Grey Area

by Will Self

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Grey Area demonstrates Will Self's razor-sharp wit in nine new 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.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, British Literature, Collections, 20th Century, Contemporary, Satire

287 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

William Self is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School, Christ's College Finchley, and Exeter College, Oxford. He was married to the late journalist Deborah Orr.

Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.

Reviews

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second collection of stories is a technical improvement over its predecessor, Self's debut The Quantum Theory of Insanity. Here the stories develop at a much faster pace and because of such are often shorter than the aforementioned earlier stories. The second half of this book is stronger than the first, mainly because Self wrote these latter pieces with this particular collection in mind, and so they share interleaved (a favorite word of Self's) characters and themes. Most of the stories are focused character studies that lean towards the internal minor slouch towards slight realization rather than dealing with a stage metaphorically swamped with blood and cadavers by last act's end. However this isn't necessarily a negative since most of the stories deal with cultural stagnation and emotional disconnect. Oh, and drugs. Anywho, great concepts abound throughout this collection: a drug company does illegal testings of an anti-depressive called Inclusion - made from the fecal matter of an obscure parasitic bee mite - which lead to disturbing, mind-bending results. Another story relates how London is controlled by only eight unremarkable people who do little more than worry and wheedle about social status. A night of drunken debauchery leads to a middle-aged philosophy professor learning the limits of "free will" when he is possessed by an Incubus. A recently dumped woman - a self-pity party on legs - seeks comfort in couple after couple, only to infect each relationship like an "emotional Typhoid Mary." A sci-fi-ish tale of a near-future London blanketed with a corrosive fog, where the quality of your gas mask is dependent upon your class.

With Grey Area, Will Self keeps up the good, verbose work of creating satirical stories about just how sad of a fucking excuse for a species humans are. I approve.

[Ｆｒａｎｋｈ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was curious about Will Self as an author since I've seen numerous copies of his books around, and I found the premise of most of his novels to be both strange and promising. I originally began reading Great Apes last year but found myself not in the mood for it at all, so I sadly had to put it aside. I finally got around to start reading his anthologies first, and Grey Area , I suppose, was a good place to start as any. Comprised of nine tales, this collection was an incredibly odd mix of the bizarrely mundane, the seemingly sinister, and the unintentionally comedic.

Self's prose is quite an extraordinary feat of imagination and discipline; a breadth of ramblings that are far too technical and dry to be ever deemed as any kind of literary eloquence.

Frankly, I'm not even sure I wholly enjoyed the experience of reading this book. I think there were times I was too baffled by the style and command of his language and descriptions to ever just connect with a story of his long enough to immerse myself in it, but when I had sustained a connection with a few, I am certainly enthralled and pleased with what I have read. Out of the nine stories, I only liked three and the rest are still pretty clever and interesting in themselves but held no kind of allure for me once I finished reading. There was something almost inaccessible to Self's stories that frustrate me a little. As well-polished and unique his stylistic approach to his stories have been, and one that I can appreciate in an objective way, any kind of emotional investment on my part seemed to be severely lacking.

I suppose this was mostly because he writes as if he was typing a technical document and not weaving a tale of fiction. On some level, it works as a satire and deconstruction for themes that do mesh well with that; but on another level with the other stories, the effect only serves to alienate readers. That being said, I'm willing to give him another chance and finish reading Great Apes someday---just not this year.

Stories included in this collection which are A Short History of the English Novel, Incubus (or the Impossibility of Self-Determination as to Desire), Scale, Grey Area, Inclusion and The End of the Relationship all possess intriguing concepts and thematic resonance. However, Self delivered them more as formal dissertations concerning the manner and behavior of men and women as oppose to actual stories of depth and invigorating characterization, and therein lies why I just wasn't that especially concerned about the people who populate his fiction for these specific stories. Reading these 'stories' do not make me enter an imaginative landscape about people who have believable struggles and conflict; reading this story makes me feel like I'm doing research on a field work where characters act more like test subjects to be observed by me as oppose to sympathize with.

That's how gravely impersonal Self's way of storytelling is, and these six pieces are so bone-dry and lacking in any kind of earnest and humane warmth that I felt absolutely nothing at all after reading them.

But it wasn't all that bad. The three stories I was completely blown away by were Between the Conceits, The Indian Mutiny, and Chest. In them, Self applied the same kind of style and they actually worked in the best way imaginable. The first story was told in the perspective of a man who acts as a self-sufficient 'god' (or supervisor) who controls a specific demographic of people in the world, while six of his compatriots do the same. It's very much akin to stories of old about gods and goddesses presiding over mankind and how they go about it, although the narrator and the other six come off more as artificial intelligence who fulfill job functions to keep the status quo at bay, as oppose to playing the roles of supernatural immortals of ancient legends. In this story, Self's penchant for technicalities and numbers is advantageous in trying to capture just how these beings operate and the influence of their powers globally.

