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Wankers
Wankers follows six months in the life of Sooty Stevens, music journalist and self-described “professional wanker”, navigating his way through a world of drugs, booze and Bond films.
Sooty’s search for something better and higher in life takes him through a gallery of grotesques: his on-off girlfriend Jennifer, who finds Sooty alternately infuriating and endearing; his tolerant sister Angie; his flamboyant best friend Dougal; rich would-be eccentric Bastian; Bastian’s inscrutable wife Consolata; Sooty’s kind mentor Martin; bullying editor Donahue; and passive-aggressive DJ Tony Benson. Funny, sexually frank, and intermittently touching, the novel presents a portrait of a certain type of 21st-century extended adolescence, and its consequences.
Sooty’s search for something better and higher in life takes him through a gallery of grotesques: his on-off girlfriend Jennifer, who finds Sooty alternately infuriating and endearing; his tolerant sister Angie; his flamboyant best friend Dougal; rich would-be eccentric Bastian; Bastian’s inscrutable wife Consolata; Sooty’s kind mentor Martin; bullying editor Donahue; and passive-aggressive DJ Tony Benson. Funny, sexually frank, and intermittently touching, the novel presents a portrait of a certain type of 21st-century extended adolescence, and its consequences.
240 pages, Paperback
Published January 7, 2019
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 28, 2019
Fun, thoughtful, especially for music nerds.
There is some masturbation but it's a minor theme. Nor is the title writing off the characters as actively unpleasant - they're at worst a little pretentious. I think it's as in onanism, narcissism, not thinking of your effect on others. Pleasing yourself. There's no explicit moral though: it neither condemns pleasing yourself nor reclaims it as a real ethics. You get the reflection that sneaking away from your hookup is a bad way to ensure seeing them again.
High Fidelity is the obvious comparator, but Sooty is less dysfunctional, more optimistic, much less dependent on true love to save him. St Aubyn is the preferred comparator - of the inability to really control oneself, of moral luck and lack of luck.
Lots of true London colour - Pret as inescapable, unthreatening, premium-mediocre locus; the fossil Club culture; the agglomeration, in this absurdly expensive place, of poorly-paid, ambiguously Cultural people from all over.
“Look, bollocks! Pixies seem to be an act that, while little appreciated within their own lifetime, have retrospectively come to be seen as one of the greats, and while, in that respect, they can be compared to The Velvet Underground or even Joy Division, where they differ from the latter two acts is that, in spite of all that obfuscating acclaim, they never actually produced a full LP of unskippable tracks.” – good going Sooty actually, you can be so eloquent! – [much more]
– “and don’t get me started on the Nirvana connection, which, by the way, I mean... you go ‘Yeah, they influenced Nirvana’ – who were a better band! And anyway, Kurt used to give props to all of his indie contemporaries, so I don’t see where’s the great re-evaluation of Flipper or The Melvins...
Look, it doesn’t matter, because that’s actually my point. When you’re really into music, you get into it, and you end up having these weird appreciations, like Kurt had – you might end up thinking that what to everyone else is a forgotten one-hit wonder deserves consideration with the rest of the greats. And you might look at the Pixies and decide they’re one of the greats, too, but when you come at it just having heard that they are great, then you’re not into it, and you don’t end up with a real love, just an appreciation. It’s why a fan of, you know, Mudhoney or...Pearl Jam’s going to be more passionate, because they’ve got something to prove. You haven’t got anything to prove, because you’ve never come to it that way.” – this is actually going really well. If I wrap up soon, I might actually win this one – “Look, if you’re going to sit there with your uncontroversial opinions where you just say that the same bands Q Magazine says are great, are, then you just look like a total...” – alright Sooty, go out on a high note here, and you’ll be invincible – “massive twat.” – fuck – “just a twat. Probably a twat with loads of unopened Pixies CDs on the shelf.”
There is some masturbation but it's a minor theme. Nor is the title writing off the characters as actively unpleasant - they're at worst a little pretentious. I think it's as in onanism, narcissism, not thinking of your effect on others. Pleasing yourself. There's no explicit moral though: it neither condemns pleasing yourself nor reclaims it as a real ethics. You get the reflection that sneaking away from your hookup is a bad way to ensure seeing them again.
High Fidelity is the obvious comparator, but Sooty is less dysfunctional, more optimistic, much less dependent on true love to save him. St Aubyn is the preferred comparator - of the inability to really control oneself, of moral luck and lack of luck.
DOUGAL: Why did you shoot the horse?
SOOTY: [She] made me. I don’t know why. I’ve never even been on a horse.
DOUGAL: Just shot one, and that’s it.
SOOTY: Yeah. I guess she thought ‘cause I’m a man, I suppose.
DOUGAL: That seems a bit sexist.
SOOTY: Maybe it is.
DOUGAL: Better not tell Berkeley, though, if you think it’s sexism. You don’t want him accusing you of cultural Marxism.
Lots of true London colour - Pret as inescapable, unthreatening, premium-mediocre locus; the fossil Club culture; the agglomeration, in this absurdly expensive place, of poorly-paid, ambiguously Cultural people from all over.
Displaying 1 of 1 review