Will Self

On the train to Cambridge, I took a call from a nice-sounding young woman at the Financial Times. She was to ask me questions for a questionnaire in her newspaper. I’d forgotten she was calling, and found myself temporarily discombobulated, ie when the questions began, their absurdity hit me like a freight train. ‘What is your favourite book?’ ‘Who is your literary inspiration?’ All that sort of reductive guff that puffs up the pages of prints too poor to source reporting anymore.

I made the mistake of trying to think seriously about them for a while, and then gave up. When she asked me if I wore anything special to write in, I replied: ‘An orange jumpsuit modelled on those of the Guantánamo detainees, with “24-Hour Emergency Writer” blazoned between the shoulder blades.’ When she inquired as to whether I ate any special snacks while I was writing, I replied – without hesitation – ‘A foie gras entier is flown to me each week, direct from the Dordogne in a canister filled with liquid nitrogen. I eat it spread on a special sourdough toast baked for me by Fortnum’s.’ When she asked me if there was anything in my past that I regretted, I dead-panned: ‘I was born a hermaphrodite, and bitterly regret the operation that deprived me of my full set of primary female sexual characteristics.’

I wished the young woman from the FT no ill-will, but sometimes the absurdity of anatomising the writing life – which, to all intents and purposes is static and incapable of being observed – gets the better of me. I also managed to fudge my connections at Cambridge, and ended up trundling about the Fens for a while: up to Ely, then across to Bury-St-Edmunds. I’d never been there before; in the two years I lived in Suffolk I passed by on the ring road occasionally, faintly disturbed by the minatory towers of the sugar beet processing factories, the chthonic glow of their sour-sweet industry. But this time, I penetrated the ring road and found a beautiful Tudor and Medieval town, and a perfect little jewel of a Theatre Royal, complete with two circles, boxes, and a small empyrean painted on to the ceiling. The house manager had fallen off the stage into the pit the previous day, so my contract rider hadn’t been adhered to: no prawn sandwiches – what stale hell was this? They did, however, give me a freebie Mars bar after the gig.

So, I did my shtick; and the audience were warm – if heavy on the knitwear. I signed a couple of books, and left in a rainstorm so heavy that it looked as if milk were being poured over the Abbey. I’d been directed to the local Indian, which was housed in a Tudor building. They put me by the window, and the rain filtered in over my chana masala. At the next table, they were talking about the camcorder footage of Gavin on fire – and how screamingly funny it still was. I wish I could’ve seen it. Thence to the Angel Hotel and bed. I was up at 6.30 am, and donned my orange jumpsuit so I could start a little work on the second draft of my next book. Twenty-four-hour writer, indeed.

25.03.08

It’s a bit like Bob Dylan’s never-ending tour, except that I’m not Bob Dylan and I haven’t done any adverts for Victoria’s Secret. (Actually, what is Victoria’s secret, that she has breasts and a vagina…? I only ask.) The closest I’ve ever been to Dylan’s birthplace of Hibbing, Minnesota, is Madison, Wisconsin. I was there the week the USAF was dropping ‘daisy-cutters’ on the Tora Bora caves – remember that? The city, like many US state capitals, is dominated by its Capitol, a scale model of the one in Washington. On my way to the bookstore to read to three orthodontically challenged Midwestern teenagers, I saw a flyer on reception advertising ‘Tonight at Civic Centre, Bob Dylon and his Band’. ‘Bob Dylon?’ I queried the girl on the desk, ‘don’t you mean Bob Dylan?’

‘Oh, uh-huh, I guess. Is that how it’s spelt?’

A prophet in his own country etc, etc.

But I digress: I’m on what seems like a never-ending tour. It began last October when Ralph Steadman and I published Psychogeography; it’s now continuing on through the publication of my new novel, The Butt, and if all goes according to plan there will be a new work of fiction, Liver, out in November, with attendant public readings. In truth, the tour goes back further than this, back to the paperback publication of The Book of Dave and before that the hardback.

I’ll keep you posted on my not very regal progress – me, disposable razor, and Vitamin C capsules, such is the Rock God and his entourage. Last Saturday, it was Glasgow, something called Aye Write! A litfest – you guessed it. The Nuremberg rallies of the contemporary bourgeoisie. The audience listened, they asked me about psychiatry, heroin, whether I used a typewriter – the usual stuff.

Afterwards, I attended a book awards ceremony, together with my friend the Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. He was up for one – but pleased not to win. ‘It went to the youngest writer!’ He crowed. ‘That’s as it should be.’ The youngest writer, Dan Rhodes, had greying hair. Hmmm.

At Glasgow Airport, the smokers have been corralled well away from the terminal since the terrible Islamist festival of Ramavan. Apart from these enhanced security measures, the only sign up was one advising travellers that ‘Heelys are not allowed in the Terminal’. Heelys being those skate shoes with built-in little wheels. What a drag, as Martin Amis so sagely remarks in his collection The Second Plane, boredom always dances attendance upon terror. Without heeling I am but an earthbound clod, striding on to the next gig.

WS
20.03.08