiding behind the trees, they really did see monsters. Will Self's book of short stories provides such revelations. Epiphanies of the absurd. Each page turns over a rock under which mental illness is spawning--slowly and quietly and inexorably. The title story is as slow a descent into societal madness as I've ever taken. You get infected somewhere along the way but you're not sure where. Like touching a doorknob that's been contaminated with lunacy. The next thing you know, you sneeze, and when you look up you see a monster peering at you from behind a tree. Will Self is an accomplished stylist with a following of both avid fans and vocal detractors. Read "The Quantity Theory of Insanity" and you'll be one or the other.
Rating: 
Summary: Small ideas, lots of showmanship
Review: Clever, but monotonic japes at academic theorizing; the stories descend into anarchic confusion like early DeLillo novels, but with less purpose. Self is far better later on; try Grey Area.
Rating:
Summary: Small ideas, lots of showmanship
Review: Clever, but monotonic japes at academic theorizing; the stories descend into anarchic confusion like early DeLillo novels, but with less purpose. Self is far better later on; try Grey Area.
Rating: 
Summary: fantabulous writing skills
Review: I think it is a thrilling experience to actually be able to read this book. You get a lot out of it, especially in everyday matters and other situations. A most inspired pulp fiction inspiring novel that will cause the same feelings to all those who have and are about to read it
Rating:
Summary: Will Self comes up with 5 brilliant premises. . .
Review: then manages to suck the life out of them. Each story takes a facinating idea, but then leaves it in neutral. The title story is a prime example of this, after the first 25 pages I became frustrated with the fact that his story and ideas had progressed no further. I had to start that story five times before I could finally read it through to the end, and the experence was not worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent leap into the absurd and the insane
Review: Though in no terms a work on par with the quality of Will Self's later efforts (re: Grey Area) Quantity Theory is a thoroughly engrossing anthology. From the outrageous Ur-Bororo to the insanity that was the development and application of the Quantity Theory to the subtle oddities of the North London Book of the Dead, Self's pen delves into deeper realms of consciousness and brings to light certain outlandish traits of humanity.Will Self is a brilliant writer with a vocabulary which would make any dictionary less than the complete OED worthless and an intellect to match. His works illustrate a biting social commentary that may stem from his far superior intelligence or simply an uneasiness with the world (which very well may be the case; many of his stories centered on drugs or mental health). The Quanitity Theory is a very good example of his work and a perfect entry into the writings of this strange but brilliant English author.
Rating:
Summary: an impressive book by a talented author
Review: Will Self constructs a highly believable, yet completely ludicrous set of situations and then welds them together to form one composite cache of imaginative and insightful thought
Rating: 
Summary: Gimmicky, heartless surrealism.
Review: Will Self is perhaps the most cruel, heartless writer of contemporary British fiction today. He has an immense encyclopedic intellect, but cares little for his characters, subjecting them to merciless metaphorical beatings (witness the one he gives Janner, an anthropologist, in the opening paragraph of "Understanding the Ur-Bororo," the third story in Quantity Theory). Character development and plot for Self becomes secondary to his obsessively overcrafted Johnsonese prose, which owes more to writers such as Max Beerbohm and William F Buckley, than to his friend Martin Amis or his surrealist hero James Ballard. Thus his fiction lacks tragedy, and even meaning, relying instead on gimmicky plots and a hybrid of quirky Woody Allen-esque humor and clever-clever sarcasm (often out of place). Without either, Self would accurately fit Utah Senator Reed Smoot's description of D.H. Lawrence after reading Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover--a man with a soul so black that he would even obscure the darkness of hell.
Rating:
Summary: one of the most creative authors of our time
Review: Will Self is, hands down, one of the most creative authors of our time - this is indisputable. He is an incredible writer in terms of form and style and unlike so many contemporary authors has an impressive breadth of themes and ideas that speak to modern life with an amazing tone. If you read anything by Self, read this, and then read How the Dead Live.
Rating:
Summary: one of the most creative authors of our time
Review: Will Self is, hands down, one of the most creative authors of our time - this is indisputable. He is an incredible writer in terms of form and style and unlike so many contemporary authors has an impressive breadth of themes and ideas that speak to modern life with an amazing tone. If you read anything by Self, read this, and then read How the Dead Live.
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