Will Self

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    • Psychogeography
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    • How The Dead Live
    • Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
    • Great Apes
    • Cock And Bull
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    • Sore Sites
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    • The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
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Real meals: Fray Bentos

May 12, 2016

The last time I addressed you from my bully-beef pulpit I was going to write about my all-consuming yen for a Fray Bentos individual steak and kidney pie, but as there wasn’t one to hand to mouth, I related the electronic cigarette incident at Pizza Express instead. This week, I can report that I have attempted to secure one of the meatylicious treats – and once again failed.   More...

Graffiti at Brixton McDonald’s

April 29, 2016

The writer Chris Hall, that redoubtable Ballardian observer of the craziness of the modern inscape, recently sent me a link to an Evening Standard item on the redecoration of the Brixton branch of McDonald’s. It may well be that others of these low-esteemed eateries have been similarly tricked out; but if it’s Brixton alone, either the higher-ups in the chain’s chain are complete and utter bastards, or they’re unbelievably shrewd.   More...

Real meals: vaping at Pizza Express

April 11, 2016

I was going to write about the Fray Bentos individual steak and kidney pudding this week, which isn’t so much a meal as a world entire, but then there was this . . . incident. And so it is I return once more to Pizza Express, and gladly.   More...

Madness of crowds: escalator etiquette

April 9, 2016

Yes, it’s official: standing on busy escalators is faster than walking up (or down) them. Research undertaken by my favourite local transport provider, Transport for London, has conclusively proved that if people stand on both sides of the escalator during peak travel times, the numbers carried can increase by as much as a third.

Well, for once that’s a piece of good crowd news in our febrile and fissiparous world, guiding us towards sensible mass behaviour of a type to appal Yevgeny Zamyatin: think We, people, not a Beckettian I. TfL’s aim is to introduce standing-only escalators at some of its busiest and deepest stations in order to cut down on congestion.   More...

Would JG Ballard have liked the film version of High-Rise?

March 24, 2016

Of the film adaptations that had been made of his work during his lifetime, JG Ballard vouchsafed to me that he liked Jonathan Weiss’s version of The Atrocity Exhibition the best. It was hardly a surprising verdict; the movie, released in 2000, eschews any of the easy certainties of narrative for a furious collage of extreme images – urban wastelands, nuclear explosions, penises rhythmically pumping in and out of vaginas – all to the accompaniment of a voice-over comprising near-verbatim passages from the quasi-novel. And as the book is a furious collage of extreme images, the film is of the highest fidelity imaginable.   More...

On location: my new mini-gaff

March 17, 2016

Some psychogeographer or other has stencilled a phone junction box on our road with this apposite slogan: “Have You Ever Walked Down This Road Before?” To which the answer always is: “Yes, thousands of times, because it’s the way to the Tube station.” In fact, the walk to this Tube station is almost exactly the same distance as the walk to East Finchley Tube station that I made from my natal home, twice daily, throughout my childhood; so, embarking on it, I feel myself to be a Start-rite kid yet again – and for ever. Then, when you round the junction box, you see on its other side this slogan: “Do You Know What’s Around the Corner?” To which my answer – both existentially and geographically – is all too often: I haven’t a clue.   More...

On London’s proposed garden bridge

March 16, 2016

Read Will Self’s piece on the garden bridge in the Guardian here.

Real meals: Virgin snack boxes part 2

March 11, 2016

A little under a year ago I wrote in this place about an encounter I’d had with Barry Sheerman MP and a Virgin Trains snack box on a train travelling from Manchester to London. At the time, what most bothered me about the snack box was its weird appearance: the cardboard printed with photo-real wickerwork so as to give the impression it was a sturdy hamper full of wholesome victuals ideal for a leisurely picnic lunch, rather than the flimsy packet of salty and sugary titbits Richard Branson was “giving” me for my real-life meal.   More...

Madness of Crowds: Google’s ‘lucky seven’ maddened crowds

March 4, 2016

It’s difficult, simply sitting alone in a small room in south London, really to get a feel for how mass human behaviour is affecting the world. But it’s too cold in late February to go out much, and besides, by this point in winter, my sense of autonomy has been so savagely eroded that I fear for what little sense of individuality I have – if I stand next to as few as two others I can sense myself being sucked into a maelstrom of the masses. So, this week, I have decided to trust to algorithms rather than observation and I offer you the top “lucky seven” maddened crowds as compiled on our behalf by Google News. It took 0.53 seconds for the HMRC-compliant search engine to come up with a humongous crowd of 91,600,000 results – so I hope you’re grateful I’m not doing the entire countdown.   More...

Real meals: Patisserie Valerie

February 24, 2016

The other day, I bought a chocolate-chip cookie from a little boy called Rocco who had set up a stall round the corner, stocked with all sorts of buns, muffins and other home-baked goodies, in order to raise money for SportsAid. “How sweet is that?” I thought, as I handed over my dosh – but when I passed by again a few hours later, I found that Rocco’s little stall had transmogrified into just one of the hundreds of branches of Rocco’s Patisserie, all of which were decorated like a pseudo-French café and were now serving ghastly, industrially produced sugary comestibles at inflated prices.   More...

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Will’s Latest Book

Will Self - Will
Will Self's latest book Will is published in hardback by Viking on 14 November 2019.

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

Will’s Previous Books

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
The Undivided Self
The Undivided Self
More info Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  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
   
Bloomsbury  
Penguin

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