Will Self

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    • Phone
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    • 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
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  • Radio and Audio
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  • Appearances
  • Book Will Self For An Event

The North London Book of the Dead

April 23, 2018

Listen to Will Self reading his short story “The North London Book of the Dead” on Radio 4 here until 9 May. It was first broadcast in 1995.

New Bloomsbury book covers

August 3, 2011

Greg Heinimann at Bloomsbury has created a series of new book covers for Will Self’s back catalogue to coincide with the paperback publication of Walking to Hollywood (below) in September. The new covers are for My Idea of Fun, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Cock & Bull, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis, Junk Mail, Grey Area, Great Apes and The Butt.

Read a short report about it in Creative Review here.

Walking to Hollywood paperback

David Eagleman talk

April 7, 2010

At the Conway Hall (conwayhall.org.uk) in central London, on March 25, Will Self was in conversation with David Eagleman, the neuroscientist and author of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives. It was a case of an eager Eagleman versus a stoical Self.

Sum’s 40 mutually exclusive stories are, said Eagleman, a critique of certainty, a “meta-message” shining a flashlight around the “possibility space”. Self gently ribbed Eagleman on his neologism of “possibilianism”, which he said didn’t exactly trip off the tongue and that, besides, it reminded him of the word bilious. He told him he preferred his own coinage – “radical agnosticism”.

Self admitted at the beginning of the talk that “It’s a drag that we’re more or less in agreement” in terms of a debate, and clearly Self was more interested in any epiphany that Eagleman might have had, or any emotional backstory to the book. In that regard, Sum turns out to have more of an intellectual inspiration.

Self talked about the shock of nursing his dying mother when he was still in his 20s and of her death, and that it was this epiphany, along with the birth of his first child, that propelled his writing, starting with the short story The North London Book of the Dead from The Quantity Theory of Insanity: “I saw myself becoming a neutered bachelor, who would be wearing a cardigan and still living at home at the age of forty, but it wasn’t to be.”

Self said he saw Sum as a book very much about this life rather than the afterlife. Intriguingly, Self also suggested that the Dignitas-inspired story Leberknödel, from Liver, could be viewed as an afterlife story too.

To watch the whole talk, visit the Intelligence Squared website here.

There is also a review on the New Scientist website here.

The Quantity Theory Of Insanity – Amazon.com Reader Reviews

January 31, 2006

11 reader reviews

“Will Self’s ‘The Quantity Theory of Insanity’ overflows with (unsurprisingly) dark humor mixed with academic flair. The stories often seem to lack a clear and definitive finishing point, as if one is reading a manuscript of a story half-written. This, of course, may be a purposeful attempt; that by not offering conclusion, Will Self is in essense prodding the reader into personal deliberation over the concepts presented. Unfortunately, if this be the case, these same concepts have seen so much activity in modern psychology that for the author to not thoroughly conclude his own insights leads one not into pondering personal beliefs in the matter, but what the author might have been trying to convey. A fruitless task as Self, undoubtedly, tries to be as enigmatic as possible.” – James F.

Read all Amazon.com reader reviews

The Quantity Theory Of Insanity – Amazon.co.uk Reader Reviews

January 31, 2006

13 reader reviews

“After reading this I found it difficult to work out if Self had entered my mind and shaken it all about or if I had entered his and lost mine somewhere within the process.In a similar way that Burroughs expertly projected his subject matter in Naked Lunch, Self takes us on an hilarious, nerve-wracking and exhausting journey through his mind and the minds of his characters, which ultimately leads to your head imploding around about the same time as it explodes. I have never laughed or cried so much at one sitting, nor have my ears bled for so long. Exquisite. ” – Mr Papillion

Read all Amazon.co.uk reader reviews

Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys – Amazon.com Reader Reviews

January 31, 2006

7 reader reviews

“Will Self borrows a gimmick used by Kafka, Borges, and in one not-very-succesful story by Fitzgerald (A Diamond as Big as the Ritz) and, to some extent, used in all science fiction. An impossible or supernatural event is treated naturalistically, or accepted deadpan without comment by the characters.(Isaac Asimov Magazine stories do this well).
Another trademark, reminiscent of the dirty Scottish shock-writers, is descriptions of drug and alcohol use from the point of view of the user. He also favors effects that used to be called Grand Guignol and are now called splatterpunk.
These devices are used as the hinges of his plots and the entertainment values of his stories often depends on how compelling you find them. Apart from them he is a witty and perceptive satirist with some wonderful prose such as his description of the small Suffolk town “landlocked by the shifting dunes of social trends” where “the landlords of the three desultory pubs on the main street drew pints for themselves in the cool, brown, afternoon interiors of their establishments.” – D.P. Birkett

Read all Amazon.com reader reviews

The Quantity Theory Of Insanity

January 15, 2006

The Quantity Theory Of Insanity - Will Self
Buy from Amazon.co.uk Buy from Amazon.com

Synopsis:
Mother crops up dead but talking in Crouch End; a cellular telephone scam ends in drugged psychosis; a mental ward captivates then captures an art therapist; motorcycle messengers mystically intuit London traffic flows. These are some of the stories featured in this collection.

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

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