Will Self kicks off a series of Lent Talks on Radio 4 on Wednesday February 24 at 8.45pm, reflecting on the relationship between art and spirituality.
There is also a version of Self’s talk in the New Statesman here.
For all those of you asking to see Will Self’s Sebald lecture, it’s now available on the Times website here, not just in the TLS. Enjoy it while there’s no paywall …
For those of you who can read German, there’s also an interesting review of the lecture by Gina Thomas at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
An essay by Will Self on the ever-changing relationship between the literary and visual arts from John Keats to JG Ballard from Tate Etc.
You can now watch, as well as listen to, Will giving his Radio 3 lecture, here.
Will has written about his pipe collection in his study for Granta.
Will has written an essay focusing on celebrity and our uncomfortable relationship to it for Alison Jackson Confidential, published by Taschen, which has been reprinted in the Daily Telegraph.
Norman Foster comes to me: “I’m sorry,” he moans pitifully, shaking the cuffs of his shirt as if he was Marley’s ghost and they were silken chains. “Sorry…?” I gag on mucous sleep. “What the hell for?”
“Stansted,” the architect wails. “I never should’ve designed it that way. True, it looked good on the back of the envelope — and elegant once my team had put it on the Cad system, but I now realise that it’s a monstrous wedge of a building, a static plane crash of a structure, forever ramming a humungous divot out of the living, beating heart of old England! Aaaargh! Euurgh! Oh woe is little me!”
It matters where you are born. Not only the country or the city, the burg or the hamlet – but the precise location, its height above terra firma, its positioning in the welter of the world; for this is the still point at the exact centre of the ever expanding shock wave of your life.
[This essay appears in the British Library edition of Essays on Alasdair Gray, edited by Phil Moores. Reproduced by kind permission of the British Library. © The British Library 2002]
A letter arrives from Phil Moores whose address is listed as follows: British Library, Customer Services, Document Supply Centre, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire. He encloses a selection of essays about the work of the Scottish novelist, artist, poet and politico- philosophic eminence grise, Alasdair Gray. You are holding this book in your hand so you know what those essays are, but picture to yourself (and let it be a Gray illustration, all firm, flowing pen-and-ink lines, precise adumbration, colour – if at all – in smooth, monochrome blocks), my own investigation of these enclosures.
[This essay is the preface of Penguin's 2002 edition of William Burroughs' Junky].
William Burroughs – Junky
I have it on the desk beside me as I write – the first edition of ‘Junky’ by William S. Burroughs. The world has changed a great deal in the fifty-odd years since it was originally published, and some of those changes are evident in the differences between the first edition of this memorable work and the one you are currently holding in your hands.
 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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