Simon Dykes, un bohemio pintor londinense de cierto éxito, pasa una desenfrenada noche de juerga politoxicómana y se va a dormir la borrachera a casa de su novia, Sarah. Al despertarse a la mañana siguiente descubre horrorizado que la mujer que dormita entre sus brazos se ha metamorfoseado en una enorme mona. Y lo que es peor, también él ha adquirido una apariencia simiesca. Pero la pesadilla no acaba ahí: Simon descubre que toda la población ha corrido igual suerte y Londres se ha convertido en una ciudad de primates. Simon se siente un hombre embutido en un cuerpo de mono, lo cual le lleva a ser considerado víctima de una crisis psicotica por sus simiescos conciudadanos y cae en manos del doctor Zack Busner, un militante de la antipsiquiatría que lo somete a un tratamiento que deberá conducirlo a la aceptación de que es un mono...

I 1st read mention of Will Self in a text by Stewart Home. Home insulted Self as being something along the lines of a rich Oxford junkie who doesn't deserve his reputation as an underground writer. Since I'd never heard of Self before, he had no reputation w/ me at all. Knowing Stewart's tendency to publically degrade anyone who he perceives as competition, I didn't take the negativity as representative of any substantial critical take. After all, it seems that Home's usual intention is to discourage conformists & sycophants from even experiencing the work of the people he puts down by making experiencing such work 'uncool'. Thusly, idiots can automatically hate Self's writing on the basis of Home's word & never discover for themselves whether Self's writing might be more interesting than Home's.

W/ that in mind, when I finally saw this bk by Self I picked it up. Having just finished reading it, I have to wonder whether Self is a pseudonym of Home. However, after doing extremely cursory pseudo-research on the net, this appears to be not the case. The writing style is similarly somewhat simple-minded but I'd give Self credit for being a little more accomplished. Home's use of the same joking repetitive description of sex over & over in his 1st novel "Pure Mania" is somewhat akin to Self's running joke referring to his character Zack Busner's self-inflated self-definitions: "the maverick anti-psychiatrist - as he liked to style himself" eg. I can certainly see why the 2 writers wd be professional rivals.

ANYWAY, I started reading this & at 1st took it to be a sign that the once-great Grove Press had deteriorated from its days as the publisher of William S. Burroughs & Jean Genet. Despite a promising alternate reality premise, I quickly got bored w/ what strikes me as a malaise of post-censorship writing: too much sex & drugs for sensationalism's sake & as a substitute for genuine incisive examination.

HOWEVER, that eventually changed & I became engrossed. "Great Apes" begins w/ an "Author's Note" in wch the author presents himself as a chimpanzee perversely writing about humans as if they'd become the dominant species instead of chimps. Then the main character, Simon Dykes, a British painter, is introduced. We follow Simon's night & sex & art life as a human for awhile until he has a breakdown & finds himself in a world in wch chimps ARE the dominant species & in wch he's one too.

From then on, the world is described w/ many references to modern-day human conditions but w/ chimps substituted for humans. Simon ends up in the doctoral care of Zack Busner & the reader follows the steps he goes thru to regain his "chimpunity". I assume Self did some research into chimpanzee studies b/c it's all fairly convincingly presented. "Arse-Lickers" definitely takes on a highly socially defined meaning here.

In the process, Self manages to give the reader a refreshing take on humanity - esp in relation to hierarchical posturings of the art & scientific worlds. Take this paragraph:

"'Of course, Zackiekins "chup-chupp", I am honored that you acknowledge my ascent up the hierarchy. Now, as I was signing, the reputations of these artists - if that's what they are - are also so arguable, that they require continual interpretation and "gru-nnn" adjustment by a large party of critics "grnn". The critics have their own hierarchy, and the hierarchy that exists between them and the artists' party is also highly fluid - subject to continual flux. That's why "chup-chupp" they're all dressed up, and displaying and presenting and grooming and mating, for all the buggers are worth "h'hee-hee-hee"!'"

In the above excerpt the main text is being signed by Simon & the things like "chup-chupp" are being vocalized - in a sortof reversal of human communication in wch the hands are used gesturally & the voice as the main communicator - something I assume to be accurate in chimps.

