The fourth instalment of my attempt to re-read and blog all of Will Self's fiction, in order of release. Today: Grey Area, Self' collection of short stories first published in 1994.
Grey Area, Self’s second collection of short fiction, is made up of four commissioned pieces and five written specifically for publication here. Topically, the highlight of the collection is Scale, an expanded version of his entry in Granta 43, the Best of Young British Novelists edition of 1993. Although there is no real underlying theme to connect the stories (something Self regretted in later interviews), there are some interesting clues to the author’s general mind-set at the time, and the themes which were beginning to preoccupy him.
Grey Area, Self’s second collection of short fiction, is made up of four commissioned pieces and five written specifically for publication here. Topically, the highlight of the collection is Scale, an expanded version of his entry in Granta 43, the Best of Young British Novelists edition of 1993. Although there is no real underlying theme to connect the stories (something Self regretted in later interviews), there are some interesting clues to the author’s general mind-set at the time, and the themes which were beginning to preoccupy him.
Broadly, the stories investigate the quotidian aspects of modern life (Between the Conceits, Grey Area), the development of hive mentality (The Indian Mutiny, Inclusion), his place in the literary world (A Short History of The English Novel, Scale), and hidden elements of the past, buried beneath the infrastructure of modern Britain (Scale and Chest). The collection also includes The End of the Relationship, one of the most apparently conventional stories Self has ever written, a surprisingly affecting account of infidelity and loneliness, possibly hinting at his troubled personal life.
At the time of publication, Self occupied an unusual position in the literary firmament. Although he had just been heralded by Granta as one of the most talented young writers in the country, the period during which he ‘could do no wrong’ was well and truly over, after the savage critical reaction to My Idea of Fun. Grey Area marks a transition between his often shocking and iconoclastic early work and the more mature, expansive style of his middle-period, represented by novels like Great Apes and The Book of Dave. As with My Idea of Fun, the first edition was cursed with a truly hideous front cover, this time seemingly taken from an office supplies catalogue; no wonder the subsequent paperback edition went with a sensible, classic Penguin design.
Moving on to the stories, Scale encapsulates many of the characteristics which define Self’s work. Ballard’s influence still shows in Self’s descriptions of the ‘gigantic concrete caissons of moribund motorway bridges’, and Swift is also in there – in a brilliantly realised piece of whimsy, Self's narrator moves into a model village to cheat the poll tax inspectors, and is portrayed as a modern day Gulliver, ‘making hay with a kitchen fork and spreading silage with a teaspoon’. Drug use and psychogeography also feature; a portion of the story in which the narrator describes a method for distilling morphine from over-the-counter medicines, likening his own circulatory system to the M25, was later set to music by Bomb the Bass. Sadly the song they produced, 5ml Barrel, isn’t available online, but rumours suggest that it plays a key role in the initiation ceremonies of the shadowy Will Self Club. Although there is nothing in Scale to match the visceral shock of Cock and Bull, it would clearly have been a suitable introduction for curious Granta readers.
Other than Scale, Inclusion™ is the most typically Selfian story in the collection, and one of the most intellectually exciting. Dr Zack Busner returns, and Self also indulges his habit of inventing Amerindian tribes (the Maeterlincki here), once more travelling to a remote outpost to describe a situation of apathy and boredom, as with the Ur-Boro from Quantity Theory. Busner has been recruited to run an illicit drug trial, for the miracle pill Inclusion. The chief ingredient of Inclusion is a waste product of bee mites, used by the Maeterlincki in their ceremonies - the tribe is strongly associated with bees, and members display something of a hive mentality themselves. When distilled, the drug promotes an all-encompassing interest; users are jolted out of apathy and depression, becoming fascinated by their surroundings, to a debilitating degree. As Busner diagnoses, they ‘have no interest but interest’, no sense of discernment. In high doses, it enables users to read one another’s minds, maybe even absorbing their consciousness entirely.
