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The Undivided Self: Selected Stories
Since the release of his first story collection in 1991, Will Self has been hailed as a master of the short story. Now, for the first time, selected stories from his five highly praised collections will be available in one volume, introduced by Rick Moody. These stories, drawn from The Quantity Theory of Insanity , Gray Area , Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys , Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe , and Liver ―plus one story never before published―give us unexpected comic twists, masterful language, and the ordinary colored by the a man who finds his mother walking in a London suburb ten months after her death; the odd nuances of a drab office worker's daily routine; and a send-up of the British elite that takes place after a carcinogenic fog blankets England. Compared favorably to Nabokov, Pynchon, Gaddis, Ballard, and DeLillo, Will Self is a bold satirist whose selected stories represent some of the best and most outrageous fiction of the last decade.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
480 pages, Hardcover
First published July 18, 2007
6 people are currently reading
156 people want to read
About the author
Will Self
175 books1,007 followersWilliam 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.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
odds-and-sods
October 8, 2014Another day, another greatest hits collection skimmed through for the single nugget of an unpublished short story. Every story in here - except "The Minor Character" - can be found in previous collections, all of which I plan to read through in due time. The aforementioned story is a nice-enough, Carveresque slice-of-life, featuring a group of middle-aged, waspish friends who go about the usual acts of adultery while a passive narrator passively ponders the insignificance of all their parts in the grand scheme of the story's narrative. Also, there is a thumbs-up introduction from novelist Rick Moody who praises Self for his erudition, his diction, his alliteration, and his imagination. Ditto, Rick.
November 25, 2011
Let us all give thanks now for Will Self.
The title of the current collection is self-contradictory (and the puns are unavoidable, I'm afraid—the man's very name is a combination of common nouns, after all). These are selected stories, hardly an undivided view of the author. But the title The Divided Self was already taken. Indeed, Self is well aware of R.D. Laing's work, and references it explicitly in at least one story ("Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys"). Psychiatrists and their patients pepper Self's prose, in fact, though the professionals who appear within these pages are more in need of analysis than capable of giving good head-shrinking, and you're more likely to meet a junkie on the prowl than a wholesome bourgeois.
The titles of the stories in this comprehensive collection are oddly straightforward, given their contents. "The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz" features just that; "Flytopia" posits just such an insectile paradise as one might think. These are mostly sf stories—speculative fictions, starting from a quirky "what if?" and proceeding with inexorable logic to explore the implications of that hypothesis, however bizarre—but they are also relentlessly prosaic and gritty tales, mired in copious bodily secretions, dangerous drugs and bad weather like a more verbal David Cronenberg. It makes for an arresting combination, although I must admit that I wasn't always prepared to read these stories uninterrupted and in sequence. Too much of the pure stuff may give you an embolism; I think they will go down better if you take them in small doses and allow yourself to become habituated to them gradually.
As Rick Moody notes in his glowing Introduction, Self's word choices are significant and precise, though it was not until the third story in that I beheld the true impact of this—when the word "sleepover" appeared in "Caring, Sharing." It's exactly the right word for that context.
The physical design of the edition I read is also exemplary; the clean design of the dust jacket evokes, without precisely echoing, the earnestness of social-science texts from the 1960s.
It seems obvious to me that none of this is unintentional. Every part of this book, both as an artifact and as a collection of words, has been carefully chosen—an act of self-will, as it were. If well-chosen words are what you're looking for... if the prospect of a thoroughly modern prose stylist unafraid to take on the depths of human depravity appeals to you, and if you don't mind more than a little surrealism mixed in with your reality, then Will Self is for you.
The title of the current collection is self-contradictory (and the puns are unavoidable, I'm afraid—the man's very name is a combination of common nouns, after all). These are selected stories, hardly an undivided view of the author. But the title The Divided Self was already taken. Indeed, Self is well aware of R.D. Laing's work, and references it explicitly in at least one story ("Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys"). Psychiatrists and their patients pepper Self's prose, in fact, though the professionals who appear within these pages are more in need of analysis than capable of giving good head-shrinking, and you're more likely to meet a junkie on the prowl than a wholesome bourgeois.
The titles of the stories in this comprehensive collection are oddly straightforward, given their contents. "The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz" features just that; "Flytopia" posits just such an insectile paradise as one might think. These are mostly sf stories—speculative fictions, starting from a quirky "what if?" and proceeding with inexorable logic to explore the implications of that hypothesis, however bizarre—but they are also relentlessly prosaic and gritty tales, mired in copious bodily secretions, dangerous drugs and bad weather like a more verbal David Cronenberg. It makes for an arresting combination, although I must admit that I wasn't always prepared to read these stories uninterrupted and in sequence. Too much of the pure stuff may give you an embolism; I think they will go down better if you take them in small doses and allow yourself to become habituated to them gradually.
As Rick Moody notes in his glowing Introduction, Self's word choices are significant and precise, though it was not until the third story in that I beheld the true impact of this—when the word "sleepover" appeared in "Caring, Sharing." It's exactly the right word for that context.