All in all, I ended up liking this alot. I've been preoccupied for many a yr w/ humans as animals. As a child, I was raised w/ the common notion that humans are distinguished from animals by various cognitive abilities that supposedly make us superior. As a teenager that seemed like a crock of shit & I've always stated that we ARE animals. Not such a radical idea, of course. I never had a problem w/ being an animal. Oddly, though, these days I DO have a problem w/ being one. Not b/c being an animal is something I consider to be 'bad' but b/c I'm a bit sick of the conflicts between instinctual behavior & intellectual behavior.

Sex between humans is a constant struggle between instincts & thoughts. I use the term BOD (Biological OverDrive) to refer to what propels us into sexual contact. The idea's obvious: we're driven to mate to further our DNA's quest for new forms. Men try to impregnate, women try to be impregnated. Perhaps gays & lesbians try to create a Third Mind. At any rate, the body cooperates w/ this process by making sexual contact a form of pleasure to be lusted for w/ great frequency. Such an acknowledgement of biological drives is almost taboo amongst political activists who prefer to emphasize social hierarchies entirely.

But back to chimps & humans. Chimpanzees have Alpha Males - males who dominate &, therefore, fuck the most females. These males use violence, displays, to maintain this position. This has preoccupied me for a long time. Humans parallel chimps in this & many respects. Alpha Male Humans rule for a while & are eventually overthrown when they get too weak to effectively use violence against the up & coming. This is instinctual. But humans have complex intellectual & social codes that temper this. The male instinctual drive may push toward impregnating as many females as possible, but the intellectual deterrents might include a lack of desire for producing children, & a desire for using sex purely for pleasure. Social deterrents might be that producing children usually carries w/ it the responsibility of taking care of them - a responsibility that the fe/male might abhor.

I often say that being in bands is just the human form of mating displaying - trying to attract a mate or mates. There's not often a strong musical impetus behind it - even if lip service is pd to music or other purposes the mating display seems like the strong, & usually underacknowledged, undercurrent. Males, esp, have bands when the members are in their 20s & then gradually fade out of the music biz after the attraction factor has served its purpose somewhat.

"Great Apes" is a good exploration of parallels between chimp & human behavior. Throughout it, there are carefully implanted references to such purposes - such as when the use of humans as cute cuddly animals in chimp society representations are alluded to, eg. ( )

".....human intelligence is by definition what humans naturally do.."

After a night of routine debauchery in London clubland surrounded by sycophants, artist Simon Dykes awakes up one morning from an uneasy dream to discover himself transformed into a giant ape and his world irretrievably altered. Worse, still his attractive girlfriend, Sarah, is now a sex-obsessed chimpanzee. Simon, not unreasonably, assumes that he is suffering a psychotic episode brought on by overdoing the drink and drugs but he finds himself carted off to a secure psychiatric hospital where a team of primate psychiatrists set about 'curing' him of his bizarre delusion; that he is human. Maverick psychiatrist and sometime television personality, Dr Zack Busner, takes an interest in Simon's case and decides to take him under his wing in the hope that here is a case that will finally make his name.

The London of 'Great Apes' is similar to our own. Its adults drive Volvos and are bankers or work in insurance, whilst their delinquent offspring either hang around on street corners, drinking Special Brew and smoking pot, or patrolling the streets looking for casual sex and violence. But at home their social structure is rigorously chimp: polygamous groups(where premature ejaculation denotes sexual prowess) which are maintained by a strict hierarchy and mutual grooming.Communication is by sign-language, supplemented by hoots and growls.

Self is original and very funny; here he satirises human masculinity, drugs, hospitals, academics, psychiatrists and is gruesomely vivid at times. However, the story feels like a long string of clever puns and in-jokes which ultimately don't seem to go anywhere and are overly drawn out. I found the first 300 pages or so of this novel an outrageous roller-coaster of a ride but unfortunately there were still a quarter of it to go. ( )

Will Self's book "Great Apes" is a funny idea that gets dragged out into a full length novel for no particular good reason. A man wakes up and finds all the world has transformed into chimpanzees. Cue a whole lot of furry copulation and poop flinging. I found it tedious after about 50 pages. ( )

I litteraturen har mange personer prøvet at blive forvandlet til dyr. Odysseus’ søfolk blev forvandlet til svin, i Det gyldne æsel måtte hovedpersonen opleve mange ydmygelser som firbenet pakdyr og i Kafkas Forvandlingen vågner Georg Samsa op til en ydmygende isolation som et gigantisk kryb. Transformationen er en måde at udforske den menneskelige tilværelse på, og sådan er det også i Store Aber.