Throughout Grey Area, Self shows his ability to inject an element of the macabre into the everyday. The title story is a Kafkaesque exploration of faceless bureaucracy. Beginning with a description of The Department, an administrative function of a nameless business whose continued existence is solely a product of inertia (97% of its money is spent internally), the narrator becomes aware of a creeping sense of horror. She is trapped in a repeating sequence of meetings, typing up identical minutes and going through the same routines, and notices that the world around her seems to be stuck in a loop – ‘a lengthy period of seasonal and climactic stasis’, as the TV expert Dr Busner explains. As well as the general distaste for office work displayed by Self throughout his fiction, there is also a subtle critique of the drifting Major government, presiding over a sluggish economy and displaying a disturbing lack of imagination after 14 years in power.
Similarly, The End of the Relationship is, on the surface, a very conventional account of a break-up, told from the point of view of a woman whose partner has been unfaithful. Self’s writing is tender at first, showing an unusual level of empathy for his protagonist, but as she moves from place to place, it becomes clear that she is an ‘emotional Typhoid Mary’, spreading the dissatisfaction she feels to every person she comes into contact with. Self uses his satirist’s ability to load the problems of the world onto one character, creating a genuinely unsettling atmosphere.
Elsewhere, the narrator of Between the Conceits explains that there are only eight people in London – the rest of the population are nothing more than chess pieces deployed in a series of power struggles. The concept allows Self to explore the paranoid mind-set, and also play with chaos theory and causality: ‘I stretch, and 35,655 white collar workers leave their houses a teeny bit early for work. This means that 6,014 will feel dyspeptic during the journey because they missed their second piece of toast... 312 will say the wrong thing, leading to dismissal; hence one of those 312 will lose the balance of their reason and commit an apparently random and motiveless murder'. The Indian Mutiny develops the theme, as one schoolboy uses the undisciplined power of his verbosity to manipulate his fellow pupils, undermining the authority and hierarchy of his class. Self’s then-characteristic gristle (‘pulling his head right off and sort of de-coring the body’), and the sense of an overpowering id, hark back to My Idea of Fun.
Incubus, written for the Serpent’s Tail Seduction anthology, appears more playful. Initially set up as a classic English country house farce, Self plays with a Wodehouse-esque tone (‘the altercation was on the verge of getting ugly – although not quite so ugly as the house’), before spiralling into a tale of alcoholism, demonic possession and infidelity. Chest also has a country house feel, as if the inhabitants of Jane Austen’s Netherfield have been transported to a smog-filled dystopian future. Self clearly enjoys mocking the social mores of this bleak country outpost, as the householders nervously socialise with a tradesmen, hunting parties stumble through dense pea-soupers in search of pheasants fitted with breathing apparatus, and inhalers are passed like port at the end of a gathering.
A Short History of the English Novel questions the whole notion of 'British writers' as posited by Granta, suggesting that in a multicultural society authors are better definied by the own individual preferences and characteristics than by nationality. Although Granta editor Bill Buford was an early champion of Self, and is thanked in the acknowledgements, there is a sense of the author biting the hand which feeds him in this story. Over lunch, a publisher jokes about everyone having a novel in them, the waiters being 'great novelists hanging out to get more material', before finding himself beseiged on all sides by frustrated young writers with a story to sell. More directly, one character remarks 'surely we won't be able to judge the literature of this decade for another thirty or forty years?'
Overall, Grey Area does suffer from a lack of consistent narrative thread, so it doesn't tend to be as highly regarded as the other early collections, Quantity Theory and Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys. However, it does provide an insight into Self's developing style - there is less desire to shock, and a greater sense of his ability to imbue apparently normal situations with a sense of unease. Scale and Inclusion are highlights, and would certainly rank alongside Self's best short fiction. Grey Area marks the end of Self's initial burst of publications - after releasing a novel, two short story collections and the dual novellas Cock and Bull within four years, it would be three years before Self released another full-length publication. Great Apes would be worth the wait though...
