Cal Devenish had a whole pile of old 35-mm film canisters that he kept in the detached garage of Beech House. They were mementoes of the time in his life when he'd imagined he might — despite every evidence to the contrary — become an inspired auteur, decanting his miraculous vision of the world on to celluloid. Stoner Cal worshipped the neophyte Greek goddess Media at College and, funded by indulgent Daddy, he persuaded friends to act as his crew. Together they'd shot a few thousand feet of wooden acting and recorded Cal's cardboard words. To give him some small credit, when Cal had seen the first week's rushes he was consumed by shame and canned the whole shoot. Cal threw away the stock, keeping only the cans for biros, paper clips and plastic oddments.
'Y'know,' Cal said to his son as they sat side by side on a wrought-iron bench in the garden, 'when you read over this stuff' — he chonked together the exercise books — 'you've gotta admit that Dave was on to something.' He'd fetched one of the old film canisters from the garage, and now Carl laid the two books inside the shallow tray and eased the lid on. Cal helped him seal it with a long strip of gaffer tape.
Michelle had allowed the digging of a hole beyond the teak decking that separated the lawn from the big bed where, when spring came, mail-order blooms would be planted. There were limits — even to honouring the dead. The son placed the film canister in the moist, friable earth — then the father covered it. Short of digging up the other book — the one the dead cabbie swore he'd buried there — this was what they both felt he probably would have wanted. Michelle stayed inside. She sat at the kitchen worktop, coffee cup cold on the marble slab, her fists ground so hard into her eye sockets that a belated eternity ring Cal had given her drew blood.
Carl didn't feel Dave's presence in the sigh of the autumnal wind through alder, birch or poplar. The London that spread out below them might have been impressive to a visitor — to a native it was mundane. Later father and son went out, the two intent on escaping the bad vibe. There in the road, pulled over to the kerb, was a Knowledge Boy on a scooter; or rather, a Knowledge Man, because when he pushed his full-face crash helmet up on his head to speak to them Carl saw that he was older than Dave would have been — had he lived — for another decade. 'Oi, guv,' he said, addressing Cal, 'can I get froo to Well Walk dahn vis way?' Cal looked uncomprehending — but Carl, whose Knowledge was far fresher, patiently explained to the sad old loser that he'd have to work his way back round via New End and Christ Church Hill. 'Ve streets on vis manna iss awl tangled up lyke bluddë spaghetti,' the wizened Knowledge Boy said, before he farted off on his bike.
They were walking down Heath Street when Cal asked, 'Have you ever considered it — doing the Knowledge, I mean?' Carl didn't reply immediately — not out of surliness, only because it often took a while for messages from the outside world to make it over the high wall, to where he crouched, hidden inside his secret mummyself. Eventually he climbed up and over to the daddy side and replied, 'Nah, t'be honest I'm kind of interested in being a lawyer — there's gotta be more of a future in it.'
Footnotes
1 Dating is from the purported discovery of the Book of Dave.
Arpee-English With Some Alternative Mokni Orthographies
Praise for The Book of Dave
"Self is endlessly talented."
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Will Self's satire is thorough and multi-layered, reaching far beyond a simple skewering of the arbitrary nature of the sacred. Alternating between the future Ham and Dave's London provides plenty of deferred comedy… while simultaneously drawing solemn attention to the weight of our own historical footprint."
— Village Voice
"Fans of Self's previous edgy satires won't be disappointed with The Book of Dave, his latest riff on the strange complexities of the modern world. Balancing stories of pained intimacies between fathers and sons, it also brilliantly caricatures the fervor of literal-minded religious fundamentalizm…Blisteringly astute."
— Rocky Mountain News
"Remarkable…among his most ambitious and imaginative… The Book of Dave seems to be about the crippling nihilism of a world without transcendent meaning and the tensions and contradictions of the religious personality."
— Weekly Standard
"Like Martin Amis, with whom he's often compared, Self marries his verbal acrobatics to social critique, gamely taking on corporate culture, family law, London urban sprawl, religion, racial division and the received wisdom of women's magazines and the pub…You're left with the intoxication of Self's wordplay and the clarity of his visions."
— Los Angeles Times
"You will marvel at the ingenuity of this highly literate, superbly written satire of what societies deem sacred. Highly recommended."
— Library Journal (starred review)
"Will Self excels at what might best be described as the what if?' mode of storytelling. Over four story collections, four novellas, and four novels, Will Self has developed his own antic, satiric and often hilarious stable of what-if stories…Self's fifth novel, The Book of Dave, is his most elaborate…what-if yet. Self imagines what would happen if, 500 years from now, English society was shaped not by Judeo-Christian theology but by the scurrilous rantings of a hateful 21st-century London cabbie."
— New York Times
"Self's command of the English language is both unrivalled and astonishing… [He is] perhaps the best writer of his generation (his short stories are peerless)… The Book of Dave…is Self's most assured work…[It] is, in the end, a bittersweet parallel of a father (Dave) searching for his lost son and a son (Carl) seeking out his lost dad."