Will Self's Transgressive Fictions

Bataille is representative of a complex view of the modern condition that reconciles Self's need to shock us in his seemingly arbitrary scenes of animal torture and human excess with his claim to be occupying the high ground of the moralist.\n He concludes that "it was one of the cleverest and most subtle portrayals of the affectless, psychopathic mind that he had ever read" (238). [...]of a verbal argument in court Danny has been mistakenly categorized as a pedophilic transgressor, while the true pedophile has convinced at least one sophisticated reader and literary expert that his narrative is that of someone who clearly recognizes (through his use of irony) the limits dividing the act from its distanced narration and placement.