The second story, The Indian Mutiny, was told in the perspective of a man who feels guilty for the suicide of his former high school teacher. It's an account revealing and condemning the capacity of teenage boys for cruelty and malice, and how their simple acts of rebellious transgressions destroyed a man's life. Finally, the last tale I thoroughly enjoyed was something rather hilarious as it was poignant.

Chest was a black comedy about a smog-infected town where its residents are caught in a perpetual state of having a bad common cold. Self's vivid and repulsive descriptions of violent coughing fits and spitting or swallowing one's own phlegm, as well as the painful process of defective bodily functions made me squirm while reading. I normally suffer from inconvenient bouts of allergic rhinitis so the physical challenges that this story's characters were going through were familiar territory for me. Reading them indulging on drugs such as oxygen tanks and asthma inhalers not for any kind of recreational pleasure but for basic relief was pretty funny. There was plenty of gallows' humor about Chest as well. That amazing metaphorical scene concerning men in medical masks shooting down cancer-infected turkeys and then a doctor removing the tumors so they can eat the murdered turkeys later for dinner was astounding and gross.

I'm not sure I can recommend Grey Are to everyone, but I do plan on reading more Will Self books in the future. I wasn't completely discouraged after all because those three stories I expounded on were pretty badass. But his prose is certainly an acquired taste. You can check it out for yourselves and judge if the flavor was made for you to enjoy.

RECOMMENDED: 7/10

DO READ MY REVIEWS AT

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

I re-read half of this but lost interest. So I don’t know whether to mark this as read April 2012 or Feb 2009 when it was (approximately) originally read. I’ll keep the original date. OK. I made a decision. Good for me! On a second read it’s clear this isn’t as strong as his later collections. The stories here read like imitations of J.G. Ballard and Georges Perec and Martin Amis (not on purpose, of course), and don’t always sustain one’s interest, being of the Russian short story school variety. The few I re-read contain the usual Self pyrotechnical prose style, but seem dated. They haven’t matured like a vintage wine, but gone rank like mouldy cheddar. Sorry Will. Love your double dozen other books. I got this pretty hardcover edition recently too. Hence the re-read.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read any Will Self for a few years now. After reading the slightly disappointing The Book of Dave a while back, it left me feeling that perhaps this author doesn't have much more to offer me.

Well, I didn't know about this collection until Jayaprakash recommended it to me. When I eventually got hold of it, I was suprised to find it contained the short story Scale which I happened to have read many years ago and had always loved. I was happy to read it again and had by appreciation of that fine story re-affirmed.

Other great stories in this collection include:

Grey Area - An almost Aickmanesque story in it's execution. A weird, dark tale of the apparent dissolution of change in a corporate setting.

Inclusion - A new anti-depressent drug is illegally trialed on some unsuspecting patients that while at first promises to be a miracle cure turns out to have some unanticipated effects. Reminded me of Flowers for Algernon in it's structure.

End of the Relationship - A bleak tale of a woman who seems to be a blight on her own and everyone elses relationship who she comes into contact with.

As usual, not all the stories herein were up to the same standard but enough to make this deserving of a five star rating. Now, perhaps I need to track down one of his other short story collections...

---

After a re-read over ten years later, I'm not sure I quite enjoyed it as much as the first time I read it but still some pretty interesting stories here.

[Jonkers Jonkers · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really didn't enjoy this. Impressive vocabulary but feel it's being clever for the sake of being clever. It really didn't seem to go anywhere. Shame, as I thought I was going to enjoy it.

[michal k-c · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the weaker side for Self, though I admittedly was charmed by a few of the stories, not least because (as I’ve mentioned in other reviews of Self’s work) of his style which is often an obscene balancing act of high and low, erudition and vulgarity.

[Hayden · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://haydenwritesthings.wordpress.c...

Wow.

‘Stretching up the hill ahead of me, I begin to see all of my future relationships, bearing me on and up like some escalator of the fleshly. Each step is a man, a man who will penetrate me with his penis and his language, a man who will make a little private place with me, secure for a month, or a week, or a couple more years.’

I picked Grey Area up last week from a second-hand bookshop, and started reading it on my home. I continued reading it when I got home. I was still reading it the next morning. At three in the morning I went to bed.

