Will Self is going to be giving a reading at the De La Warr Pavilion on Thursday April 22 at 6.30pm, followed by a Q&A and a book signing. Tickets are free. For further details, visit their website.
A couple of US reviews of Liver, published by Bloomsbury USA in hardback in the States, the first from the Washington Post, which said that the four stories collected here “are for those who like their stories brainy, cunning, hard-edged and diabolical”; and the second from the New Yorker, which said that the characters were, ahem, “difficult to like” …
On Tuesday December 15 at 6.30pm, Self and Steadman will be talking about their second collection of Psychogeography columns, Psycho Too, at the Old Market in Hove. Tickets cost £6 – for details, visit their website here. (Don’t be put off by the blurb that relates to the first collection – they’ll be talking about the latest one.)
Will Self is going to be talking about Psycho Too at Daunt Books in Chelsea on Thursday December 10 at 7pm. For further details, visit the Daunt Books website.
To listen to Will Self talking to Steve Wright about Psycho Too, visit the BBC’s iplayer. It’s at the 2hr 32min mark and lasts for five minutes or so (available until Tuesday December 8).
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).
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.”
To listen to Will Self and Ralph Steadman talking on the Today programme about their new book, Psycho Too, visit the BBC website here. There’s also an audio slideshow of Steadman’s illustrations here.
Will Self introduces his “brilliant Psycho Too, a meditation on the vexed relationship of psyche and place in a globalised world. It brings together a second helping of the very best words and pictures from Psychogeography – the columns Self contributed to the Independent for half a decade; accompanied by Ralph Steadman’s edgy, and dazzling artwork” at Book Now – Richmond upon Thames’ annual literature festival, Clarendon Hall, York House, November 24, 7.30pm, £10 (£8.50 concession) – £5 of ticket redeemable against book price.
“I thought I might be an academic. I read PPE at Oxford and was very interested in Marx, Wittgenstein, Habermas – theories of knowledge and praxis. I applied to do an MPhil, but unfortunately I was busted for drugs before I sat my finals and went into something of a tailspin … ”
To read the rest of My Other Life: Will Self, visit the Guardian website here.
 Liver More info |
 The Butt More info |
 The Book Of Dave More info |
 Psychogeography More info |
 Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe More info |
 Dorian More info |
 Feeding Frenzy More info |
 How The Dead Live More info |
 Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys More info |
 Great Apes More info |
 Cock And Bull More info |
 Grey Area More info |
 Junk Mail More info |
 My Idea Of Fun More info |
 The Sweet Smell Of Psychosis More info |
 The Quantity Theory Of Insanity More info |
 Sore Sites More info |
 Perfidious Man More info |
 William Burroughs - Junky [with essay by WS] More info |
 Alasdair Gray - Critical Essays [with essay by WS] More info |
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