Big Fat "Cock" Review

Cock  is the story of the unhappy and alcoholic marriage of Carol and Dan. Carol is the main focus of Cock. The story is centered on Carol’s journey for empowerment beginning with her experimentation with masturbation. He husband, Dan, is quite soft, mentally and sexually. He drinks too much and is unable to pleasure his wife. The singular reason behind their “love” is due to Carol having her first orgasm, which happened drunkenly with Dan. The incident happened mostly by accident, but is still the fuel behind their relationship. Because Dan became so deep into his alcoholism they both attended AA meetings, Carol’s concentrated on the effects of having an alcoholic partner.

The interesting part about the text is that the story is told by a person, their gender becomes a bit ambiguous throughout the story, on a train to a woman who is half way unwilling to sit and listen. This aspect of the story makes Cock seem like a myth or wives’-tale, which helps to increase the reader’s willingness and patience with the outlandish parts of the story, one being that Carol grows a penis.

Her character begins to be described in much more masculine terms as her penis grows. She also becomes much more sexually ambitious. These manly characteristics help to highlight the main themes of the book: gender inequality and feminine power. Carol becomes the head of her household as Dan slinks through recovery with his new AA buddy. She works as the pivot point in the story, always shifting and changing between the male point of view and the female point of view. Overall the story created an interesting dichotomy within women in our modern world. Will Self’s work usually presents the reader with a type of fiction that they are unable to relate to, but very much astonishes him, and makes him increasingly uncomfortable.