Will Self’s talk from October 2018 at the Hillingdon Literary Festival, which begins with a reading from a section of his short story “Scale” (from Grey Area). Will discusses the writing of his books Walking to Hollywood and Phone, the importance of the M40 in his fiction, pretending to be British, the Iraq war and a little about his new memoir, Will, which is due to be published in November.
Will features quite heavily in this rather good 1999 documentary about Bret Easton Ellis.
‘Not a day goes by without further frontline despatches from the war between our established liberal ideology and the strange new realities that body-forth from the future. Taking today — the one on which I sat down to write this article — as representative, I found in my morning bulletins a report about how the US Constitution’s vaunted separation of powers — personified by Special Counsel Robert Mueller — was leading inexorably to the indictment, and hence removal, of “rogue” President Donald Trump. Then there was an item about the minister for women, whose public musings about the rise in the numbers of young people applying for gender-reassignment therapies were being taken as prima facie evidence that she doubted the authenticity of trans people’s claims to be gender dysphoric.
‘Also trending was an opinion piece bemoaning the fake polarisation of British politics. The writer pointed out that the issues surrounding our imminent departure from the EU are being inadequately debated by our main political parties. Both Labour and the Tories, argued the writer, would prefer to concentrate on internal power struggles as different factions attempt to tar each other with illiberalism, whether that be anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.
‘As for news of liberalism that could be summarised without the prefix “ill”, there was little that was reassuring. Only an item suggesting that the Liberal Democrats’ revolving-door leader, Vince Cable, would probably exit for good once the UK had left the EU, given that the party’s commitment to remain — its sole raison d’être since the 2016 referendum — will no longer be relevant.’
Read the rest of Will Self’s article at Prospect magazine.
You can listen to Will’s recent Point of View on Radio 4 here, in which he talks about the disturbing story of what happened to a friend, recently detained in a London psychiatric hospital.
Please do go along to support the Chandos House treatment for addiction sponsored abseil tomorrow from 11am to 5pm at Clifton Downs, Bristol if you can. The details are on their Facebook page here and you can donate here.
Will Self has written the introduction to the forthcoming Portrait Of Britain, “200 photographs that capture the face of a changing nation”. The book is published on September 6th. You can see preview images, read an excerpt of Will’s introduction and pre-order on the website of the book’s publisher, Hoxton Mini Press.
Will is giving a Funzing talk entitled “Is the left dead?” at The Emmanuel Centre, Marsham Street, London, SW1P 3DW on Tuesday 31 July, from 6.45pm to 8.45pm. “With the far-right on the rise and the left in disarray, what does the future hold for socialism?” For more details and to book tickets, visit uk.funzing.com.
