The Artist Goes Ape : the Impossible Metamorphosis of Simon Dykes/Will Self in Great Apes

Zack Busner, the brilliant professor, ape psychiatrist and successful father and husband, thus communicates his basic intention, in a fictional “Author’s Note” to Great Apes (1997), while trying to prepare his ape-readers to the much astonishing story of Simon Dykes the artist and the ex-human being. What is told, in Self's novel, is the story of the protagonist’s apelike metamorphosis. This metamorphosis is relevant in that it is radical and sudden - though not necessarily complete and achieving wholeness at once. Simon’s slow progress towards wholeness is therefore a journey whose basic texture is made out of three ritual patterns, implying three borders to be crossed and three rifts to become aware of. Meaningfully enough, each rite seems to exploit, in Self’s novel, a set of references drawn from a specific cultural field.