There’s a copy of Self’s Book of Dave sitting on my bookshelf that I picked up at a local market and tried to read but couldn’t get into it. It’s a reasonably sized novel and – I think – at the time, I had many many other things going on and felt that I couldn’t really commit. It’s been all about short stories and poetry recently, and Grey Area is a collection of short stories. Perfect.

And my-oh-my is it a wonderful collection! When I finished it yesterday on the train I had more than the standard sense of achievement, or satisfaction, that I have when I finish reading a book. Usually there’s that feeling of comfort-cum-sadness, of knowing that it is all complete and in your hands and in your head. You have read it all, and the characters have done what they needed to have done to make the strings join up in a cats-cradle-esque nest of narrative/s. With Grey Area, there was an element of this comfort/sadness but it ended quickly. I found myself shuffling through the pages I had just read as if maybe I had missed something. That wasn’t to say that it didn’t feel whole - because it did – but it felt like all the stories had far more in common with each other than I had previously thought. There were snapshots in all of the stories; of rolling fog, of a difficult conversation, a man abusing drugs in the distance, motorways, and all of these images seem to slip into one another – to overlap – and suddenly the collection is more like a pile of disorganised papers on a desk. They sit on top of one another, splaying out in multiple directions, and yet are still in contact, it is like navigating a giant grey Venn-diagram – there’s this sense of a whole but in order to feel that wholeness you have to read through everything again – like you did the first time – and enjoy the stories as if they were all happening at the same time, in the same country.

So I flicked back through the pages. Then I flicked forwards. Then I flicked back, and felt amazed. Amazed is the word. Suddenly I felt that anything I’d end up writing would only pale in comparison to these stories. In a way Self’s writing felt very Carver, in that the stories end when they end and we have to sit back and enjoy that. The characters move independently of what we’d like, they make decisions we wouldn’t make, and ultimately it really feels like they are there – living, like us – and we are just watching them through little windows.

‘I yearned to be in that tippy, creaky boat of a bed, full of crumbs and sex and fag ash. I wanted to be framed by the basketry of angular shadows the naked bulb threw on the walls, and contained by the soft basketry of his limbs. At least we felt something for each other. He got inside me – he really did. All my other relationships were as superficial as a salutation – this evening proved it. It was only with him that I became a real person.’

Will Self has a great sense of wit. I remember seeing him on television as a kid and thinking him a monster of a man. On Shooting Stars he sat like a massive domesticated spider; limbs cascading over the side of seats – chair turned at angles to comfort his extensive lower legs. He’d be quiet to some extent – respectfully I used to think – and when a gap would appear he’d let a concise line slip that would just hit the nail on the head. His words were always potent and well placed – and this comes across in his prose as much as in person. Self’s characters all engage in these witticisms – from creating domestic courts in their bathrooms as a form of neighbourhood justice, to musing on the irritable comments of others during chess (‘He’s not a bad player, although I find his habit of neighing whenever he moves his knights intensely irritating’). These humorous moments lighten the mood of the text, showing us glimpses of comforting humanity behind the often oppressive and intense environments of his stories.

What I find most wonderful about Self’s writing is that the construction of these comic witticisms are echoed in the more philosophical/psychological scenes in his stories. A great example is the opening line of the first story we come to; ‘There are only eight people in London and fortunately I am one of them.‘ This first sentence is so bold, sure and simple – to the point, even – that’s not to say that the entirety of the text is like this (it would be almost unapproachable, if so) but he has this way of throwing in power-lines along with sure/definite descriptions. I find another example in a sex scene in a later story; ‘his hands were under her, holding her by the apex of her buttocks, and he ate into her, worried at the very core of her, as if she were some giant watermelon that he must devour to assuage an unquenchable thirst.‘ That brilliant ‘worried at the very core of her‘ seemed just perfect in a way I couldn’t easily describe – there is that brutish sense of engorgement; of the melding of the selves and the loss of the self, and of support, and of the physicality of sex – it just seemed to cover so many factors in so few words. One more; ‘Eventually, by dint of computer-aided visualisations, the police are able to re-enact the whole incident. The cars set off at intervals; the police hover overhead in helicopters; officers in patrol cars and on foot question any passers-by. But, the horror of horrors, while the reconstruction is actually taking place, the killer strikes again [...]‘ What we find here is a very concise nod to Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation - that of our current cultures concern over image, of the consistent reproduction of third order reality (hyperreality).

A fantastic book.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will Self's laconic, intellectual style is highly readable throughout this collection of stories which are often surreal and always absurd. Rather than deconstruct each story individually, it's interesting to note the common themes which unite them all. Alienation, physiological disgust and shared experience run through these stories like a vein and it's this latter theme which is the most interesting.

'Between The Conceits' is either about eight people who control the lives of every man and woman in London, or at least about a person who is deluded enough to believe that he controls them. 'The Indian Mutiny' about a boy who convinces his classmates to rise up against his long-suffering teacher. 'Chest' is about a health-obsessed population living in an atmosphere of deadly pollution, while the titular story 'Grey Area' considers a Groundhog Day-esque repetition of time, albeit time repeated in the already repetitious and dull world of a large office.
All suggest a collective madness which probably has its greatest expression in 'Inclusion', in which a new anti-depressant causes people to experience an over-whelming desire to know everything about everything, to the point at which they begin to include other people's psyches into their own.

My favourite however would have to be the thoroughly strange 'Kettle' which tells the tale of a morphine addict with an all-consuming passion for motorways and the model village next to his house. It's a real flight of fancy around ostensibly tedious subject matter.

Taken as a whole, 'Grey Area; is a more than fitting title as it takes in the lives of drab people and their dull little desires and lets them play out their private madnesses on the stage of Self's distinctly left-field imagination.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories, like comedy sketch shows are a bit troublesome to rate because they're always going to contain a few good ones, a few bad ones and everything in between. I've split this review up into the respective short stories to make it a bit easier to figure out how much I liked the book overall. :P

Between the conceits: Seven individuals have the power to control the population of London - doesn't really go anywhere from the initial concept. 2/5

Indian mutiny: Students rebel against a teacher - better story development but could be more believable. 3/5

A short history: A couple of people having an argument about literature find many aspiring authors around London. Pretty funny and I'm starting to enjoy the book now. 4/5

Incubus: A research assistant considers seduction by her professor. A nice bit of character development. 4/5

Scale: Multiple themes relating to the word 'scale'. Winced at a few of the drug bits, but still very interesting. 4/5

Chest: In the future the air is so polluted that everyone requires a respirator to go outside. Probably my favourite of the lot. 5/5

Grey area: Monotony surrounding an obsessive office worker. It was good, but made my think about work too much, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I could! 4/5

Inclusion: Medical trial of a new drug called Inclusion. Really cool format for this story, so that you get to see things from several perspectives and are kept in the dark about other things. 5/5

End of relationship: Just lots of people breaking up really, but actually hilarious to read about. 5/5

[Nick Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will Self is seldom dull, and I was excited to read some of his shorter pieces having previously enjoyed many of the novels of his that I have read. Despite the word-play and witty nature of the prose, some of the earlier stories in this collection felt slightly underwhelming, perhaps underdeveloped. In the second half, however, I found more that really absorbed and intrigued me, some thought-provoking satire on modern life for certain. My favourites were the title story (on the repetitive nature of office life), ‘Chest’ (a dark, dystopian tale of air pollution and class) and the unusual potential of the opening ‘Between the Conceits’ (the nature of influence and power held by a minority).

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I jumped into this immediately after finishing Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys which I loved.

It was not as good.

I often felt bored reading these stories and kept on checking the contents page to see how many pages left to the end. The writing style at times was good -- the usual Self turn of phrase and great choice of wording -- but other times was really just terrible.

I like stories. And I don't think Will Self would lower himself to satisfy that desire in any reader. Instead he wants to explore the use of words as a device for something. Something that an imbecile like me would never understand...

Ok, but not ok.

[Mark Speed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this was my first taste of Will Self's work. I knew within a couple of pages I'd found a kindred spirit, and an author who was capable of being disturbing, humorous and challenging in the right way.

This is an anthology with a lot of variety, with the common thread being that they will bend your imagination nicely. Or not nicely if you're a bit square.

My mother borrowed this, along with The Quantity Theory of Insanity and became a huge fan. She's a creative type.

[Datsun · Rating 2 out of 5]

In small doses, this can be fun stuff if you like the idea of playing with an idea taken to some extreme. But Self is clever. Or, at least, thinks he is clever and takes great pains to let you know it. I don't know if I'd like to spend any time at all with the author in a social situation. Reading these pieces gave me a sense of satisfaction in following his ideas through to their ends, but relatively little pleasure in language or story.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

It might be because I am not clever or literarily smart enough, but I could not fathom a single one of these stories.

It felt to me that the author was trying to be too smart and clever here to actually present an enjoyable read.

These almost feel like experiments in literary exploration rather than something you are meant to enjoy reading.

[Christopher · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this collection of short stories a try after not caring for Will Self's novel The Butt. It is rare that I read a collection by a writer and not like a single story. Many of them had interesting ideas, but Self is pretty full of....himself.

