Mention Books Conducive To Great Apes
| Original Title: | Great Apes |
| ISBN: | 0802135765 (ISBN13: 9780802135766) |
| Characters: | Zack Busner |
| Literary Awards: | Tähtivaeltaja Award (2000) |
Ilustration In Pursuance Of Books Great Apes
Fans of Will Self's satirical fiction and stunning prose will not be disappointed in the latest from the author who brought readers through the bizarre war between the sexes in Cock & Bull and into the costly world of high-stakes business in My Idea of Fun. With Great Apes, Self takes readers into a sort of "Planet of the Apes" with a twist. Simon Dykes is a London painter whose life suddenly becomes Kafkaesque. After an evening of routine debauchery, traipsing from toilet to toilet and partaking in a host of narcotics, the middle-aged painter wakes to discover that his girlfriend, Sarah, has turned into a chimpanzee. Simon is also a chimp, but he does not accept this fact—he is convinced that he is still human.
He is then confined to an emergency psychiatric ward and placed under the care of alpha-psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner. Simon finds chimp behavior a bit unnatural; he can't bring himself to use gestures rather than speech to communicate. He also finds it difficult to mate publicly or accept social grooming. Dr. Zack Busner—also a medical doctor, radical psychoanalyst, maverick axiolytic drug researcher, and former television personality—is prepared to help Simon get used to "chimpunity". It is during Simon's gradual simianization that Self's true satirical genius shines, as he examines anthropology, the trendy art world, animal rights, and much more.
Be Specific About Based On Books Great Apes
| Title | : | Great Apes |
| Author | : | Will Self |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 404 pages |
| Published | : | August 11th 1998 by Grove Press (first published 1997) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Fantasy |
Rating Based On Books Great Apes
Ratings: 3.66 From 3202 Users | 217 ReviewsJudgment Based On Books Great Apes
to be honest I still have not finished this book yet.When I started to read it my person life went tits up...things evened out and I picked up the book again and my personal life went tits up, I stopped reading it, things got better, started again and things went tits up!The book is cursed. I mentioned my problems with The Great Apes to a friend of mine, Paul Lee, and the exact same patten happened with him!!... an infinite number of chimpanzees ... would probably form a committee to ensure they never randomly produced the rubbish that is Great Apes. 20 pages into this, you'd be forgiven for thinking Will Self was a meaningful pseudonym. Pretty much from the get go, this seems to be all about convincing us how clever the author is. As Lyn Gardner writes in her Guardian review of the Great Apes stage play,... the show always seems keener on showcasing its larky cleverness than on creating real
This book, if book is what you must call it, stank up my life for ten days or two weeks while I dodged all of the chimpshit Self decided to fling at me, the innocent reader. Chimpshit. That's all it was. Four hundred pages of chimpshit.Oh. I'm sorry. Did I forget to mention that I thought this novel to be nothing but chimpshit? Pure and fruity chimpshit?
I didn't finish this book because it was far too much hard work. Even with an Oxbridge degree (though not in literature), I pretty much found myself opening a dictionary every couple of pages. And the new words used didn't really enrich or enliven the story - or my own vocab. I very much get the impression that the author is very much Self by name... This novel makes me think he writes for self-agrandisement rather than for creativity and the enjoyment of others.
The concept is interesting, but the chimp culture felt contrived and overdone and the human plot line bored me to tears. And please stop beating me over the head with the "morality is relative" message. We get it, man is just as dirty as chimps, even if they aren't repeatedly banging their aunt's bloody vagina.
This book has one of the most exhilarating first chapters I've ever read - I actually went back to reread it twice before moving on to chapter 2. The basic premise of the book is fascinating: the central character is transformed intio a chimpanzee and so is everyone else around him. The first part of the book was a joy, but the joke wears progressively thinner as the book goes on. It would have made a great novella, but the pressure to make it a book length thing destroyed it.
one line joke in 404 pages. The reader may get a minor positive feeling when the figure out some of the made-up words 'chimpunity' = humanity. There are major or minor levels of shock and disgust depending on your personal threshold for grossness when the 'apes' do the things you may have seen monkeys do at the zoo as part of acceptable everyday culture. And then there is the redundancy of having these two tricks expended and repeated to pad out the story. I am not sure why I forced myself to
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