Stories
Foie Humain
The story plots the lives and some key events of the regulars at The Plantation Club in Blore Court in London, a place that bears a resemblance to The Colony Room. These include the acquisition of a bar boy called Hilary, trips to the art exhibitions or plays of the regulars and funerals for some of the regulars. Everybody in the story is either a hard drinker or being groomed to be one. The decay and detritus that builds up within the club over the years parallels the build up and eventual decay in (The Plantation Club landlord) Val Carmichael's Liver.
The Regulars are all profane in their language and are referred to by monikers (such as The Poof, the Dog, The Typist, His Nibs) rather than by their given names.
Over the course of time Val becomes weaker and weaker as he continues to drink heavily on a daily basis, till eventually the inevitable happens with the result of Hilary taking his place at the bar as the new proprietor and employing a new bar boy (Stevie) and one of the regulars revealing that they are exactly as their name suggests.
Leberknödel
Joyce Beddoes is a terminally ill elderly woman with liver cancer who travels to Switzerland from her home in England to meet with Dr Hohl, to prepare for euthanasia. Travelling with her is her daughter Isobel. In the last few hours before her appointment Joyce mulls over her life.
Upon entering Dr Hohl's flat she relaxes and begins eating truffles and an anti-emetic before he finally presents her with a glass of poison. At this moment, holding the glass, Joyce finds herself thinking about a wasp. She leaves without drinking the poison and abandons her clingy and slovenly daughter to a Swiss women's prison. Taking advantage of a Catholic hospice's pastoral care arrangements, she lives on until deciding to eventually use the services of Dr Hohl's assisted suicide clinic at a delayed time of her own choosing, while taking the opportunity to tour Zurich.
The title of this story, Leberknödel, is a German dish of Liver Dumplings. The story is also presented in smaller sections; Introitus, Kyrie, Sequentia, offertorium, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei and Communio.
Prometheus A transposition of the ancient Greek myth of theft of divine prerogatives, human hubris and retribution, in which Zeus is a corporate CEO, Athena is his glamorous daughter, Pandora is an upmarket sex worker and Prometheus and Epimetheus are advertising agency executives.
Like his namesake Prometheus' liver is eaten daily; in this variation by a griffon vulture three times a day. The bird itself is adept at seeking him out when it is time to feed. At one point negotiating a busy kitchen to find Prometheus waiting in the bathroom. These feedings leave Prometheus in a weakened condition as the day progresses and he has less and less of a functioning liver.
Birdy Num Num A hepatitis virus describes the lives and clients of a Soho flat's drug dealer resident from a parasite's point of view. One of the users caught up in the action of the story believes himself to be Peter Sellers in his role as Hrundi V. Bakshi in the film The Party with the other characters of the story filling in for the characters in the film. The story is opened by the virus promising the reader a tale of its latest victim, not a whodunit, but whether-they-deserved-it.
All of the stories in the collection contain connections to one another with characters and places from each, such as The Plantation Club, cropping up in other stories. This is a common trait of Self's work and can be seen in his previous use of the character Zack Busner
Read more about this topic: Liver: A Fictional Organ With A Surface Anatomy Of Four Lobes
Famous quotes containing the word stories:
“Every one of my friends had a bad day somewhere in her history she wished she could forget but couldn’t. A very bad mother day changes you forever. Those were the hardest stories to tell. . . . “I could still see the red imprint of his little bum when I changed his diaper that night. I stared at my hand, as if they were alien parts of myself . . . as if they had betrayed me. From that day on, I never hit him again.””
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden into history, it is the stories we didn’t write, the questions we didn’t ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter.... For me “style” is matter.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)