The Butt

By Will Self

When Tom Brodzinski finally decides to give up smoking during a family holiday in a weird, unnamed land, a moment's inattention becomes his undoing. Flipping the butt of his last cigarette off the balcony of the holiday apartment, it lands on the head of the elderly Reggie Lincoln, and burns him. Despite Brodzinski's liberal attitudes and good intentions, the local authorities treat his action as an assault. Soon the full weight of the courts and tribal custom is brought to bear. What follows is a journey through a fantastically distorted world, a country that is part Australia, part Iraq and entirely the heart of distinctively modern darkness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Aug 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781408837399

Will Self

Will Self is an English novelist, journalist, political commentator and television personality. He is the author of ten novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas, and five collections of non-fiction writing.

Reviews for The Butt

[vguy_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Intriguing dystopia with lost guy going on an enforced Quest. Plenty of W Self's peculiar brand of misanthropy; well-drawn galere of depressing rogues, superbly read on my CD by ??. Rendering of a nightmare world, part Australia, part Brave New World. gets a bit lost once journey's end is reached where a mastermind German (Konrad Lorenz cum Platonic philosopher king cum Don Cipriano of the Plumed Serpent) explains how he and his dad have invented the whole thing. The protagonist then loses touch with whatever reality there might be and it all gets a bit confusing and inconclusive.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I once switched off a radio interview with Will Self because I was feeling sorry for the interviewer. I gave this book a go, though, in the belief that being irritating and writing great literature don’t have to be mutually exclusive. So it turned out, up to a point: this is very well written, original, and possessed of a sort of bleak sarcasm all of its own.It’s set in a huge country – a Southern Hemisphere island continent where colonialism has marginalised the indigenous population; it has an arid and inhospitable interior and men wear ‘strides’. Sound familiar? Well, it’s not Australia. In this curious country there exists a farcical legal system in which a tourist who drops a cigarette butt off his hotel balcony is subjected to legal proceedings because it lands on another person’s head.I guess I was expecting something a bit more light hearted than this turned out to be. It felt like being trapped inside some bizarre dream – probably intentionally – and though it was clearly a high-functioning satire on something, I couldn’t for the life of me work out what. I’m pinning my hopes on a reviewer on here being able to fill in the gaps for me. It did get me thinking about satirical literature in general – the way that it can deploy all the irony it likes, but unless the perspective lines of that irony cross somewhere to focus the reader on the question, moral or otherwise, that is being posed, many readers are just going to miss the point. I don't know what the point was, in this novel - you could pick from any number of possibilities (the anti-smoking movement, multiculturalism, tourism, or maybe - just maybe - it's an emperor's new clothes-style joke being perpetrated on the reading public).Ultimately, I was glad to reach the end of this novel; the bits I liked reminded me of John Fowles’ ‘The Magus’, the bits I didn't just reminded me that I don't much like Will Self.

[michaelmacfarlane · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have always been a massive fan of Will Self. It was on reading 'Design faults in the volvo 740 turbo' that got me back into reading and subequently, writing.There are few writers outside the science fiction genre (which in the Ballardian sense you could almost consider Self to be in) that craft their alternate universes with such painstaking and obsessive detail. In Self's last novel 'The book of Dave' this attention to detail ended up hindering the overall enjoyment of the novel and pace of the plot. However in this novel his creation of a strange barren land that is part Iraq, part Australia, is a complete triumph. Whilst the novel is an allegory of colonialism and liberal conscience post 9/11, it is best to enjoy the story in its own right rather than search for parallel meaning; the meanings behind the story subtly reveal themselves without conscious attempts at interpreting them.

[beckyjg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Social satire should be funny and incisive, making us take a long, hard look at ourselves and the society we live in, while giving us a good laugh in the process. Unfortunately, The Butt, by Will Self, does none of these things. Tom Brodzinski, presumably an American--although his country of origin is never named, is on vacation with his wife and four children in a Third World, apparently African, country. The action in the novel is precipitated when Tom decides, while smoking what will be his last cigarette on the balcony of the family's hotel room, to quit. Not finding an ashtray in which to dispose of the smoldering butt, he flicks it off the balcony, flinching--but not thinking much more about it--when it lands on the bald pate of an elderly resident sunbathing on his own balcony.As it turns out, the victim of Tom's crime (there are believed to be no accidents in this country), while an Anglo, is married to a native woman and so is protected by the laws of his adopted country. Tom, presumed guilty, is sentenced to deliver restitution--two good hunting rifles, a set of cooking pots, and ten thousand dollars--the the man's tribespeople thousands of miles away.The feel of the novel is Kafkaesque--a sentence out of proportion to the nature of the crime, a judicial system which everyone except Tom seems to understand, an undercurrent of foreboding throughout--but in the end seems hollow, devoid of any particular meaning. And, while it seems as if it wants to be funny, it just isn't.

[mausergem_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Tom is on a vacation with his family where he decides to quit smoking. On the balcony of his hotel, smoking his last cigarette, he flicks the burning butt over the edge and it lands on the bald scalp of a fellow Anglo who is married to a native of the land. Tom's troubles begin from this point onwards. As is the ritual of this unknown country the punishment of any crime is not just imprisonment but the perpetrator has to make up to the tribe whose member he has harmed. Hence Tom has to travel thousands of miles to the tribal home to make his repayment. This is supposed to be a satirical novel. It's set in a unknown country very much like Africa. The humour is crude and racist and the author just makes up rules as he imagines them and to suit his purpose. This is my first novel by Will Self, a twice Booker prize nominee and it was a great disappointment. A two star read.

[redjanet · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really did not like this book. I thought the premise of a flipped cigarette butt, an intentional last smoke, causing an accident leading to a political situation was funny, but overall I just found the whole story and the characters to be emotionally lacking and generally ugly and mean. I read through to the end to see how the story would be resolved, but this doesn't inspire me to read more by the author, which is a shame as I generally like his television and general media presence.