Product Description

Trapped in the most venal media clique in London, Richard is losing it on all fronts. Most of all, he's losing his soul to Bell, a television personality, and his heart to the nubile Ursula Bentley. He is lured on by the fragrance of her perfume and by another, more sinister smell.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148231 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 savoured, 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 humour. 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

Customer Reviews

Self's dirty illustraited underworld
With the usual decedant, narcotic and dirty undertones, Self trawls through the underworld of jounalistic "lovey" England, based around the infamous Sealink club. Although this is his shortist and least known book, it is well worth the read especially for the matching and equally sordid illustrations. A good way to watch the destruction of the b-list celebrities' souls. Read it.

Revulsion
This is the only book I have read that truly turned my stomach at theend.
Its the epitomy of Self's self obsessed obsession with scale anddetail.