The Quantity Theory of Insanity (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Will Self
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Short stories
- Genres: Short fiction, Satire, Dark comedy
- Subjects: Suicide, Mental illness, Death or dying, Anthropology or anthropologists, Psychiatry or psychiatrists, Psychotherapy or psychotherapists
American readers got their first taste of Will Self’s genius for depicting the Ionesco-like absurdity of contemporary life in Cock & Bull (1993), a pair of complementary, comically obsessive novellas which, parodying Philip Roth’s The Breast (1972; rev. ed., 1980) parodying Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” (1915; English translation, 1936), take a weirdly angled look at sexual stereotypes and more. Appetites whetted for Self’s brand of postmodern perversity, they got their second course in My Idea of Fun: A Cautionary Tale (1944), an explosively...
[The entire page is 2077 words long]
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