A literary sensation on the strength of his breakout collection of interwoven short stories—1991’s The Quantity Theory of Insanity—Will Self continued to impress with 1992’s Cock and Bull, a pair of novellas that take conventional notions of gender and turn them inside out. Inspired by Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa wakes up one day to find himself turned into a giant insect, Self offers the story of Carol, a woman whose clitoris lengthens into a penis, and John Bull, a man who grows a vagina behind his knee. In both cases Self examines the impact these physical metamorphoses have on the gender identity of his protagonists. Critics and reviewers did not quite know what to make of Cock and Bull’s absurdist premise. Some applaud its playful approach to gender (Harbord). Others accuse it of being too clever by half and of using dexterous wordplay to obscure what is a vulgar sort of determinism (Kakutani). The confusion is understandable because the author himself claims to be undecided, explaining that, when asked what the story is about: I’d give various answers:
that it was about my rage with feminist arguments that all men are rapists by virtue of possessing the requisite weapon; that it was about the breakdown in gender distinctions which implied that all it was to be either one or the other was a mix and match of the requisite parts; that it was about my own nature, for, as Cocteau remarked, all true artists are hermaphrodites. (2006, 285)
Ultimately, Self suggests that the question can be boiled down to this: Is gender biologically or culturally determined? Taking Carol as our example, we can conclude that the answer is, quite simply, yes.
Francesco Guidicini/Camera Press/France
At first glance, Carol appears to be a blatant instance of biological determinism. Her growing penis provides a masculine sense of empowerment—“an acute awareness of a solid and mechanical species of causation in the world” (54)—while it also fuels her aggressive tendencies, culminating in rape. And yet Carol’s metamorphosis has cultural rather than biological origins. Significantly, her penis emerges at the very moment she becomes aware of her hapless husband’s shortcomings: Ruled by the bottle and his overbearing mother, Dan turns out to be not much of a man. His abdication of a strong male role leaves the relations between the sexes out of balance (at least, as traditionally conceived). Carol’s penis thus emerges as a biological response to a cultural imperative, rushing in to fill the void left by Dan’s deficient masculinity.
Cock is also about the nature of narrative itself, suggesting that the experience of gender needs to be understood as a story we tell about ourselves. Crucially, the story of Carol and hapless Dan comes to us at a remove. Cock is narrated to a nameless listener by a character described only as a fussy university don. His account of Carol’s metamorphosis is increasingly interrupted by a variety of hateful rants, culminating in a vicious attack on his listener, who, as he is being raped, realizes that the don is none other than the newly empowered Carol. Her penis has prompted a masculinity that is toxic in its attitude toward otherness, which must be relentlessly feminized and dominated through both words and brute force.
If Cock concludes that the penis makes the man, Bull explores the impact of a wayward vagina on the lad. John Bull, British Everyman, wakes up one morning to find a vagina nestled behind his knee. Convincing himself that it is a burn or wound, Bull immediately consults his doctor. This is in sharp contrast to Carol, who, glorying in her “frond,” has absolutely no intention of seeking treatment. Dr. Margoulies, Bull’s sleazy general practitioner, calms his hysterical patient down, though he is less interested in his Bull’s well-being than in the erotic potential of his new orifice, an obsession with tragicomic implications.
Beyond Bull and Carol’s shocking transformation, their interactions with secondary characters provide occasion for Self to develop themes that he would continue to obsess over throughout the 1990s. Foremost among them is an abiding suspicion of the medical establishment’s claims on what constitutes mental health. Starting with The Quantity Theory of Insanity, the target of Self’s satire is the scientific obsession with measuring, classifying, quantifying—the indignities of attempting to reduce subjective experience to a function of objective knowledge. As such, two characters in particular come in for harsh treatment. Dave 2—Dan’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor in Cock—is the perfect foil for Self’s merciless send-up of the banal affirmations of therapy. Meanwhile, Dr. Margoulies, who soothes Bull’s anxiety over his “troublesome gash” while plotting his seduction, is a stand-in for the mendacity of modern medicine.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harbord, Janet. “Performing Parts: Gender and Sexuality in Recent Fiction and Theory,” Women: A Cultural Review 7, no. 1 (Spring 1996), 39–47.
Kakutani, Michiko. “Comic Novellas on Metamorphoses,” New York Times, 31 May 1993, p. 20.
Self, Will. Cock and Bull. London: Bloomsbury, 1992. ———. Junk Mail. New York: Black Cat, 2006.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Short Story
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