Cock & Bull

Rating:
Summary: When men and women switch roles
Review: A definite oddity of a book that explores how and why men and women are infinitely different. One woman grows fully functional male genitalia and conversely a male is disfigured with female genitals in the back of his knee. What's most interesting about the books is the emotional metamorphosis, not necessarily the physical one that these two independent people experience.

I liked the idea of the book, however I found the vocabulary to be grandiloquent at times. Reading this book with a dictionary nearby was a necessity for me. This isn't necessarily a weakness, however I found that the book should have been a little more decipherable for being such a small novelette. The story itself was grand; the vocabulary just confused and overshadowed the narrative. I liked the book, and I recommend it, just be prepared to sit with a dictionary while reading.

Rating:
Summary: When men and women switch roles
Review: A definite oddity of a book that explores how and why men and women are infinitely different. One woman grows fully functional male genitalia and conversely a male is disfigured with female genitals in the back of his knee. What's most interesting about the books is the emotional metamorphosis, not necessarily the physical one that these two independent people experience.

I liked the idea of the book, however I found the vocabulary to be grandiloquent at times. Reading this book with a dictionary nearby was a necessity for me. This isn't necessarily a weakness, however I found that the book should have been a little more decipherable for being such a small novelette. The story itself was grand; the vocabulary just confused and overshadowed the narrative. I liked the book, and I recommend it, just be prepared to sit with a dictionary while reading.

Rating:
Summary: CoCK
Review: Didn't care for the bull. Kinda dug the C*ck. I thought that the story was insightful, funny, sexy, etc. Maybe that was a bit too much c#ck for some people. They should stick to reading John Grisham or the like.

Rating:
Summary: It was remaindered for good reason
Review: In this book, Will Self explores gender. Unfortunately, he doesn't really commit. In the first book, a bored suburban woman develops a penis. She doesn't develop a true, honest to God, do-I-dress-left-or-right one, just a nub. There just is not a lot driving her, either. She just seemed like a sad little person, who never goes anywhere. In the companion story, a macho man develops a vagina on his leg. To use the AOL-type acronym, WTF? Why not commit? Why not put it where they generally are located? You certainly won't find one on someone's leg!

Both stories were too weak. He doesn't wake them up completely switched in gender, he does not really show how society treats men and women through the fresh eyes of someone who has undergone a full transformation. He just makes these oddball half-baked chimeras and has all of the consequence of the mutation be a result of their own internal ruminations.

Best ignore this one and enjoy his other, more entertaining books.

Rating:
Summary: The Strange World of Self
Review: Not one for the faint-hearted (if you're easily offended, better steer clear of this one)! Self's Londoners live weird existences that I feel would fit in very well with Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights". Probably Self would treat any attempt at analysis of his work with some disdain, but nevertheless I felt that (as usual) he was attempting to challenge the reader's view of morality and sexuality. Self seemed to me to be saying that human sexuality (for that read sexual roles) is both ambiguous and mutable: the commonly-held view that all is black-and-white is nonsense, rather it's all various shades of grey. I enjoyed the book immensely - it's challenging, funny and disturbing......

Rating:
Summary: Two devilish stories
Review: Really funny, twisty stuff. If you like Martin Amis, then you'll love Cock & Bull. Really British stuff and proof positive that the contemporary Brit novelists are the only ones getting it done right now.

Rating:
Summary: Ooh, I'm scared.
Review: There's this woman, right, and she grows a penis!! It's soooo rude! That Will's so naughty! And then there's this subtext about antisemitism and it's so, like, deep! Crikey, he's clever.

Will Self wants to be Kafka. Or maybe he wishes Kafka had never been born then he could have got there first. Let's be thankful good old Franz did beat him to it, and with a lot more style to boot. And Brett Easton Ellis does that shocking nastiness thing a whole lot better, too.

Rating:
Summary: Making 'Brilliant' cliche...
Review: This happened to be the 3rd book of Will Self's that I read, the first being Great Apes and second being The Sweet Smell of Psychosis. The athletic story line in this collection of two novellas were pleasantly charming. Here I am sitting in a dreadry Romantic American Literature Class but reading about a guy who suddenly grows a vagina beind his left knee. That brings us into the subject matter. First we have 'Cock: A Novelette'. In it this woman, over a period of time, grows a fully functional male penis. In 'Bull: A Farce', a rugby player is bestowed by fate with a fully functional femine genitalia network, so to speak. There are, however, complications to both of these. Cock and Bull is a good read for postmodernists or anyone who thinks that books are dull. Be warned, however, the writing stlye is complex and hard to understand if you are not equipt for the task. Very good book though, over all.