Self Portrait

Author Will Self. (Michael Wildsmith/Raincoast Books)

Seven hundred years from now, most of England is flooded. Its inhabitants have entered a new dark age, where drastic climate change helps bring about the breakdown of civilization as we know it. Desperate for guidance, survivors unearth a text that provides the blueprint for a new society. Alas, this new bible contains the rantings of Dave Rudman, a mentally unstable London cabbie from the late 20th century.

This is the premise of Will Self’s new novel, The Book of Dave, which is also the name of its protagonist’s deranged volume. Dave’s writings, die-stamped on metal plates and buried like a time capsule for future generations, spell out his many convictions, including his belief that the sexes should be segregated and cab drivers venerated.
           
“Some version of this probably will happen,” says Self, reclining on a couch in the living room of his south London home. “I think that this civilization is going to collapse. Another will probably arise, and it will be characterized by some other nasty religion. Obviously, not one that derives from a cabbie’s demented ramblings, but it might as well be.”

The Book of Dave is split into two narratives set in two very different Londons. One story follows Dave Rudman in the recent past as he drives his taxi while attempting to come to terms with a crumbled marriage that left his wife and their son, Carl, living with her boyfriend in Hampstead. The second story is set in “Ham,” a version of Hampstead roughly 700 years in the future. It follows Carl Dévúsh, who has striking similarities to Dave’s son and eventually rebels against his forefather’s teachings. The future Carl speaks in “Mokni” (phonetically written Cockney with a few curveballs thrown in) and makes a long and difficult journey to “Nú Lundun,” a re-creation of the flooded city. Nú Lundun is also home to the PCO, or “priestly hierarchy,” modelled on London’s real-life Public Carriage Office, which licenses cabbies.

Self is a highly regarded and controversial satirist, and nearly all of his work has been set in versions of London warped by his fecund imagination. In the novel Great Apes (1997), London is run by chimpanzees, while humans are in zoos; How the Dead Live (2000) proposes that when Londoners die, they simply move to another part of town; in the short story Caring, Sharing (1999), London is overrun by emotionally and sexually retarded adults who are cared for by giant children.

(Raincoast Books)

Steeped in the geography and culture of Self’s native city, The Book of Dave targets revealed religion. This “dävinanity” parodies aspects of Christian fundamentalism, but despite echoes of the New Jerusalem that pilgrims attempted to create in the United States in the 17th century, Self insists the book is not meant to target America.

“There’s plenty here to get your teeth into,” he says of London. “Inasmuch as I am a satirist, I’m quite particular about who I’m able to afflict and who I’m able to comfort. I can’t comfort the Muslim ‘street,’ who feel deracinated and angry with U.S. imperialism and neo-con, Christian-inspired foreign policy. What I am capable of doing is to set it up in relation to my own society, dealing with the impact of revealed religion: what it means to people, what its roots are and how it interacts with the patriarchy. People can read off from that a universal message.”

Self was once better known for his use of hard drugs than for his fiction. But nowadays, he’s a family man: he has two children with his wife, journalist Deborah Orr, and two from a previous marriage. He has also narrowed his vices down to two: cigar smoking and sesquipedalianism — though he claims to be cutting down on the long words.

Self refers to himself as “a notorious urban walker and surveyor of the city and its topography.” Stretching his long legs out onto his coffee table and puffing on a stogie, he says, “I do this thing every year, which Dave replicates in the book, where I walk from my house, 100 miles out of London; that’s all about being rooted in a historic narrative. The first time I walked to Heathrow Airport, I was conscious that I was probably the first person to have done it since the Industrial Revolution. I’m going to walk to New York at the end of November: I’m going to walk to Heathrow, fly to JFK, and then walk to Manhattan. Nobody’s ever done that.”

Self writes a weekly column for London’s Independent called Psychogeography, in which he uses events from his own life to reflect on the relation between a person’s sense of place and his or her psychological state. In 1961, the year Self was born, his late father, Peter, became the chair of the Town and Country Planning Association. The family was living in Hampstead Garden Suburb, a planned middle-class development in the northwest of London. Will has described it as “a kind of park containing houses.”

It could hardly be more different from the densely populated Stockwell, where Self now lives, which earlier this year was cited by the city of London as a “violence hot spot.” Decorated by paintings, objets d’art and books on Surrealism, Self’s high-ceilinged living room overlooks a somewhat down-at-heel housing estate. In 2001, he and Orr fought off a burglar in their home, who bit Orr’s hand multiple times. In September, Self wrote in an Evening Standard column, “Crime in Stockwell — unlike love — is all around.”

Through The Book of Dave, Self is able to explore all of London’s lows and highs, from Dave’s run-down bedsit to his ex-wife’s boyfriend’s abode in chi-chi Hampstead; in the novel's future, Hampstead is the only spot in London far enough above sea level to withstand the coming flood. As Dave’s sanity begins to unravel, he becomes more and more misanthropic, and obsessed with The Knowledge, the comprehensive real-life book on London’s layout and traffic patterns that every black-cab driver is required to possess. Dave’s bible includes a list of the “runs” (routes across London) and “points” (important places that lie along these runs) that cabbies must memorize.

Self compares The Knowledge to holy books that people adopt as moral guides. “At the same time, they’ll be repeating them by rote, as if they were just a meaningless collection of syllables.” For Self, The Knowledge is “particularly beautiful, because if it’s fully realized: you have these institutions dedicated to interpreting it and making it fact again, rebuilding the city according to its arcana.”

These days, The Knowledge itself is in danger of being undermined by technology, as satellite navigation systems are installed in cabs. “SatNav is dreadful at so many different levels,” says Self. “People aren’t in a real place anymore. In reading a map and negotiating where you are, you are where you are, but if you simply drive according to SatNav, then you are a pixel across a screen.”

Self also admits to being “appalled” at Cabvision, a television service installed in newer taxis. Then again, he rarely takes cabs these days. “It’s like when I wrote Great Apes, I couldn’t go to the zoo anymore. In writing books, you kind of write yourself out of things.”

The Book of Dave is in stores now.

Mike Doherty teaches literature at the University of Toronto and is a post-doctoral research fellow with the London Consortium.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.