Fiction: Ever get the feeling that you've walked into a conversation several hours too late to understand whatever point is being made? If there ever was one. Well, reading Will Self's latest offering of oddments reflecting the state of multi-racial, social-welfare Britain and/or the human mind is a bit like that, writes Eileen Battersby.
Allowing for a laugh or two along the way, this is one of those books that underlines what happens when a youngish, quasi-subversive writer becomes a near instant institution, or worse still, a celebrity with a trend radar who can simply toss off a book thanks to having a couple of commissioned pieces on hand and an apparently epic belief in his own entertainment value.
Self is known for being radio show/ newspaper article/literary conference slick and topical. Added to that is the fact that he has to date produced a rain forest of work - or wordage. Perhaps if you are a Self follower, and have already read every word he has written, there may be something in this new collection for you. If like me, you have not, you may feel life is too short to justify an encounter with a smart-alec book that says nothing, offering only a few comic jabs and several pangs of déjà vu, set in the territory London writers love to prowl.
Here's a guy so well-established and officially cool that he can dedicate a book, this one, to his publisher. Self has figured out what's wrong with Britain as well as what ails mankind in general - we are all sexually frustrated, too thin, too fat, too old, too alone; unhappy, depressed, dissatisfied, under threat and given to crazy dreams. Oh yes, and he has decided that most of us are also insane. Now that each reader knows he or she is not alone in their misery, Self makes it easy for us to face the day - or at least read his fiction.
The catch is, it's not really fiction at all. Self does not tell stories, he makes slick, hip, social observations, leaving his characters to limp along like an army of walking wounded who happened to get caught in the crossfire of his cleverness.
Britain has its share of novelists who expend so much prose on opinion pieces that they can shoulder the professional journalists out of the way, and every few years - or more often, in the case of Self - produce hefty volumes of journalistic titbits to fill in the gaps left by the novels they don't appear to want to write as the old celebrity journalism pays more.
Many moons ago, in the last century - well, in darkest 1993 - Will Self featured on one of those lists that the British literary community is so keen on posting, rather like naming survivors after a nuclear devastation. He was, along with 19 other marked men and women, a custodian of Brit Lit. In short, Self was hosanna'd as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 1993.
Self, a great name for an egoist (as is Will, "wilful"), appeared on the London scene as the next generation's answer to Martin Amis. He was heading in the direction of social satire delivered in comic narratives with a tendency towards grotesque humour and equally grotesque cartoon characters. Now, with 11 books under his belt, not forgetting a further four volumes of non-fiction and masses of newspaper articles, he is still producing sharp, cartoon-like observations and very funny single sentences, and is regarded as a guru and trendy media high priest - but has yet to earn the title of storyteller.
Take the title story, a novella, in this latest collection. 'Dr Mukti' features the good doctor, "a psychiatrist of modest achievements but vaulting ambition". His best friend is an equally unhappy old school pal. The pair don't like each other much but dislike themselves even more. Mukti is an Indian who once renounced his culture to the point of marrying an English girl. His parents made sure the marriage didn't last longer than a few minutes and wife number two was, duly, a beautiful, if sexually compromised, Indian girl. Hey ho, somehow they produced a boy child and his arrival ends their sexual relationship.
Among Mukti's other problems is the bizarre string of weirdo patients being despatched to him by a fellow shrink, Zack Busner. Before this side of the narrative develops, Self has time to make what proves to be the funniest observation in this particular tale of woe. Returning home to his untidy London dwelling, peopled by ancient Indian relatives, all grazing gummily, he wonders "what it would be like to live in a home that did not resemble a bus-station canteen". Cue laughter. I thought it was funny, though not much else is in the story, which eventually nosedives into one of those offbeat twists so favoured by Self.
About the best piece in the book is the third person narrative, '161', in which a young lad in fear of his life takes to living secretly in a wardrobe in an old man's flat in a tower block. Elsewhere, 'Conversations with Ord' features more of the same, in this case life as an ordeal endured by a narrator who begins his turn with the best sentence in the story: "I was down to one friend, Keith, a former bank robber."
London, in Selfland, is drab and full of misfits and mental breakdowns. By the time you arrive at the final story, featuring an artist who thinks he is a chimp, you could be suspecting Selfland is not your kind of place.
Suffice to say Self is no Martin Amis. Lacking the Amis linguistic panache and also curiously devoid of any real substance, the languidly clever Self creates the impression of writing self-regarding fiction to meet deadlines and fill clearly available space.
The short story genre merits more respect. No reader really expects every performance to bear the touch of genius or palpable pain, but when prose is as impersonal and flat as this, it looks like it's time to cast a second glance at the emperor.
Publishers have long since given up on line editing, but have they also abandoned quality control?
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe. By Will Self, Bloomsbury, 257pp. £15.99