Will Self’s Cock is the story of Carol and Dan, who
meet during a pub-crawl in college and get married. The story is told from Carol’s perspective. What begins
as a mildly unfulfilling sex life worsens into one Carol cannot tolerate. Her dissatisfaction with Dan, who has
grown to be a burden because of his alcoholism, leads Carol to explore
alternatives for sexual satisfaction.
She discovers the joys of masturbation, but soon thereafter stumbles
upon a growth above her genitals, which is later determined to be a penis.
Carol
carries on with her life, and attempts to fix her husbands problems by
participating in AA meetings with him and his mentor. While she uses these meetings as a platform through which to
vent her own anxieties about her secret down below, Carol ultimately finds both
Dan and her mentor intolerable and rapes both of them.
Cock is the story of a metamorphosis,
but not in the traditional sense. It
is both comedic and serious. The subject matter alone undermines that great
literary achievements that utilize the same theme of metamorphosis, like Kafka’s
and Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Self’s Cock is a satirical piece not only meant to undermine
traditional literary themes, but it is transgressive in its attack on
contemporary gender roles. His
story demands the questions: How does Carol’s penis change her? Are genital parts correlate with masculinity
and femininity? How much of our everyday behavior as male and female is
performance? Why are we so
obsessed with our genitals?
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