Cock & Bull - Hardcover

Self, Will

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871135310 ISBN 13: 9780871135315

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr, 1993

Synopsis

After her marriage to Dan, a hopeless alcoholic, Carol discovers that she is growing a penis, and she uses it to change her previously passive role in life. 22,500 first printing.

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Reviews

Issues of gender identity move from the philosophical to the physical realm in these two racy, startingly inventive novellas of genital anomaly set in contemporary London. "Cock" introduces Carol, a dissatisfied housewife who, while coping with her husband's sloppy alcoholism and her own quest for sexual fulfillment, sprouts a penis. "Bull" tells of John Bull, a rugby enthusiast and frustrated sportswriter who awakens one morning to find behind his left knee a strange, deep wound that he will soon learn is a vagina. Self ( The Quantity Theory of Insanity ) relates these Kafkaesque fables with an acerbic wit and a narrative mastery that make the absurd seem credible and the commonplace absurd. Indicting all listeners and tellers of stories through "Cock" 's vituperative narrator and through "Bull" 's mockery of journalism, Self treats his readers alternately to biting satire and to flashes of insight, delivering all in zestfully erudite language.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Two eerily fascinating, original novellas, delving into a nightmarish world of sexual ambiguity and moral ambivalence, from British writer Self. Cock (``A Novelette'') and Bull (``A Farce'') offer complementary views of the dark possibilities that emerge when sexual differences are miraculously overcome. The former story concerns Carol, a miserable housewife who married the man responsible for her first orgasm only to have him turn into a cringing, boorish drunk. Finding a release from her desperation in masturbation, she discovers that she's also growing a penis, but eventually her disgust turns to admiration, and with a new-found assertiveness she's able to liberate herself from her husband in a final, grimly satisfying way. The narrator of Carol's tale, an unctuous Oxford don who trapped an unwilling listener in a train compartment, moves from words to action to reach a vicious climax of his own, brutalizing his fellow traveller before going his way. Bull poses another Kafkaesque turn, as a beefy sportswriter-turned- cabaret-critic awakens one morning to find that a vagina has formed between his calf and knee. Thinking it a wound, he seeks medical treatment, but his doctor, believed by all (and himself) to be a saint, becomes obsessed with it and quickly seduces his patient. After a few nights of unimaginable coupling, his moral scruples reappear and the two part company, but the hapless victim has conceived and flees to San Francisco to bear his shame alone. Savagely satirical and visceral, with all the tawdry glories of modern British life exposed: as chilling as it is outrageous. Definitely not for the squeamish. (First printing of 22,500) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

If David Lodge were to collaborate with Monty Python, the results might resemble this wickedly playful, gender-bending pair of novellas. The first, Cock: A Novelette, concerns Carol, a passive young woman trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, who starts developing a penis. Personality changes soon follow, leading to unpleasant consequences for Dan, her loutish husband. Bull: A Farce , meanwhile, involves a typical Englishman, archetypally named John Bull, who wakes up one day to discover a "wound" on his leg that turns out be a vagina. The doctor who examines him develops a more-than-professional interest in his new genitalia, and the two begin a confused affair. While gender complications play an obvious role in these satiric tales, Self's real target is "the horror that shadows each and every aspect of the ordinary." Recommended for public libraries.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0871135310
• ISBN 13: 9780871135315
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 310