Work! Consume! Die! [Hardcover]

Overall a pretty entertaining read, Work! Consume! Die, has three recurring sections:

firstly there are surreal short stories apparently based on the author's life. These are very inventive, satirical, and dark. They generally paint a portrait of the writer as a drug-addled, envious, celebrity-hating sociopath. I'd like to see Frankie Boyle write more short stories based on these samples.

Then there are sections where the Boyle gives seemingly straightforward criticisms of aspects of society, and how people kid themselves.. I find these sections extremely refreshing, both in their honesty, and in their harsh indictment of the consumer based culture we have. Boyle has the gift of being funny even whilst he is preaching from the pulpit. These were my favourite parts of the book, but also, sadly, the shortest.

The majority of the book, and the one that I expect will play to Boyle's largest fanbase, are the long sections of risque jokes about celebrities and politics and so on. Pretty much typical stand up routine stuff, about how fat James Corden is, or how Jordan has fake breasts, just a bit riskier jokes. I understand that parts of W!C!D! are culled from the author's Sun columns. I haven't read these columns, but I am guessing that these are those parts. The gags are pretty funny, and even if you don't like a few, they come so thick and fast, that there's bound to be a funnier one coming up in a few sentences time.

The uneasy feeling that I got from all this was the contradiction between the parts of the book. Frankie Boyle obviously sees himself as the heir to Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce: a comedian who tells it like it is about our sick, celebrity obsessed culture. The problem is that Frankie Boyle comes across as more celebrity-obsessed than anyone, since all his jokes are about D-list celebrities. It could be an ironic stance, but I suspect it is more about paying the bills. I understand his justification for doing Sun columns is that he is sugaring the pill so he can spread his message to a wider audience. Based on what's on offer here, it's all sugar, and no pill. Interestingly, at this point in his career, Frankie Boyle is stuck on the fence between taking cash from the Sun for saying daringly rude things about celebrities we love to hate, and making interesting and truly subversive comments about our culture. He could go either way. I, for one, hope that he forsakes some of the fast money and drops the celebrity bashing in favour of his more interesting stuff. After all, in twenty years time, nobody is going to know who James Corden or Katie Price are, but people will still listen to Bill Hicks recordings.

If you've seen Frankie Boyle in action you know the kind of thing, a razor wit with nothing off limits. He certainly puts it out there in the intro, almost like he's drawing a line in the sand, "I refuse to play safe and be commercial".
I often find those bits too much, and feel that he sometimes uses the 'I can't believe he wrote that' reaction as an easy laugh. Though he does say he believes that laughing about things takes the sting out of them, cuts them down to size. And then, later, much to his credit, wonders whether laughing about something is a cowardly way to avoid doing something about it, so that we should only joke about things we can't change. Like... disabilities. That's our Frankie.
And when he's being genuine like that you gotta love him. He often seems to end chapters on a passionate note. Not as downbeat as the title might suggest, nor as flippant.
A lot of the names he mentions in his rants on popular culture are unfamiliar to me. I guess he doesn't have much of a following outside the UK, so he didn't have Australia (for instance) much in mind. I found it pretty funny even without knowing the people, though I did eventually skim just a little bit. I may have given it more than four stars if I were British.
There's also an interesting idea (i.e. I don't think I got it) for a TV show woven into the start of some of the chapters, a surreal kind of parable and some day-to-day Frankie snippets. All very readable.
Frankie, why do you hide behind the yucky stuff? Let us love you!

A fair account of a man contemplating suicide in an absurd world, but being too sociopathic to get the job done. A great antidote to reality and welcome return from one of the most important comics of his generation!

Frankie lays waste, in typical Frankie Boyle fashion, to the banality of existence through a series of hilarious vignettes on popular culture, politics and world affairs. One gets the sense of Boyle as a latter day Oscar Wilde; had Wilde been straight, foul mouthed, Scottish and a world weary harbinger of a doomed future.

In a culture so marred with demogogues trying to manipulate our worldview, in the most superficial and mundane way possible, Frankie emerges as somewhat of a comic 'Christ' figure or 'Neo'; showing us how far the rabbit hole really goes.