The Voice of John Self, pages 52 to 117

The most obvious tactic of voice-driven fiction is that it forces the reader to rely solely on what the narrator says. Speculation is futile because when or if anything in the plot is revealed it is still under the subjective guise of the voice. Let's say that the criteria for a "successful" voice is that it is a) convincing and b) incites some feeling within the reader to relate to or at least pity the narrator. Examined next to these two points John Self is a champion narrator. Despite his horrifying eating, drinking, pornography, misogynistic habits he manages to keep the reader not only curious and entertained but feel something beyond disgust. A few classmates admitted to experiencing: sympathy, pity, and even a little concept-harmony. John Self described by someone else through base terms would never provoke any of the listed responses but because his inner monologue is so intriguing he's turned himself into a sympathy-inducing antihero.

There is a very long paragraph that starts on (my) page 64 with "Standing in the nordic nook of the kitchen, I can gaze down at the flimsy-limbed joggers heading south towards the Park. It's nearly as bad as New York." Within this paragraph John let's us on quite a few things that go beyond his disdain for exercising and his cold apartment. Below we have an example of how John manages to convince us that his condition isn't actually his fault:
"Now they want to feel terrific for ever. The Sixties taught us this, that it was hateful to be old. I am a product of the Sixties - an obedient, unsmiling, no-comment product of the Sixties - but in this matter my true sympathies go further back, to those days of yore when no one minded feeling like death the whole time" (64). 
He resents the societal impulse to exercise and passes it off as some cultural fad or idea that doesn't have any true backing and yet somehow he's convincing. There's an element of self-righteousness in his character that makes the reader want to believe his rants. On the next page he says, "it does my poor old ticker good to see someone really totalled - by his own hand, mind you. Not blasted by outside nature or misfortune, which only frightens me." In one breath he stands up for something totally outrageous (being so drunk during a business lunch that he needs to vomit) while displaying some bizarrely touching vulnerability.
Despite the fact that Fielding has convinced John that he really impressed Butch, the end of this paragraph suggests he might have urinated on himself instead. An act that wouldn't count as a "hit" with a glamorous actress. A lot of the success in our narrator's voice comes from the truthful and purposeful ignorance of humiliation. "Ay! don't let it touch me! Keep it away... So I lock the suit up again, back in the slammer with its partners in crime... far from my touch" (66). His tendency to bury the unwanted is the perfect excuse for alcoholism and the relentless need to make more money.