.com Review The Sweet Smell of Psychosis (very loosely based on Alexander Mackendrick's searing '50s movie Sweet Smell of Success) is the kind of mordant fable that Will Self could toss off in his sleep. But although it doesn't stretch Self's considerable talents, it is still a wonderfully poisonous entertainment. Richard Hermes is a tiny cog in the London media machine, a hack whose only distinction is a tenuous position at the edge of the most powerful clique in town. At its heart is the loathsome Bell, a sort of malevolent anti-Oprah whose media omnipresence has given him enormous power. ...one of Bell's most sycophantic acolytes had established--through certain arcane statistical computations--that there must, logically, be at least two hundred thousand people in Britain who did nothing else but listen to Bell's voice, watch Bell's face, or read his words, for every waking hour of their lives. Richard is drawn deeper into Bell's web in pursuit of the gorgeous Ursula Bentley, but he can't keep up with the clique's colossal appetite for controlled substances. He soon begins to slide into drug-addled madness, and Self once again demonstrates his uncanny ability to render altered states in perfectly crafted prose. In fact, much of the pleasure that The Sweet Smell of Psychosis has to offer comes not from the story of Richard's inevitable fall, but from Self's deft and playful way with words. Few writers in English are able to use such beautiful language to describe the most revolting things. Whether he's writing about an excruciating hangover or Bell's naked body ("each pap sporting a twistle of black, black hair",) Self's decadent language begs to be savored, even read out loud. Martin Rowson, the Hogarth to Self's Swift, provides some remarkable illustrations to accompany the text. Rowson's work (most recently showcased in his comic-book version of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman) is grim and shadowy, but filled with detail and twisted humor. Together, he and Self have created an elegant billet-aigre to London's dark underbelly, a cautionary tale that takes pleasure in its own unpleasantness. --Simon Leake Read more From Publishers Weekly British author Self (Cock & Bull; My Idea of Fun) is notorious for extremes of debauchery, and in his newest tale of one man's descent into vice and excess he teams up with political cartoonist Rawson, who provides sinister, nightmarish illustrations. This novella turns an innocent loose in the wicked city, London, refreshing a plot in essence as old as Petronius, and infusing it with Self's now nearly formulaic sex-and-drugs drollery. The innocent du jour is Richard Hermes, who has left a homely old northern city and a "homey, suety" girlfriend to Make It in London's media scene. That scene's center is the notorious news/media celebrity called, simply, Bell, who holds court at the Sealink Club, "a dark, humid environment in which fungal tittle-tattle could swell overnight." Richard is in love with an habitu? of Bell's set, Ursula Bently. Ursula is maddeningly sexy, world weary, and semiaddicted to whatever is going about. Richard's problem is that Bell's group, which cavorts around late night London, stopping in at opium dens and preening themselves in mirrors, is impinging disastrously on his health, moral sense and career. While the faint scent of Ursula's perfume, Jicki, is driving Richard mad with lust, Bell seems just to be driving Richard mad: he keeps seeing the hateful Bell's face on other people. Slowly, Richard makes inroads on Ursula's affections until finally he holds her naked in his arms. Of course, things go surrealistically wrong from that point on. This short book, while capped off with a somewhat stunted punchlinelike ending, will nevertheless provide readers with a mini-overdose of Self's signature detached licentiousness. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more See all Editorial Reviews
S**N
the beautiful ugly people
Self and Rowson make a pungent pair - both left wing, media London establishment jesters as writer and cartoonist respectively, they team up in this short novella to paint a verbal and visual zeitgeist crusher of a book. The story is a simple one, not a bit of it cannot be found in some other tale or parable somewhere: naive, northern boy leaves his miserable life in the north with his 'girlfriend tending towards parturition, and small flat that would have required partition' to try and make it in the cocaine blasted world of media London as journalist for Rendezvous - one of those listings magazines that claims to surf the very tip of the cultural wave with weekly listings for tedious avant-garde cultural events.Richard, our hero, finds himself drowning in a sea of drugs and superficiality. His nemesis, Bell, is a modern media baron - a promiscuous womaniser and hairsuite sex god. Mixing excessive substance abuse with paranoid affection for Ursula Bentley - a sort of twenties decadent siren reconstructed afloat on the pillow of narcotics in 90s central London, Richard finds his crush on the flighty Ursula growing with his cocaine fuelled paranoia about seeing Bell's face everywhere he goes. Richard has the nub of goodness within him, bless him. His wish is to make a genuine connection with Ursula, lift her and her tedious sex column out of this ephemeral dirge of media London to a married life of meaning and permanence. Ursula merely ruffles his hair and calls him 'sweet'. The twin poles, and scents of Ursula's perfume 'Jicki' and Richard's psychosis - entwine and grow as the novella roars to a swift and surreal denoument.So the story is basically a bog standard modern parable of values being important than drugs, beautiful people and glamour blah blah. But the style - Self's amphetiminic and thesauras powered prose and Rowson's Hogarthian grotesque cartoons is to be savoured.
O**D
scathing
This joyfully venomous novella, whose title invokes the excellent Burt Lancaster/Tony Curtis film Sweet Smell of Success (1957), is ostensibly intended to satirize the sorts of tabloid hack journalists who had enjoyed themselves so thoroughly at the expense of Martin Amis, Will Self's literary godfather, several years ago. But, perhaps just because I'm not British, there did not seem to be anything presslike about the characters; instead it seemed just a vicious, but worthwhile, savaging of the sort of amoral, ambisexual, drug-addled, sensation-chasers who are all too common in every walk of life and line of work these days.Richard Hermes is an entirely minor features writer who has become caught up in the vortex of young journalists who revolve around Bell, a constant media presence known for bedding any man or woman he sets his eye on, sort of Larry King crossed with a satyr. Richard recognizes the emptiness of the lives the group leads, and still has a sufficient remnant of decency to be repelled by the acts of needless cruelty that they thrive on, however, he's fallen in lust with Ursula Bently, an icy blonde beauty, who hangs with this crowd, but whom he compares to "a diamond found in a gutter behind a Chinese takeaway."Richard pays court to the intermittently receptive Ursula, and descends deeper and deeper into a paranoid cocaine-induced haze, in which everyone around him seems to resemble Bell. He harbors the improbable hope that Ursula is redeemable and that the two of them can break out of Bell's gravitational pull to live happily ever after. But in the end, even as he plans to get away from the City and Bell, to return home for the Christmas holiday, Richard finally gets his chance to bed down Ursula, though the experience proves less than heavenly.If the book is intended to say something specific about the press, it escaped me entirely. No one actually seems to perform any kind of work in the book, it's all clubbing, drugging, drinking, and scrumping. But taken simply as a cautionary tale, a warning that by being with these people you become one of them and sink into the abyss, it worked well enough.GRADE : B
N**R
Not his best effort.
I can't put my finger on why I didn't like this book. I like his other books (Great Apes and Grey Matter are great). You can't help, but feel dirty after reading a book like this, yet there was little humor or even interesting perspective to lighten the blow. I found this to be creepy and not in a good way. Maybe I was just in a bad mood...
K**S
The twisting reels of faces
IT was amazing to read a book that through it's title gives you the clue that this book will be wierd, but to still be taken aback at how twisted the reels of faces can become when reading such a well written book.
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