The Butt is an extraordinary, and strange, novel detailing the events
following one man's flick of his cigarette butt of his apartment balcony that
lands on top of the man below's head. What follows is a journey through a
foreign land with bizarre customs, and even more bizarre laws. Could he really
be guilty of attempted murder? Just for flickin' a butt?!
About two chapters into this book I began to think of George Orwell's
'six rules for writing' and in particular the second rule: 'never use a long
word where a short one will do.' I'll repeat that 'never use a long word
where a short one will do.' Boy oh boy were there some 'long' words in
this book - and by long I mean I'm sitting there having to chew my way through
sentences three or four times before it goes in. This made it annoying almost
instantly as it was arduous trying to get through chapters and stops the flow
of the story. There's nothing wrong with 'long' words, in fact most of them are
poetic and beautiful but writing things like 'actualité'
instead of 'truth' is plain ridiculous. Orwell would be most unimpressed.
To Self's credit, he is a genius at describing simple,
every day things and making them sound unusual and exciting. I knew it was
worth trudging through the long-winded chapters just to get a few descriptive
gems at the end of it.
In terms of story originality and creative, this book
would get a ten out of ten from almost everyone, but where it comes up short is
in the delivery. There is no denying Self's writing ability, and sense of
humour, but at the end of the book after we are forced to churn through chapter
after chapter following the protagonist on a long, boring and pointless journey
driving across baron land and finally arrive at our destination to be told by
another character who arrived there much earlier that he 'had flown', I just
thought well, bloody hell, couldn't we have flown too?
Will Self is an author I would always recommend but as
for this book, it's not very high on my list of 'must-reads'.
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