Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys PDF full book. Access full book title Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys by Will Self. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Will Self
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747539065
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Get Book Here
Book Description
Offers a collection of short stories that explores the 'muddy foreshore and abysmal depths' of the human psyche.
Author: Will Self
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0747539065
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Get Book Here
Book Description
Offers a collection of short stories that explores the 'muddy foreshore and abysmal depths' of the human psyche.
Author: M. Hunter Hayes
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570036750
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Get Book Here
Book Description
Understanding Will Self introduces readers to the satire and expressive ingenuity of a British writer who has garnered an array of awards since the 1991 publication of his first short story collection, The Quantity Theory of Sanity. In this guide to the well-received but largely unstudied writer, M. Hunter Hayes examines the key themes, narrative strategies, and cultural commentaries that characterize Self's work. Through close textual analyses, Hayes guides readers through the alternative universe of Self's writing and maps the interplay between his forays into journalism and fiction. Marked by their combination of seemingly improbable events and quotidian details, Self's novels, novellas, and short stories examine contemporary English life through a mode of writing that he has aptly termed dirty magical realism. Hayes shows how recurring characters have evolved through successive works and in relation with their environments.
Author: Will Self
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596912979
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Get Book Here
Book Description
This new volume of work from the British satirist draws selected short stories from his five previous collections, including The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Gray Area and Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys.
Author: Will Self
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802199348
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Get Book Here
Book Description
Will Self's DORIAN is a "shameless imitation" of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray that reimagines the novel in the milieu of London's early-80s art scene, which for liberated homosexuals were a golden era of sex, drugs and decadence before the AIDS epidemic struck later in the decade. It is "an age in which appearances matter more and more and more. Only the shallowest of people won't judge by them." Young Dorian Gray, just out of school, is a trust funded, impressionable Adonis-like blonde with none of the cynicism of the characters who end up corrupting his innocence even as they love him for it. He arrives in London to help socialite and philanthropist Phyllis Hawtree with her project of running a shelter for young drug addicts. He knows he is strikingly beautiful, that he could be a male model, but he tries not to get too caught up in the "looks thing." Basil Hallward, an artist friend of Phyllis's son Henry Wotton, meets Dorian and immediately falls for him, asking him to pose for a video installation called Cathode Narcissus, wherein Dorian is surrounded by nine television monitors which project images of himself looking into a mirror. In the book's final pages, we discover that Dorian is so taken by the images that he makes a wish that they will age while he remains eternally young. And indeed, Dorian soon swears he sees some faint traces of aging in the images. Meanwhile Dorian is so impressed with the witty, sophisticated banter between Baz and Wotton that he immediately wants to be part of their world (he is described as a social chameleon, easily slipping into the characteristics and fashions and mannerisms of those around him). Dorian, then, breaks up with his college girlfriend and takes up with Baz's friend Wotton, a rich, intelligent but affectless homosexual boozer and cokehead (and careless Jaguar driver) who has a loveless marriage of convenience with the socialite Lady Victoria, a somewhat batty woman who is fine to live in denial of her husband's sexuality so long as their marriage keeps bringing in a flood of party invitations. Jealous of Baz's affections for Dorian and eager to see Dorian "thoroughly pleasure this jaded century" via his unparalleled looks and money, he takes Dorian under his wing and Dorian soon grows to prefer the wild, devil-may-care Wotton over the earnest, somewhat pretentious Baz. ("Baz Hallward the wayward acolyte, seething with energy and bumptiousness; while the younger man [Wotton] played the part of his mentor, consumed with cool, eaten up with indifference.") "Dorian knew his own limitation: he had money but no real style. His upbringing had been here and there, on the fringes of film sets, in foreign hotels… It had given him polish but no shine. He lacked the deep lustre of someone like Wotton." But in truth, Wotton is no better himself: "Henry Wotton was subject to saying to anyone who would listen that the chameleon is the most significant of modern types." And while outer appearance would seem to belie this, the truth was that beneath the Planet of Wotton was a realm of complete flux." The characters to which Wotton introduces Dorian are no better: drug addicts who revere Dorian only for his looks and money. As Dorian gets caught up in this world he becomes every bit as superficial as these people: "Dorian had begun to display talents in the only two areas of life that are worth considering, he was becoming a seducer par excellence, and he was transforming