‘Male writers now are the opposition party, and that may not be such a bad thing for them.’ So Rob Doyle writes in this addictive self-portrait/collection of reviews. And if male writers are now in navel-gazing opposition, ousted by a landslide of female talent, judging by this book Doyle is one of their most reactionary members, still in thrall to those outmoded frontbenchers who were long ago elevated to the Lords: Nietzsche, Huysmans, Bataille, Houellebecq, Amis Jr. His themes (male heterosexuality, aggression, drug use, alienation, philosophy) and consciously euphonious style reek of what he, in a scathing passage of self-reflection, calls a ‘desperate desire to be edgy’. And, by the norms of contemporary fiction, they also render him to many modern readers ‘toxic, misogynistic and violent, an unfortunate blot on the literary scene’.
Having spent two novels and one short story collection establishing this reputation, Autobibliography is Doyle’s self-justification of sorts — a guide to the reading that ‘formed’, ‘deformed’ and is now ‘reforming’ him.
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