The physical design of the edition I read is also exemplary; the clean design of the dust jacket evokes, without precisely echoing, the earnestness of social-science texts from the 1960s.
It seems obvious to me that none of this is unintentional. Every part of this book, both as an artifact and as a collection of words, has been carefully chosen—an act of self-will, as it were. If well-chosen words are what you're looking for... if the prospect of a thoroughly modern prose stylist unafraid to take on the depths of human depravity appeals to you, and if you don't mind more than a little surrealism mixed in with your reality, then Will Self is for you.
March 25, 2020
Favourite stories in order:
The Nonce Prize (but read ‘The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz’ first)
The Five Swing Walk
Caring, Sharing
Understanding the Ur-Bororo
Chest (eerily relevant during this UK quarantine)
Birdy Num Num
Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough boys
Flytopia
Design faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo: A Manual
The Nonce Prize (but read ‘The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz’ first)
The Five Swing Walk
Caring, Sharing
Understanding the Ur-Bororo
Chest (eerily relevant during this UK quarantine)
Birdy Num Num
Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough boys
Flytopia
Design faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo: A Manual
February 17, 2025
If you want freaky insights into the human psyche, you can't do much better than Will Self
https://popculturelunchbox.substack.c...
The UK’s Will Self is one of my favorite authors and an ideal place to start for newbies is his best-of short story 2010 collection The Undivided Self. (I previously reviewed the first two entries from it: “The Rock of Crack as Big as The Ritz” and “Flytopia.”)
After a long break, I’ve returned to the book and “Caring, Sharing” was next up. The story continues the string of must-read fiction from Self, who perhaps fittingly reminds me of the movie Trainspotting every time I see that unique face of his.
(Short stories are, of course, a great way to test the waters with any fiction writer. So I recommend starting here, but if you already like the brilliant premises Self consistently puts forth—and if you’re a fan of monkeys or even better yet all things Planet of the Apes, like me—then by all means plummet headlong into my favorite novel of his, Great Apes, which I ranked in 2014 as my 35th-favorite novel of all time. That book explores animal rights and other issues when a man and his girlfriend wake after a night of debauchery to find they have both somehow become chimpanzees.)
Meanwhile, the short story at hand explores what a post-sexual work could look like. Two humans (or “grown-ups”) have each taken years to overcome past traumatic dates with other humans and have both settled into comfortable recovery with the help of “emotes”—robot-like creatures three times the size of humans who support them emotionally, help dress them and put them to sleep, and cuddle as needed. Things go about as well as seemingly possible on this date, but even more interesting is what takes place in the shadows with the emotes, who appear to be gaining ground on the humans, to say the least, in terms of who’s more human.
In 1999, the The New York Times gave its critique:
“This deadpan allegory is not startlingly new—science fiction satire experts like Frederik Pohl and Robert Sheckley were delivering similar stuff in the 1950s—but it’s performed with tremendous gusto and a peculiar sweetness.”
5 out of 5 stars
“Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys” is about Bill, a contractor psychiatrist, who is on an epic, drunken, and drugged drive from the northern tip of Scotland all the way down to London to see a female acquaintance named Betty. As Bill’s imagination takes him to an idea of buying a castle to begin a sort-of cult of all his ex-girlfriends, he pulls over in the rain to pick up a hitchhiker named Mark. His dislike of the hitchhiker grows throughout the ride as he asks the passenger all kinds of personal questions, which are dutifully answered, but the hitchhiker puzzlingly never asks any personal questions of Bill. The hate in Bill’s mind climaxes when the hitchhiker tells him he plans to ride Tonka toy trucks in the streets of Glasgow later that night. The title of the story is based on an ad slogan for Tonka, which the hitcher had never heard of before. After Bill drops off the hitchhiker and continues on alone getting nearer to London, his disgust in the neglect Mark had shown in questioning him and also in abandoning his child years before got Bill thinking about his own abandonment of his own son. The ride ends there, and I won’t spoil how. While this story is a bit longer, bordering on a novella, it unfolds pretty slowly but is still a gripping take on how our past can karmically come back to grab us.
4 out of 5 stars
“Default Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo: A Manual” is the oddest and least satisfying of these three stories. Bill Bywater, another psychologist protagonist, is reminded of his mistress Serena’s vulva every time he sees the word Volvo, which is pretty often since that’s the kind of car he drives. The relatively short story seems to be all about the lack of logic that goes into the temptations of adultery and, while an entertaining way to spend about 30 minutes or so, isn’t one of Self’s better ones.
3 out of 5 stars
https://popculturelunchbox.substack.c...
The UK’s Will Self is one of my favorite authors and an ideal place to start for newbies is his best-of short story 2010 collection The Undivided Self. (I previously reviewed the first two entries from it: “The Rock of Crack as Big as The Ritz” and “Flytopia.”)
After a long break, I’ve returned to the book and “Caring, Sharing” was next up. The story continues the string of must-read fiction from Self, who perhaps fittingly reminds me of the movie Trainspotting every time I see that unique face of his.
