Cock and Bull. - book reviews

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1994 by Mark Osteen

Picture, if you will, a woman named Carol who, much to her astonishment, begins to sprout a penis. That Twilight Zonish scenario is the premise of Cock: A Novelette, the first of these twin satires. Picture Martin Amis without the stylistic grandstanding or streak of sentimentality and you have Will Self, who nevertheless proves in these nasty, scathingly funny novellas that he writes most like, well, him-self.

Carol is married to the alcoholic Dan, a "pisshead" so sodden that had he confined himself to pissing on his own head, he would have been almost socially acceptable." Indeed, even before her new addition, Carol feels herself "less of a woman when Dan was around": perhaps it is his habit of referring to their conjugal couplings as "climbing on board," an apt metaphor for his "mechanical and piston-like" performances. However, after many drunken nights with his cronies Gary, Barry, Gerry, Derry and Dave 1, Dan decides to dry out, a decision that permits Self to execute some sharp send-ups of the dogmas of the self-help movement as propagated by Dan's moronic mentor, Dave 2.

A proto-feminist too insipid to shape a critique of phallocentrism, Carol instead becomes one. Unfortunately, her acquisition of a phallus also turns her into a stereotype of the testosterone-crazed, aggressive male. Thus Carol achieves her vengeful apotheosis when, after reacquainting Dan and his nemesis, the "Lager of Lamot" (spiced with a generous helping of Spanish fly), she manages to find an ingenious new use for a cake icing gun and with it gives both Dan and Dave 2 what's coming (in more ways than one) to them.

Cock has plenty of funny lines (for example, the description of Henry Jame's novels as "penis substitutes" in which the sentences "uncoil . . . inside our minds like ever-lengthening weenies," or the depiction of Carol's hermaphroditic genitals as resembling "a packaged shirt and V-neck pullover combination"), but here Self is more interested in exposing the "horror that shadows . . . every aspect of the ordinary." Indeed, the horror of Carol's violent solution to her problems is compounded by the framing of the tale, which is told to a passive train passenger by an "ersatz Ancient Mariner," a donnish personage who traps his listener in a compartment and not only forces him to listen to this increasingly grotesque story, but ultimately drugs and sodomizes him as well - climbing on board, indeed. The novelette's denouement not only calls into question our own prurient interest in the characters and clinches the tale's troubling association of sex and violence, but also implies an equally disturbing identification between storytelling and rape, as if the violation we perpetrate by intruding on these characters is paid for by the physical violation of our surrogate, the frame narrator.

Bull (subtitled A Farce) is, by contrast, lighter and less gruesome. Its Kafkaesque opening finds its rather dim protagonist John Bull (the mind reels at the allegorical possibilities of this appellation: perhaps a metaphorical stab at enqueened and en-thatchered England?) discovering that he has magically given birth to a vagina on the back of his knee. The unhappy cabaret editor of a trendy magazine called Get Out! (seemingly based on the British magazine Time Out) and an amateur rugby player, Bull seeks help from his GP, the adulterous and self-deceiving Dr. Margoulies, who, envisioning proprietary control over this medical miracle, tells Bull that his new organ is merely "a wound and a burn." But one thing leads to another, and before long Bull (who, the doctor discovers, is "virgo intacta, surprising in a man of his age") and the doctor are having sex - the most satisfying sex that Bull has ever had.

If Bull is a more sympathetic character than the alternately passive and aggressive Carol, likewise Bull is more fabulistic, less nasty than its twin. It is also funnier, as, for example, in its characterization of the trend-worshipping, promiscuous "journalist" Juniper, Bull's ex-girlfriend, who has sex "the way some people eat dry-roasted peanuts: compulsively, in large quantities and with progressively less pleasure." Bull is at first uncomfortable with his additional orifice (once Margoulies tells him what it is), and is forced to contrive some farcical expedients to cover it up when playing rugby, which he enjoys not only for the sport, but for the homosocial camaraderie: "There was beeriness but not too much leeriness; and huggery but not too much buggery." Bull is also concerned that his original organ is being neglected in favor of the newcomer; he feels as if his "penis had gracefully stepped aside, like a retiring diva introducing her successor to the adoring audience at La Scala."

I will refrain from revealing the ending. Suffice it to say that, despite Margoulies's smarmy machinations and our hero's subsequent impregnation, Bull comes to embrace his newfound identity and all ends well - this is, after all, a farce. Nevertheless, Bull complements Cock's savagery with a gentler satire that still manages to pillory macho males, infantile standup "comedians" who think that merely repeating curse words makes them funny, the medical profession, and trendy pop culture criticism, while also making pointed comments about gender roles, homophobia, and the ubiquity of female victimization. These witty and stylish cock-and-bull stories thus carry - albeit lightly - the weight of a serious purpose.