“If you’re anything like me, you probably find the global dominance of the Subway sandwich chain bewildering. There are now 32,046 Subway branches in 90 countries, making it the biggest fast-food purveyor the world has ever seen. But for why? The outlets are nothing but tiled slots with an interior design suggestive of a post-apocalyptic New York: the subway map, brownstones and Brooklyn Bridge, seared like the silhouettes of atom bomb victims into the shit-brown decor.

Journalism, New Statesman | No Comments »

The London Perambulator – the documentary featuring an extended interview with Will Self – is screening at Cine-City Brighton Film Festival. As well as an interview shot in Will Self’s study, there is footage of his walk with Nick Papadimitriou to Heathrow en-route to LA last July. A short excerpt from the film can be viewed here.

The film will be screened this Thursday 26 November at 8pm at the Sallis Benney Theatre, Faculty of Arts and Architecture, Grand Parade, Brighton, East Sussex, BN2 0JY. For more details, visit the Cine-City website.

Interviews with Will, Miscellaneous, Television, Will's Diary | No Comments »

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living: Mortality, the Corpse and the Fiction of Will Self.

Death, according to Jacque Lynn Foltyn, has replaced sex as the 21st century’s definitive taboo. While the valance has long since been ripped away from the collective Victorian piano leg, the corpse, meanwhile, has become primed with symbolic explosives, threatening the very foundations of society built upon the mythology of modernist progress. Be it the computer-generated cadavers of CSI Miami, or Gunther von Hagens’ reality TV autopsies, Foltyn argues that the human corpse has become an increasingly pervasive object of revulsion and attraction in our culture, a site of anxiety about medicine’s failure to conquer, but enthusiasm to hide, death. With all this in mind, it’s not surprising to find that the fiction of Will Self – an author who frequently weaves his narratives in, around, and beyond the boundaries of taboo – is one who showcases several literary autopsies, in which death and the human corpse are explored with a surgeon’s eye (and, more often than not, a coroner’s tongue).

Essays about Will, How The Dead Live, My Idea Of Fun, The Book Of Dave | No Comments »

Are you healthy?
“I have the same sign on my office door that Field Marshal Montgomery had outside his tent during the desert campaign; it reads ‘I am 99% fit, are you?’ I’ve always been pretty fit. Even when I was a heroin addict I was a fit heroin addict.”

Read the rest of Will Self’s answers from the Observer’s My body & soul here.

Interviews with Will, Observer | No Comments »

“Last summer I was walking through an interminable caravan park atop a cliff in Norfolk when I began clocking the makes of the vans. There was the Windsor and the Coronation and the Aspen. Naturally, the Aspen, I said to myself as I plodded past its gemütlich net curtains, what could be better branding for a mobile home? The quaking aspen of North America – or Populus tremuloides – is noted for its spectacular autumnal display. The round leaves in myriad shades of red and yellow twist freely on their stalks, producing the heady illusion that the very earth itself is in motion. Oh yes, were I to be as free as Margaret Beckett, the Aspen would be the covered wagon for me.

Journalism, New Statesman | No Comments »

From Adam & Eve Projects: “Will Self shuns Dubai’s manic road system in favour of navigating his way across the desert on foot. Will’s destination is the opulent desert oasis, Bab Al Shams Resort where he photographs and writes about his slightly alien adventure.”

Journalism, Photography, Psycho Too | No Comments »

You can read Will Self’s introduction to Zamyatin’s cult classic novel, We, at Random House here.

Introductions | No Comments »

Will Self has written about JG Ballard for the Guardian’s Review section, published tomorrow, the day before what would have been Ballard’s 79th birthday. Read it here.

The Guardian | No Comments »

A short review of Will Self’s talk at the British Library with Grayson Perry can be found at the Londonist.

Miscellaneous | No Comments »

“I was walking to the local post office one morning this week when I came across a policeman looking grimly at a large pile of car tyres that had been dumped in the gutter.

“‘You’re looking tired out,’ I quipped, but when he failed to smile I went on philosophically: ‘Well, that’s London for you.’

“‘No,’ he replied, still stony-faced. ‘That’s Stockwell.’

“I went on my way a little chagrined at his stereotyping of my neighbourhood, which, while it may have its problems, still deserves a less negative attitude from its law enforcers.

Evening Standard, Journalism | No Comments »