(Short stories are, of course, a great way to test the waters with any fiction writer. So I recommend starting here, but if you already like the brilliant premises Self consistently puts forth—and if you’re a fan of monkeys or even better yet all things Planet of the Apes, like me—then by all means plummet headlong into my favorite novel of his, Great Apes, which I ranked in 2014 as my 35th-favorite novel of all time. That book explores animal rights and other issues when a man and his girlfriend wake after a night of debauchery to find they have both somehow become chimpanzees.)
Meanwhile, the short story at hand explores what a post-sexual work could look like. Two humans (or “grown-ups”) have each taken years to overcome past traumatic dates with other humans and have both settled into comfortable recovery with the help of “emotes”—robot-like creatures three times the size of humans who support them emotionally, help dress them and put them to sleep, and cuddle as needed. Things go about as well as seemingly possible on this date, but even more interesting is what takes place in the shadows with the emotes, who appear to be gaining ground on the humans, to say the least, in terms of who’s more human.
In 1999, the The New York Times gave its critique:
“This deadpan allegory is not startlingly new—science fiction satire experts like Frederik Pohl and Robert Sheckley were delivering similar stuff in the 1950s—but it’s performed with tremendous gusto and a peculiar sweetness.”
5 out of 5 stars
“Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys” is about Bill, a contractor psychiatrist, who is on an epic, drunken, and drugged drive from the northern tip of Scotland all the way down to London to see a female acquaintance named Betty. As Bill’s imagination takes him to an idea of buying a castle to begin a sort-of cult of all his ex-girlfriends, he pulls over in the rain to pick up a hitchhiker named Mark. His dislike of the hitchhiker grows throughout the ride as he asks the passenger all kinds of personal questions, which are dutifully answered, but the hitchhiker puzzlingly never asks any personal questions of Bill. The hate in Bill’s mind climaxes when the hitchhiker tells him he plans to ride Tonka toy trucks in the streets of Glasgow later that night. The title of the story is based on an ad slogan for Tonka, which the hitcher had never heard of before. After Bill drops off the hitchhiker and continues on alone getting nearer to London, his disgust in the neglect Mark had shown in questioning him and also in abandoning his child years before got Bill thinking about his own abandonment of his own son. The ride ends there, and I won’t spoil how. While this story is a bit longer, bordering on a novella, it unfolds pretty slowly but is still a gripping take on how our past can karmically come back to grab us.
4 out of 5 stars
“Default Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo: A Manual” is the oddest and least satisfying of these three stories. Bill Bywater, another psychologist protagonist, is reminded of his mistress Serena’s vulva every time he sees the word Volvo, which is pretty often since that’s the kind of car he drives. The relatively short story seems to be all about the lack of logic that goes into the temptations of adultery and, while an entertaining way to spend about 30 minutes or so, isn’t one of Self’s better ones.
3 out of 5 stars
December 29, 2023
I have no idea what this guy is on about. Maybe I’m not smart enough or deep-thinking enough to get it, or maybe this guy’s writing is a crock of self-indulgent horse excrement. I can’t tell which.
Everybody is divorced, most are having an affair and there’s a lot of drug use. Most people are depressed, London is grey and miserable and things are all going to shit.
And he seems to like cars.
This is an example of what I’d call ennui-porn. That’s all I got.
Everybody is divorced, most are having an affair and there’s a lot of drug use. Most people are depressed, London is grey and miserable and things are all going to shit.
And he seems to like cars.
This is an example of what I’d call ennui-porn. That’s all I got.
March 23, 2019
An excellent introduction to the best of Will Self's work - of you've never read anything by him, it'd be a good one to pick up, as it's a compilation of short stories spanning a fair bit of his career.
Want to read
May 4, 2010Scheduled Nov. 2010. 480 pgs. Introduction by Rick Moody. A greatest hits package drawn from five short story collections with a "bonus track" - a never-before-published work - which, fanboy talking, doesn't rule out "The Happy Detective", a multi-part spoken word piece he's contributed to the Late Night Tales mix-CD series. But would seem to rule out his Amisian satire on Gays and Mormons, "The Principle", and the just plain weird, "The Putti".
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The Happy Detective (excerpt): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qbsNZ...
The Principle: http://www.nerve.com/fiction/self/the...
The Putti: http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n12/ht...
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The Happy Detective (excerpt): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qbsNZ...
The Principle: http://www.nerve.com/fiction/self/the...
The Putti: http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n12/ht...
October 13, 2011
Tricky dialogue, trippy scenarios, and devious storytelling mixed with futuristic (maybe realistic) British dialogue. Reminds me of sci-fi scenarios placed into everyday situations. A bit of Theodore Sturgeon, mixed with Anthony Burgess. I got through the first bunch of stories, including the extremely upsetting sequel to the house foundation made of crack rock. I would like to get back to these stories later.
June 27, 2011
I am giving this a 5 already, since I find most of Self's stories delicious and unnerving (which is pretty much my sweet spot). And I have read about half already, but ones new to me are working as well.
January 27, 2013
Two years later, I can't remember one story or image from this book. Normally, something sticks.
Read
November 8, 2016A collection of short stories. Read about half of them.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews