Will was part of a panel that chose the “50 most authentic places on earth”. Here are two of his choices:
Los Angeles, USA:
“What can be more mondial and timely than this high-rise outgrowth of the great sprawl: the historic core of LA, the beginning of the Miracle Mile of Wilshire Boulevard, and the location of Echo Park, where Chinatown was filmed? Downtown LA is the bulwark between the Hispanic city of East LA and the Anglo city to the west. Anyone going to LA for empty-headed perma-tan Valley Girls need, emphatically, look elsewhere.”
Monthly Archives: November 2008
The Butt review
The Daily Telegraph review of The Butt:
“Self writes here with an adroit impersonation of coarse exuberance that makes The Butt as readable as a blokeish airport novel (though with a fuddlingly large vocabulary). But just beneath the brash surface shimmer the unmistakable apparitions of Self’s masters: Swift, Voltaire and Lewis Carroll are all partly responsible for the ingenious, mephitic invention that is The Butt.”
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To save the day, Gordon, you have to tax the rich
During the heady days of the boom, I used to opine regularly that the National Lottery was a tax on stupidity, the odds of winning the jackpot being so infinitesimal. But now the lean years are upon us, and the Government’s pre-Budget report has brought home to me what I’ve always really known: all our taxes are a tax on stupidity.
Read the rest of Will’s Standard column here.
Resonance FM
Those good people at Resonance FM have provided us with a link to download Will’s interview, but we’re not sure how long it will be there for, so best visit sooner rather than later.
Fears, doubts and what we all owe Baby P’s memory
To read Will’s latest Standard column, go here.
Resonance FM
Will is going to be on Resonance FM on Thursday November 20 at 4.30pm. He is a guest on Interesting Conversations. You can listen via 104.4FM or go to www.resonancefm.com. An MP3 version will be available to download later. Will is to discuss The Butt, Liver and “his intumescent back catalogue”.
David Lynch
To read Will’s interview with David Lynch, you’ll have to buy a copy of the December issue of GQ magazine. But it’s worth it, not least for the fact that Will claims to have cracked the meaning behind Lynch’s films …
Book of Dave podcasts
Here are Will’s Penguin podcasts around the time of the Book of Dave in 2006.
The banks have buried their heads in the sand
Over the past decade, as British culture has become steeped in pop psychology, one expression has come to be bandied about with increasing abandon: “She’s in denial.” Much as I deplore such psychobabble, sometimes “in denial” is the mot juste. Since the British economy began to hit the buffers, while interest rates have been slashed and consumer demand plummeted, so people’s denial has increased. Of course, ours being an unequal society, this denial has not been spread about evenly; on the contrary, the highest concentration is among the richest and most powerful.
To read the rest of Will’s Standard column, click here.
The Gallery, Foyles
Will is going to be talking about psychogeography and WG Sebald tomorrow at 6.30pm at The Gallery, Foyles bookshop, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London WC2. Call 020-7713 0023 for tickets.