himself into an artificer of distinction, a person who is capable of employing all of the objective world to gain his own end." He eventually falls for a junkie named Herman largely for his beautiful black skin. To celebrate the debut of Cathode Narcissus, Dorian invites Herman over for an orgy with Wotton, Baz, and the others although not as jaded as Dorian has become (and apparently not a homosexual), Herman's craving for drugs is such that he agrees, and at the party he shares a needle with the other attendees and unwittingly infects them with AIDS. After the party, perhaps because he is ashamed of what he has sunk to, he kills himself in the street. PART TWO: TRANSMISSION Ten years have passed, and Henry Wotton now lies in a hospital bed on the AIDS ward. He knows he is dying, as is his friend Baz who visits him now for the first time in years, but unlike Baz, Wotton has continued to live the life that brought him down, bribing the hospital employees to let his dealer visit him. His wife is in absolute denial, calling Wotton’s infection a “bug.� Baz becomes angry that Wotton is not taking care of himself (having been clean for five years, Baz has recovered his soul). He tells Wotton about his move to New York City in the early eighties, when Manhattan was “at the very peak of a great mountain of depravity.� His drug habit drove him to poverty and homelessness and he eventually ended up an errand boy for three transvestite cabaret acts who housed him in their squaliiiiiid apartment. Dorian found him here and “saved� him by cleaning him up and taking him shopping so that Baz might introduce him to some of his downtown connections (Warhol, Mapplethorpe, Burroughs, etc.) This doesn’t really happen, but Dorian does manage to “put himself at the center of every season,� ever-popular for his looks, fake refinement, and money. “His social promiscuity and his sexual promiscuity have had the same bewildering effect—that of making him incomprehensible, unknowable. Is he gay or straight? Is he nob or yob? And incidentally, how old is he exactly?� Dorian discovers gay nightlife, sleeping with hundreds (maybe thousands) of men and in one brutal instance he later recalls with glee, beating a man to death as he sodomizes him in the basement of the Mineshaft nightclub. Eventually, however, when the AIDS scare begins, Dorian popularity lessens when many suspect that he is knowingly transmitting the disease. When Wotton returns from the AIDS ward, a dinner party is thrown and Dorian shows up unexpectedly. Wotton and Baz are shocked to see that he looks exactly as he did ten years ago—he hasn’t aged a bit and apparently doesn’t have AIDS. During the party Baz tells Dorian that he would like to photograph Cathode Narcissus for an upcoming retrospective and Dorian invites Baz back to his mews home to see it. There, Dorian offers Baz oral sex and his first hit in five years. He tells Baz of the wish he made when he first saw Cathode Narcissus and reveals that ever since then, the images have indeed been aging while he stays young. When Baz refuses to believe it Dorian reveals the monitors and sure enough they play horrifying images of an AIDS-stricken Dorian—“concentration camp victims forced to dance by some insane Nazi doctor. When Baz refuses to copy the tapes for Dorian so that he can continue to preserve his youth, Dorian brutally stabs Baz several times, killing him without compunction. “Baz joined the wraithlike Dorians, who had stepped down from their monitors to meet him and in the null space in the middle of the null room, the ten of them linked hands, formed a ring, and commenced a stately dance.� EPILOGUE As it turns out, everything up until this point is the text of a novel written by Henry Wotton, who is now dead of AIDS and has left the book for Dorian and Victoria. Dorian is hurt and indignant about the way he is portrayed: he insists that he never killed anyone, he is not a shallow narcissus but rather someone who genuinely cares about the good of others, he is not a free-loading model but has worked hard as the publisher of a fashion/design magazine. He brushes the book off but as he tries to go on with his work of preserving the now-famous work of Baz, the cynical narrative voice of Henry Wotton’s book keeps intruding into his thoughts until finally, as Dorian visits the scene of his friend Princess Di’s fatal crash, Wotton reappears and cuts his throat.
Author: Will Self
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802193358
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Get Book Here
Book Description
Will Self, whom the Los Angeles Times calls “the hottest young novelist in England,” demonstrates his razor-sharp wit in these nine new stories. Self’s method depends upon taking an ordinary aspect of the world and then pushing it to its limit in furious absurdity. The short stories in Grey Area reflect the technical brilliance and satiric voice that have made him one of the most highly praised comic writers in a decade. These are stories that delve into the modern psyche with unsettling and darkly satiric results. “Inclusion®” tells the story of a doctor who is illegally testing a new antidepressant made from bee excrement. “A Short History of the English Novel” brings us face to face with a pompous publisher who is greeted at every turn by countless rejected authors. In “The End of the Relationship” a woman who has been left by her boyfriend provokes—“like some emotional Typhoid Mary”—that same reaction among all the couples she goes to for comfort. The narrator of “Between the Conceits” declares without hesitation that London is controlled by only eight individuals, and, thankfully, he is one of them. Self’s world in these pieces is both curiously familiar and hauntingly strange. Published to critical acclaim in England, Grey Area is a dazzling collection by one of the most talented and original writers of his generation.