Kunstmaleren Simon Dykes er velkendt skikkelse: Kunstmaler, fraskilt, midaldrende og med et lidt for stort forbrug af stoffer og alkohol. Næste udstilling er lige om hjørnet, og Dykes vil gå i en ny retning og vise menneskekroppen i netop det øjeblik, hvor den knuses i en trafikulykke eller fortæres af en voldsom brand. Der mangler masser af arbejde, men alligevel tager han med sin yngre kæreste Sarah og nogle af hendes venner i byen, hvor de som sædvanlig tager dårlig kokain og ender i sengen i en voldsom rus.

Da han vågner, er verden forandret. Sarah er forvandlet til en chimpanse, og det slår ham selvfølgelig med rædsel. Da sygehjælperne fra den psykiatriske skadestue kommer, kan de hurtigt konstatere, at den er helt gal: Foran dem er to chimpanser og en kælepony, men den ene panse er gået fra forstanden. Han påstår, at han er menneske, og han skriger til kæresten, at hun er et grimt dyr, der ikke må røre ham.

Under indlæggelsen får den berømte tv-psykolog Zack Bushner øje på Dykes. Bushner er i sin kontroversielle karrieres efterår, og han lever hovedsaligt af at skrive bøger og lave fjernsynsprogrammer om særligt interessante tilfælde. En panse, der bilder sig ind, at han er et menneske, og hvis vrangforestillinger er så komplekse, at han kan beskrive menneskeligt samliv detaljeret, er selvfølgelig en fremragende case.

Self nøjes altså ikke med at forvandle sin hovedperson. Han forvandler hele verden til en chimpanseverden, hvor Dykes er den eneste der tror, at han er et menneske. Chimpanse-samfundet er bogens bærende ide, og det er ikke uinteressant at se, hvordan en verden med det udgangspunkt kunne se ud. Chimpanserne bor stadig i flokke med en dominerende alfa-han i spidsen, den sociale orden fastlægges gennem fysisk dominans og gensidig soignering er afgørende for at opbygge relationer. Samtidig er det et samfund, hvor sex på kryds og tværs er helt naturligt, og hvor hunnerne bliver bedækket af stribevis af hanner, når de er i ’østrus’. Påklædning er begrænse til overkroppen, så de effektive fødder kan bruges til at gribe med, og ikke mindst så de imponerende bagdele kan vises frem.

På den anden side er meget fuldstændigt som i vores verden, og det virker nogle gange lidt tilfældigt, hvad der er lavet om, og hvad der ikke er. Aberne kommunikere primært via tegnsprog suppleret med enkelte lyde, men alligevel er Bushner og konen til opera. Det giver jo ikke meget mening.

Og i andre sammenhænge nyder Self tydeligvis at fremhæve abeskikke, som han ved vil provokere. Fædrene forventes f.eks. at parre sig med deres døtre – alt andet er børnemishandling – de lovpriser og piller konstant ved hinandens røvhuller, og pelsen er gang på gang plettet med sæd og lort, som pilles ud ved soignering og stoppes i munden. Mon ikke en chimpanse-Pasteur også ville have bragt abesamfundet i en mere hygiejnisk retning?

Disse særheder bliver meget tydelige, fordi bogen er over 400 sider. Det ville have fungeret langt bedre som en novella, hvor det anderledes chimpansesamfund kunne præsenteres uden at selvmodsigelserne blev så tydelige.

Bogens andet problem er skildringen af Dykes. Hans fortvivlelse skildres kun udefra, for efter indledningen ser vi overvejende historien fra Bushners synsvinkel. Den intense rædsel over egen krop, som Kafka skildrer så levende, er kun en påstand i Store Aber.

Der er en grund til, at spejlverdener og forvandlinger bruges så ofte i litteraturen. Det er simpelthen et godt greb, og det er interessant at udforske de verdener, der konstrueres. Chimpanseverdenen er også det mest interessante i Store aber, men bogen er for lang, for provokerende for provokationens skyld og slutningen var utilfredsstillende. ( )