Will Self

  • Books
    • Will
    • Phone
    • Shark
    • Umbrella
    • The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker
    • The Undivided Self
    • Walking to Hollywood
    • Liver
    • The Butt
    • The Book Of Dave
    • Psycho Too
    • Psychogeography
    • Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
    • Dorian
    • Feeding Frenzy
    • How The Dead Live
    • Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
    • Great Apes
    • Cock And Bull
    • Grey Area
    • Junk Mail
    • My Idea Of Fun
    • Perfidious Man
    • Sore Sites
    • The Sweet Smell of Psychosis
    • The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
  • Journalism
    • The Big Issue
    • Daily Telegraph
    • Evening Standard
    • The First Post
    • GQ
    • The Guardian
    • High Life
    • Independent
    • London Review of Books
    • New Statesman
    • The New York Times
    • Observer
    • Prospect
    • The Times
    • Walk
  • Radio and Audio
  • Television
  • Appearances
  • Book Will Self For An Event

The madness of crowds: Shops

February 3, 2012

The latest Madness of Crowds column:

My kids as a rule don’t say the cutest things, but the weirdest. As a result, I’ve learned to strip-mine ruthlessly their inchoate brains for ideas – which is why, presumably, they can’t wait to leave home. My youngest is still only ten, so he can’t get away, and I’m glad of that because he’s proved especially helpful in furnishing topics for this column. Yesterday morning, on our way to his school, as the bus grumbled along the Wandsworth Road, I asked him if he could come up with anything for this week’s Madness of Crowds. He thought for a second or so, then said: “What about all those shops that open knowing that they’re going to have to close down again?”

I knew what he was referring to right away – the melancholy sight of “closing-down sale” stickers blazoned across shop windows, behind which lurk uncoveted stock – but I cavilled at the way he put it. “I don’t think they know they’re going to have to close down,” I said. “On the contrary, I think each new shopkeeper believes devoutly in the likelihood of their success.”

There is, it seems to me, a great pathos in the lunacy of the wannabe shopkeeper. In essence, the condition of the retailer is the closest any human being gets to inhabiting the ecological niche of the Venus flytrap. Like the carnivorous plant, the human must remain immobile, seeking only through subterfuge – bright colours, teasing scents, pleasing goo – to lure the prey. Even once the meaty treats have snuck inside, there’s no guarantee that the poor mites will end up drained of their fiscal blood, because it takes so damn long to close those leaves/sales.

Whenever I’ve had a friend who’s opened a shop, I’ve observed the same insensibility creep over them as they realise that the only thing they’ve sold is themselves, downriver. Even before the collapse of the pyramid-selling scheme that was New Labour economic policy, chest-beating was already under way over the decline of the British high street. Previous governments have brought in dashing outsiders to advise on media, health and science but, as far as I know, Mary Prêt-à-Portas is the first retail guru to go to Westminster for a song (or possibly a fat consultancy fee).

Prêt-à-Portas’s conclusions were deliciously loopy: in a retail environment in which a third of businesses were “failing or degenerating”, the solution was to appoint “town teams”; laws on market traders should be relaxed and parking charges cut. Put simply, the only way to prevent the madness that ensues with the crowd’s departure was to drag it back again.

The one thing Portas wouldn’t counsel – oh, no! – was a moratorium on ex-urban shopping centres. (Nuking the internet wasn’t tabled at all.) This is a bit like a consultant on hungry Venus flytraps recommending more insecticides. But you can hardly blame Prêt-à-Portas. This particular liquidation sale has been going on for a very long time.

After all, it was Napoleon who described the British as “une nation de boutiquiers” and, by the time we reach 1910, we have these prescient lines about them being penned:

Essentially their lives are failures, not the sharp and tragic failure of the labourer who gets out of work and starves, but a slow, chronic process of consecutive small losses, which may end if the individual is exceptionally fortunate in an impoverished death bed before actual bankruptcy or destitution supervenes. Their chances of ascendant means are less in their shops than in any lottery that was ever planned. The secular development of transit and communications has made the organisation of distributing businesses upon large and economical lines inevitable; except in the chaotic confusions of newly opened countries, the day when a man might earn an independent living by unskilled or practically unskilled retailing has gone for ever.

Step forward, HG Wells (The History of Mr Polly), on the money as ever. We’ve talked about cognitive dissonance – or psychosis-lite – in this column before but no condition warrants this designation more than that of the consumer who believes passionately in the knock-down prices afforded by “the secular development of transit and communications” and equally devoutly in the socially cohering charms of ye olde mercer. No condition, that is, except that of the ye new olde mercer himself (or herself), who sets sail against the wind of change with only a sheet of plate glass as a means of propulsion.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pocket

Will’s Latest Book

Will Self - Why Read
Will Self's latest book Why Read will be published in hardback by Grove on 3 November 2022.

You can pre-order at Amazon.co.uk.

Will’s Previous Books

Will Self - Will
Will
More info
Amazon.co.uk

  Will Self - Phone
Phone
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Shark
Shark
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Umbrella
Umbrella
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being A Prawn Cracker
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being A Prawn Cracker
More info
Amazon.co.uk
  Walking To Hollywood
Walking To Hollywood
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Butt
The Butt
More info Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Grey Area
Grey Area
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Junk Mail
Junk Mail
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Great Apes
Great Apes
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Cock And Bull
Cock And Bull
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Sweet Smell Of Psychosis
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis
More info

Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  My Idea Of Fun
My Idea Of Fun
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Book Of Dave
The Book Of Dave
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Psychogeography
Psychogeography
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Psycho Too
Psycho II
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Liver
Liver
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
How The Dead Live
How The Dead Live
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Dorian
Dorian
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Feeding Frenzy
Feeding Frenzy
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Sore Sites
Sore Sites
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Perfidious Man
Perfidious Man
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  The Undivided Self
The Undivided Self
More info Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Bloomsbury  
Penguin

About / Contact

will-self.com is the official website for British novelist and journalist Will Self. The site is managed by Chris Hall and Chris Mitchell.

If you want to get in touch, you can email us at info@will-self.com

All email will be read, but we can’t guarantee a response.

PR agencies, please DO NOT put this email address on any mailing lists.

If you have a specific request for Will regarding commissions, book rights etc, you can contact his agent via agent@will-self.com

Will’s Writing Room

Will's Writing Room
– a 360 degree view in 71 photos

Recent Posts

  • ‘The Queen is dead – and let’s try to keep it that way’
  • Why Read to be published in November
  • On the Road with Penguin Classics
  • The British Monarchy Should Die With the Queen
  • Arvon Live Writing Day: Writing about place
  • On Damien Hirst
  • On Glastonbury
  • Ports Fest evening
  • Roughler Club, west London
  • On the n-word

© 2005–2023 · Will Self · All Rights Reserved