Self's Bull + Gonzales

            Bull is the story of Bull, who discovers a vagina on the back of his leg.  He is curious about it but is more fearful than anything else.  Not much happens in the present: Bull discovers the orifice and rushes to the hospital instead of going in for work.  On his way to the hospital, however, we are given exposition that better contextualizes Bull’s current crisis. 

            Although Self is poking fun at the notion of “raised consciousness” (171) as the result of such a metamorphosis, it is, in fact, what is happening in the story.   Bull, for the first time in his life, is forced to contemplate the experience of the opposite sex.  He is “…imprisoned in a stereoscopic zone where a shift in angle is all that’s required for free will to be seen as determined.” (156) This becomes evident when he remembers his experience at a bar after discovering the vagina.  A comedian named Razza Rob is relentlessly making jokes about vaginas and even singles out Bull as the subject of a joke.  He feels awkward and self-conscious and wants to escape the bar, but if he had not sprouted a vagina he would have been perfectly content in participating in the vulgar and insensitive humor: “Given the right circumstances Bull could appreciate a good joke at the expense of women’s genitals just as much as the next man.” (169) This moment underscores Bull’s hypocrisy.  We also learn about Dr. Margoulies, who is a womanizing and cheating man, but he’s a nice doctor!  A saint!

            Madelena Gonzales, in The Aesthetics of Post-Realism and the Obscenification of Everyday Life: The Novel in the Age of Technology, asks: “…how does the novel, a traditionally low- tech form, requiring only pen and paper, interact with this new state of af- fairs or state of the art?” (115) Although the technique of free-indirect discourse is not a very recent development, it is a modern technique that is represented in Self’s Cock and Bull.  On his way to the hospital, Bull thinks about all the people that have committed suicide from the building (bridge) in front of him.  We are experiencing this moment from the third person perspective, but then suddenly, without introduction that we are entering Bull’s mind, Self adds: “I mustn’t keep thinking like that.” (161) This internal monologue illustrates things about Bull that would otherwise have been inaccessible.  This technique, especially in an age in which “television and cinema have taken over the narrative function of the novel” (Gonzales), is particularly useful.