Author: Christopher B.R. Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317634381
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Get Book Here
Book Description
Examining the interdependent nature of substance, space, and subjectivity, this book constitutes an interdisciplinary analysis of the intoxication indigenous to what has been termed "our narcotic modernity." The first section – Drug/Culture – demonstrates how the body of the addict and the social body of the city are both inscribed by "controlled" substance. Positing addiction as a "pathology (out) of place" that is specific to the (late-)capitalist urban landscape, the second section – Dope/Sick – conducts a critique of the prevailing pathology paradigm of addiction, proposing in its place a theoretical reconceptualization of drug dependence in the terms of "p/re/in-scription." Remapping the successive stages or phases of our narcotic modernity, the third section – Narco/State – delineates three primary eras of narcotic modernity, including the contemporary city of "safe"/"supervised" consumption. Employing an experimental, "intra-textual" format, the fourth section – Brain/Disease – mimics the sense, state or scape of intoxication accompanying each permutation of narcotic modernity in the interchangeable terms of drug, dream and/or disease. Tracing the parallel evolution of "addiction," the (late-)capitalist cityscape, and the pathological project of modernity, the four parts of this book thus together constitute a users’ guide to urban space.
Author: Will Self
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802147496
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this collection of four linked stories, newly reissued by Grove, Will Self takes aim at the disease and decay that target the largest of human organs: the liver. Set in locales as toxic as a London drinking club and mundane as a clinic in an orderly Swiss city, the stories distill the hard lives of their subjects, whether alcoholic, drug addict, or cancer patient. In “Foie Humaine,” set at the Plantation Club, it’s always a Tuesday afternoon in midwinter, and the shivering denizens of this dusty realm spend their days observing its proprietor as he force-feeds the barman vodka-spiked beer. Joyce Beddoes, protagonist of “Leberknödel,” has terminal liver cancer and is on her way to be euthanized in Zurich when, miraculously, her disease goes into remission. In “Prometheus,” a young copywriter at London’s most cutting-edge ad agency has his liver nibbled by a griffon thrice daily, but he’s always in the pink the following morning and ready to make that killer pitch. If blood and bile flow through liverish London, the two arteries meet in “Birdy Num Num,” where career junky Billy Chobham performs little services for the customers who gather to wait for the Man, while in his blood a virus pullulates. A moving portrayal of egos, appetites, and addictions, Liver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most talented minds working today.
Author: Simon Critchley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134401213
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 143
Get Book Here
Book Description
Humor is een fascinerend, prachtig geschreven en komisch boek over wat homor ons kan vertellen over onze menselijke natuur. Van de oudheid tot aan de moderne tijd en puttend uit het werk van een breed scala aan auteurs, in het bijzonder Swift, Sterne, Shaftesbury, Bergson, Beckett en Freud, keert Humor het komische binnenstebuiten en onthult ons een smakelijk inzicht in wat we grappig vinden. Humor beantwoordt vragen zoals: "Waarom lijden komieken aan depressies", "Waarom lachen we zo vaak om dieren" en "Wat gebeurt er in racistische en seksistische humor". Humor zal niet alleen de lezers uit een reeks van disciplines zoals filosofie, theologie, literatuurwetenschap, psycholanalyse, geschiedenis en antropologie aanspreken, maar ook zeer tot de verbeelding spreken van een ieder met een gevoel voor humor - ieder van ons dus, hopelijk.
Author: Ian Gregson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441130004
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Get Book Here
Book Description
This monograph analyses the use of caricature as one of the key strategies in narrative fiction since the war. Close analysis of some of the best known postwar novelists including Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Angela Carter and Will Self, reveals how they use caricature to express postmodern conceptions of the self. In the process of moving away from the modernist focus on subjectivity, postmodern characterisation has often drawn on a much older satirical tradition which includes Hogarth and Gillray in the visual arts, and Dryden, Pope, Swift and Dickens in literature. Its key images depict the human as reduced to the status of an object, an animal or a machine, or the human body as dismembered to represent the fragmentation of the human spirit. Gregson argues that this return to caricature is symptomatic of a satirical attitude to the self which is particularly characteristic of contemporary culture.
Author: Will Self
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408837331
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 341
Get Book Here
Book Description
Provocateurs Will Self and Ralph Steadman join forces in this post-millennial meditation on the vexed relationship between psyche and place in a globalised world, bringing together for the first time the very best of their 'Psychogeography' columns for the Independent. The introduction, 'Walking to New York', is both a prelude to the verbal and visual essays that make up this extraordinary collaboration, and a revealing exploration of the split in Self's Jewish-American-British psyche and its relationship to the political geography of the post-9/11 world. Ranging from the Scottish Highlands to Istanbul and from Morocco to Ohio, Will Self's engaging and disturbing vision is perfectly counter-pointed by Ralph Steadman's edgy and beautiful artwork.
