19 Raptures
Posted by Chris H on December 3rd, 2009A snippet of Will Self’s contribution to the charity 19 Raptures, from the Independent.
Archive for the 'Short Stories And Novel Extracts Online' Category
How the Dead Live
Posted by Chris H on July 1st, 2009You can find the Epilogue to How the Dead Live at the Guardian here.
A Report to the Minister
Posted by Chris H on June 20th, 2009Will Self’s story set in Bushy Park, London, for the Royal Parks series of short stories that take their inspiration from London’s Royal Parks, is now available here for £2.
Wystan: a new short story
Posted by Chris H on March 15th, 2009“Chloe dreamt that she was having sex with her father-in-law’s dog, Wystan, a particularly skinny and nervous whippet. The whippet’s claws scratched her shoulders and breasts terribly — his needle-sharp teeth nipped at her ears; what was going on down below Chloe could only intuit, not feel, but the idea alone sent alternating pulses of nausea and shame coursing through her subconscious.
Coming soon: A wildly eccentric tail
Posted by Chris H on March 11th, 2009In this week’s Sunday Times Will Self “sends up the aristocracy in a wildly eccentric tale about an heir who, when he can’t father a son, looks to his trusty whippet for a helping hand”.
Bushy Park
Posted by Chris H on February 22nd, 2009You can find a Guardian news story about Will Self’s short story celebrating Bushy Park here, one of London’s royal parks, which is due to be published in May, and also Nicholas Lezard’s blog on it too.
A Visit from Mrs Wells
Posted by Chris H on December 9th, 2008You can listen again here to Will’s story told from the point of view of a child, Kylie, in the wake of the Baby P case, first broadcast on Radio 4’s From Fact to Fiction on Saturday December 6.
Breaking down the micro-worlds
Posted by Chris H on January 24th, 2008Fascinating reading and lecture from Will at the Google HQ in California. Will talks about psychogeography, Debords’s The Society of the Spectacle, the Romantics’ framing of beauty and how we can break out of mediated forms of experience, that takes in Laurence Stern, micro-worlds and the development of boulevards. The reading is from his latest book, Psychogeography, and is about his experience at US Customs.
The Gesture. A new short story
Posted by Chris H on August 20th, 2006The Gesture
It was one of those things that married people come to loathe about their spouses with a deep and passionate intensity, along with the timbre of their coughs, their tipsy giggles, the particular, guilty creaks with which they ascend the stairs. In Holly’s case, it was the dismissive flick of thumb and index finger, with which Brion indicated that the subject was closed. That he wasn’t going to come out with them to lunch – and that he didn’t wish to talk to her anymore.
The Book Of Revelations – Salon Audio 2000
Posted by Chris M on January 29th, 2006“Self recently wrote an introduction to one of the Pocket Canons, the series of new versions of the King James Bible introduced by great writers and published by Cannongate Press. Self introduces the Book of Revelation with his own take on technology, religion and the millennium.”
This is an audio recording of Self reading his introduction