Throughout Grey Area, Self shows his ability to inject an element of the macabre into the everyday. The title story is a Kafkaesque exploration of faceless bureaucracy. Beginning with a description of The Department, an administrative function of a nameless business whose continued existence is solely a product of inertia (97% of its money is spent internally), the narrator becomes aware of a creeping sense of horror. She is trapped in a repeating sequence of meetings, typing up identical minutes and going through the same routines, and notices that the world around her seems to be stuck in a loop – ‘a lengthy period of seasonal and climactic stasis’, as the TV expert Dr Busner explains. As well as the general distaste for office work displayed by Self throughout his fiction, there is also a subtle critique of the drifting Major government, presiding over a sluggish economy and displaying a disturbing lack of imagination after 14 years in power.
Similarly, The End of the Relationship is, on the surface, a very conventional account of a break-up, told from the point of view of a woman whose partner has been unfaithful. Self’s writing is tender at first, showing an unusual level of empathy for his protagonist, but as she moves from place to place, it becomes clear that she is an ‘emotional Typhoid Mary’, spreading the dissatisfaction she feels to every person she comes into contact with. Self uses his satirist’s ability to load the problems of the world onto one character, creating a genuinely unsettling atmosphere.
Elsewhere, the narrator of Between the Conceits explains that there are only eight people in London – the rest of the population are nothing more than chess pieces deployed in a series of power struggles. The concept allows Self to explore the paranoid mind-set, and also play with chaos theory and causality: ‘I stretch, and 35,655 white collar workers leave their houses a teeny bit early for work. This means that 6,014 will feel dyspeptic during the journey because they missed their second piece of toast... 312 will say the wrong thing, leading to dismissal; hence one of those 312 will lose the balance of their reason and commit an apparently random and motiveless murder'. The Indian Mutiny develops the theme, as one schoolboy uses the undisciplined power of his verbosity to manipulate his fellow pupils, undermining the authority and hierarchy of his class. Self’s then-characteristic gristle (‘pulling his head right off and sort of de-coring the body’), and the sense of an overpowering id, hark back to My Idea of Fun.
Incubus, written for the Serpent’s Tail Seduction anthology, appears more playful. Initially set up as a classic English country house farce, Self plays with a Wodehouse-esque tone (‘the altercation was on the verge of getting ugly – although not quite so ugly as the house’), before spiralling into a tale of alcoholism, demonic possession and infidelity. Chest also has a country house feel, as if the inhabitants of Jane Austen’s Netherfield have been transported to a smog-filled dystopian future. Self clearly enjoys mocking the social mores of this bleak country outpost, as the householders nervously socialise with a tradesmen, hunting parties stumble through dense pea-soupers in search of pheasants fitted with breathing apparatus, and inhalers are passed like port at the end of a gathering.
A Short History of the English Novel questions the whole notion of 'British writers' as posited by Granta, suggesting that in a multicultural society authors are better definied by the own individual preferences and characteristics than by nationality. Although Granta editor Bill Buford was an early champion of Self, and is thanked in the acknowledgements, there is a sense of the author biting the hand which feeds him in this story. Over lunch, a publisher jokes about everyone having a novel in them, the waiters being 'great novelists hanging out to get more material', before finding himself beseiged on all sides by frustrated young writers with a story to sell. More directly, one character remarks 'surely we won't be able to judge the literature of this decade for another thirty or forty years?'
Overall, Grey Area does suffer from a lack of consistent narrative thread, so it doesn't tend to be as highly regarded as the other early collections, Quantity Theory and Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys. However, it does provide an insight into Self's developing style - there is less desire to shock, and a greater sense of his ability to imbue apparently normal situations with a sense of unease. Scale and Inclusion are highlights, and would certainly rank alongside Self's best short fiction. Grey Area marks the end of Self's initial burst of publications - after releasing a novel, two short story collections and the dual novellas Cock and Bull within four years, it would be three years before Self released another full-length publication. Great Apes would be worth the wait though...
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