Product Description

"Cock: A Novelette" is the story of a woman who grows a fully functional penis. "Bull: A Farce" is the story of a man who acquires a vagina and all its companion parts. There are, however, complications. Cock & Bull, the book that introduced an enfant terrible of English letters to an American audience, has quickly become a classic of blistering satire.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #175027 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Two bitingly erudite and absurdist novellas describe characters who suddenly sprout the genitalia of the opposite sex.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
If David Lodge were to collaborate with Monty Python, the results might resemble this wickedly playful, gender-bending pair of novellas. The first, Cock: A Novelette, concerns Carol, a passive young woman trapped in an unsatisfying marriage, who starts developing a penis. Personality changes soon follow, leading to unpleasant consequences for Dan, her loutish husband. Bull: A Farce , meanwhile, involves a typical Englishman, archetypally named John Bull, who wakes up one day to discover a "wound" on his leg that turns out be a vagina. The doctor who examines him develops a more-than-professional interest in his new genitalia, and the two begin a confused affair. While gender complications play an obvious role in these satiric tales, Self's real target is "the horror that shadows each and every aspect of the ordinary." Recommended for public libraries.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Two eerily fascinating, original novellas, delving into a nightmarish world of sexual ambiguity and moral ambivalence, from British writer Self. Cock (``A Novelette'') and Bull (``A Farce'') offer complementary views of the dark possibilities that emerge when sexual differences are miraculously overcome. The former story concerns Carol, a miserable housewife who married the man responsible for her first orgasm only to have him turn into a cringing, boorish drunk. Finding a release from her desperation in masturbation, she discovers that she's also growing a penis, but eventually her disgust turns to admiration, and with a new-found assertiveness she's able to liberate herself from her husband in a final, grimly satisfying way. The narrator of Carol's tale, an unctuous Oxford don who trapped an unwilling listener in a train compartment, moves from words to action to reach a vicious climax of his own, brutalizing his fellow traveller before going his way. Bull poses another Kafkaesque turn, as a beefy sportswriter-turned- cabaret-critic awakens one morning to find that a vagina has formed between his calf and knee. Thinking it a wound, he seeks medical treatment, but his doctor, believed by all (and himself) to be a saint, becomes obsessed with it and quickly seduces his patient. After a few nights of unimaginable coupling, his moral scruples reappear and the two part company, but the hapless victim has conceived and flees to San Francisco to bear his shame alone. Savagely satirical and visceral, with all the tawdry glories of modern British life exposed: as chilling as it is outrageous. Definitely not for the squeamish. (First printing of 22,500) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Making 'Brilliant' cliche...
This happened to be the 3rd book of Will Self's that I read, the first being Great Apes and second being The Sweet Smell of Psychosis. The athletic story line in this collection of two novellas were pleasantly charming. Here I am sitting in a dreadry Romantic American Literature Class but reading about a guy who suddenly grows a vagina beind his left knee. That brings us into the subject matter. First we have 'Cock: A Novelette'. In it this woman, over a period of time, grows a fully functional male penis. In 'Bull: A Farce', a rugby player is bestowed by fate with a fully functional femine genitalia network, so to speak. There are, however, complications to both of these. Cock and Bull is a good read for postmodernists or anyone who thinks that books are dull. Be warned, however, the writing stlye is complex and hard to understand if you are not equipt for the task. Very good book though, over all.

When men and women switch roles
A definite oddity of a book that explores how and why men and women are infinitely different. One woman grows fully functional male genitalia and conversely a male is disfigured with female genitals in the back of his knee. What's most interesting about the books is the emotional metamorphosis, not necessarily the physical one that these two independent people experience.

I liked the idea of the book, however I found the vocabulary to be grandiloquent at times. Reading this book with a dictionary nearby was a necessity for me. This isn't necessarily a weakness, however I found that the book should have been a little more decipherable for being such a small novelette. The story itself was grand; the vocabulary just confused and overshadowed the narrative. I liked the book, and I recommend it, just be prepared to sit with a dictionary while reading.

Gender swap
These two novellas, written at great speed during a holiday in Morocco, when Self was, as he proclaimed himself 'high on marijuana' have the brio and freshness of stories rolled out with swift, merciless satire.

The concept is similar in both stories - exploring the murky waters of human sexual identity, but the pace differs. In 'Cock' a woman trapped in a moribund marriage to a bloke whose idea of sexual seduction is to ask if he can 'climb on board' gradually finds the grisly stub of her clitoris growing and expanding into a fully fledged penis, which takes over her personality giving it freakish impulses.

In 'Bull', the metamorphosis is more sudden. Like Gregor Samsa, Bull, a slightly dimwitted, naive rugby player who implausibly writes an arts column for a listings magazine wakes up one morning to find a vagina has sprouted in the crook of his knee. Strange things happen to him as he tries to come to grips with this, and the curious attentions of his doctor Alan Margoulies...

This is not Self's best work. It pitches well, but the stories are too frenzied and overwrought to have the subtleties and satirical power of his greatest stories. But there is still plenty of humour, and like all Self's writing, his prose holds up an ugly and uncomfortable mirror to ourselves, and our modes of living.