My thing about this book is that John Self is unlikeable. Half-American and half-British. A guy who's rolling in money <s>supposedly</s>. But there is charisma in his language that gets to me. Crude and vivid and grimy, like New York where he spends most of his time, gallivanting around going to porn shops and strip clubs, getting drunk and jacking off. Which reminds me. 'Giving oneself a handjob' sounds better than just 'masturbating' after reading this book. It implies a third-party, even when John does it to himself. There's also a few Orwellian references that I can't help but smile at. Martina making John read Animal Farm and 1984. John's hotel room: Room 101. The year this book was published was 1984. The most memorable one though, when he wonders about why Orwell thinks the pigs are the smartest animals in the farm. I couldn't help but think that it's all irony, the fact that someone like John is asking this question. He doesn't realize (or he probably does) that he's essentially describing men. "And when I think of what they get up to in the hay even I have to shudder. I tell you, it's no accident that they're called pigs. And yet Orwell here figures them for the brains behind the farm. He just can't have seen any pigs in action. Either that, or I'm missing something." Yeah. I wonder the same thing about men all the time.