No Tom Sharpe thread?

[danwho9]

Was doing the old CaB specific google search and didn't find a thread on Sharpe so I thought i'd set it up here. I have to say that he's probably my favourite comedy novelist of all time having read Riotous Assembly and its follow up a few years back and to be frank I thought they were some of the best books I've ever read, despite not exactly being a bookish type myself. Wilt and Blott are absolutely favourites of mine too. Any more similar love here?

[Famous Mortimer]

I read pretty much everything he'd written when I was at University in the mid 90s, but not read anything from "Grantchester Grind" onwards. Loved em but have never thought of revisiting him or them, for some reason.

[Keebleman]

I read quite a few in my teens.  I remember The Wilt Alternative reducing me to a sobbing mess (of laughter) in the sixth form common room.  But he had a view of the world that was too harsh, unfriendly and chilling for a wimpy 16 year old like me to deal with.

I did buy one for my Mum as a birthday present.  Riotous Assembly, I think.  "Bloody hell, Keeble!" she said.  "Had you read this?!"  As it happened I hadn't so I took a look.  Yeah, not an appropriate gift for one's mater.

But I stopped reading him only after seeing the film How To Murder Your Wife.  It was the exact same plot as Wilt!  He'd stolen it, completely without acknowledgement!  After learning of this sharp(e) practice I went right off him.

[Twit 2]

Well, the last thread was a little flat.

[timebug]

I think I read just about all of them around the time they came out in paperback. The thing that always made me laff (apart from the books themselves!) was that the cover illustrations, front and back, were a wraparound 'single pic' drawing that more or less showed every major incident in the story.

[Kankurette]

Me! Read all the Wilt books except the last one. It sounds shit tbh. The first one was the best, though the whole plotline with Sally Pringsheim has not aged well. (She's blatantly based on someone. Shere Hite?)

[Fambo Number Mive]

Remember reading most of the Tom Sharpe books as a teenager and enjoying them (though finding them a little disturbing in places). The copies I bought were the ones timebug mentions with the main events of the story graphically displayed on the cover.

[Catalogue Trousers]

The thing that always made me laff (apart from the books themselves!) was that the cover illustrations, front and back, were a wraparound 'single pic' drawing that more or less showed every major incident in the story.

By Paul Sample, who also created Ogri for Bike Magazine and did a lot of film poster work.

I don't think that Pringsheim in Wilt has aged badly at all. A pansexual advantage-taker? If nothing else, she's a definite one-off, Sharpe didn't obsessively grind an axe against people like her. I personally find Constable Els a far more repugnant figure (however funny), and he gets away scot-free.

[Kankurette]

Sally's an example of the Psycho Lesbian trope. Grooming Eva into becoming a sex slave (she makes her wear sexy underwear and plans to fuck her with a strap-on once she's more 'liberated') and manipulating her into leaving her husband. She's not pan, Gaskell explicitly says she's a lesbian. Though I agree she is a one-off.

[Catalogue Trousers]

In which case, she's a somewhat unusual lesbian: she tries to seduce Wilt before running off with Eva, and certainly indulges in bondage-themed sex play with her husband. I suspect that Sharpe was confused by the correct terminology. Plus ca change and all that jazz.

[Kankurette]

I thought she seduced Wilt just to manipulate Eva into leaving him? My memory is a bit hazy though. And of course Sharpe had her and Eva burning Eva's bra, that common feminist urban legend.

Wilt convincing the police he's ground Eva into sausage was absolutely hilarious. As was Dr Board being a troll and grossing out the other teachers while the doll was pulled out of the hole.

[Mister Six]

Never read anything by him, but I picked up a copy of Blott on the Landscape second hand the other month, having remembered seeing it and Wilt (wonderful name for a novel, though I've no idea what it relates to) on my parents' shelves as a kid. Will report in once I've given it a go.

[Kankurette]

Henry Wilt. He's a lecturer at a technical college who constantly gets humiliated and is really good at screwing with people. His wife Eva is huge and blonde and fucking terrifying.