[Artemis Eclectica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is it just me? I wasn't in the mood for this. A babbling brook for showing off his vocabulary. Pretentious and nihilistic.
Whereas when I read Cock and Bull I laughed out loud all the way through.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't get into this one, and didn't read past the first story.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love his premises but not often where they end up, if anywhere, and how long they take to get there :P

[T. Tokunaga · Rating 3 out of 5]

【Will Self / Grey Area / 1994, 1996, Penguin Books】

This is the least vivid Will Self I ever read, and was a bit of disappointment because I admire him arguably as one of the best authors alive, but it's not really an initiation of his slump or anything; it's rather an attempt at minimalist style by an exuberant author often also baroque and grim.

The minimalist style was coincidentally happening in the US, maybe in the UK if we call Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan minimalistic, and authors were more focused on daily-life realism of middle class than ever. And the style also required a mode which are not traditionally literary, or more likely the minimalism limited literary expressions' range and formed "postmodern borrowing." Self did that, and was insipid, except for the last line:

--You should stay interested in it and not allow your thoughts to stray to unanswered letters, unreturned phone calls, unpaid bills, unfulfilled ambitions, wasted opportunities and people unloved and unmissed. (p. 249. Inclusion®)

No doubt he tried to be grounded in the reality of the educated, which failed, and I can't really suppress my grin at his being Will Self:

--After the divorce, my wife organised a division of the chattels. She took all the adult-size plates and cutlery, leaving me with the diminutive ware that our children had outgrown. (p. 94. Scale)

--At seven, he is old enough to know the difference between the smell of tobacco and the smell that comes from my pipe. (p. 100., Scale)

I still like his style after all.

[Johan D'Haenen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heeft me niet kunnen aanspreken. Will Self houdt van woordenkramerij... hij wil zichzelf graag slim voordoen, maar inhoudelijk hebben zijn verhalen weinig om het lijf. Af en toe is er eens een interessante opflakkering, maar dan verzakt alles weer in ellenlange droge blablabla.

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

first dip into Self. Won't be the last. Some of the stories were chock-full of glib vocabulary with a superficial plot, think Auster's weaker stuff but WORSE. Others were simply, utterly fantastic. These far outweighed the irritating stories. Will (be reading more) Self.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderfully weird collection of short stories.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grey Area, I think, is the most accessible and enjoyable of all the Will Self books I've read. It's also where I've admired Self's literary prowess the most. In this, he practises with all ranges of narrative - first person, second person, omniscient narrator, male narrator, female narrator - and executes them all perfectly.

The problem I had was when Self became (ironically) Self-indulgent in stories such as the eponymous Grey Area and Inclusion. They were those Will Self moments that were deliberately hard-to-read but you can't help but love him anyway.

Personal favourites from this collection were Incubus, Between the Conceits and The End of the Relationship (which was the most exhilarating and gripping). Self is an exceptional talent and is the most intellectually stimulating living writer.

Without want of sounding perverse, his sex scenes are incredibly engaging!

[Neil P · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a fantastic world intermarried together by these short stories that definitely pushes its way to the surface reality of living in the monotone cityscape of Middle England and its satellites. There are brilliantly quirky events and moments but greater still the environment and the conditions that Self creates engulfs all of it and takes you on an oddity.

[LeeLee Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection of darkly surreal, very British short stories. They're engrossing and well-written. There were two in the middle ("Scale" and "Chest") that were longer and less interesting and I wound up skipping partway through. If it weren't for those two stories, however, this would have gotten the full five stars. I really enjoyed these.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

". You are left with the sense that if you were to read it all over again, you'd find more connections between the disparate worlds. It's really quite impressive how fully realized each story was with full character development."
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/20...

[Christopher Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early, brilliant stuff. The best is the story "Inclusion," about an all-devouring brand of antidepressant that erases the boundaries of the ego--which can be seen as a weird meditation on psychiatry itself, one of Self's abiding preoccupations. I think, with this, I've read all his fiction, except for his newest, Umbrella. And that's near the top of my pile. Onward ...

[Scott Whittaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still can't decide. The writing is amazing, the ideas are strong, but somehow they never quite progress as I'd like, or as far. Still waiting for the story from him that progresses and doesn't just feel clever.

[Zadignose]

Apparently I read this at some point in my life, along with some other Will Self book. Why I read it, or what I thought of it, I don't know, but the fact that it left no lasting impression probablyindicates mediocrity. That, or I wasn't paying attention.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. A collection of nine short stories that range from satirical to plain weird. They're surprisingly accessible considering Self's reputation as a sesquipedalian. I haven't read any of his other books, partly for this reason, so these short stories were the ideal introduction.