Will Self

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    • Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
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    • Feeding Frenzy
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    • Great Apes
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  • Book Will Self For An Event

Alasdair Gray – 1982, Janine

January 29, 2006

Will Self wrote an introduction for the Canongate edition of Alasdair Gray’s book.

Synopis:
An unforgettably challenging book about power and powerlessness, men and women, masters and servants, small countries and big countries, Alasdair Gray’s exploration of the politics of pornography has lost none of its power to shock. Disliked by some and praised by others, 1982 Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy, as explored via the lonely sexual fantasies of Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover and business man. Yet there is hope here, too, and the humour (if black) and the imaginative and textual energy of the narrative achieves its own kind of redemption in the end.

You can buy Janine, 1982 at Amazon.co.uk

Addicted To Transmogrification – Will Self 2001 Guardian interview

January 29, 2006

Nicholas Wroe interviews Will Self in the wake of How The Dead Live’s publication:

“Looking back, Self thinks that getting his first book accepted was the high point of his literary career. “By this time I had children to support, but more than that, at a personal level, it was enormously liberating knowing I could do this thing. Whether out of anxiety or productivity, I just didn’t want to stop doing it.”

In the decade since he has produced four novels, another two collections of stories, a pair of linked novellas, a book of collected non-fiction and, last year, a meditation on masculinity that focused on the case history of a transsexual. His most recent novel, How the Dead Live , is published in paperback this month. It echoes one of his earliest and best short stories, “The North London Book of the Dead”, in which a young man has the unsettling experience of meeting his recently deceased mother in Crouch End.

“I was very interested in writing about this idea of what it was like for materialistic, atheistic people to die with no sense of spiritual transcendence,” he explains. “I’d seen my mother and, to a degree, my father, die like that, and it had a profound effect on me. In order to write a book that would do justice to the subject, I realised that my own lifestyle, which at that point was completely mired in active addiction, would have to change. So in a sense the book became something of a vehicle of recovery, and possibly even redemption, for me.” ”

Read the full interview online

How The Dead Live – Penguin Books interview with Will Self

January 29, 2006

To celebrate the paperback release of How the Dead Live, Will Self’s inventive, savage meditation on life after death, Penguin have rejacketed several of Will’s books with stunning new artwork from some of Britain’s foremost contemporary artists.

In an exclusive interview, we asked Will his thoughts on everything from drug addiction and Jewishness to the disintegration of the soul.

You’re involved with many things; journalism, short-stories, novels. Do you regard these as being quite different activities?

I’ve always thought of myself as a writer first and foremost, the whole business of my work is to mediate the world through language, whatever form that language takes. However, that being said, my heart lies in a particular kind of fiction, fiction of the alternative world. The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon.

You display an interest in science fiction, and in the writing of JG Ballard. Was this your childhood reading?

As a child I absolutely gorged myself on sci-fi, I’d eat it in great truckles and sort of chewed it up, I could not get my hands on enough of the stuff. There are certain writers who are kind of science fiction, but something more, like J G Ballard, arguably even somebody like Robert Heinlein and Philip K Dick. I ate these along with the whole mush and brew.

Read the full interview on the Penguin website

Penguin Books – Readers Q&A

January 29, 2006

We gave you the chance to query Will Self on all things literary. Here, Will answers your questions.

Read the full interview on Penguin’s website

The Idler – 1993 interview with Will Self

January 29, 2006

“Will Self has a distinguished history of idleness. At 12 he renounced all sporting activity and involved himself in counter-cultural pursuits. In his twenties he drew a cartoon strip for the New Statesman, Slump, which featured a proto-idler who never got out of bed. It was semi-autobiographical, as Self himself rarely rose either. Following a flirtation with the world of business as a magazine publisher, he found himself experiencing success as a novelist, writer of short stories and journalist. The Idler met Self – lanky, loud and louche – in this latest of his multiple personalities and discussed driving, drugs, small businesses and the will to dullness.

Idler: Are you an Idler?

Self: I’m an incredibly indolent person. I have an enormous natural inability to do … virtually anything, actually. For long periods of my life I just lay in bed and read novels. When people used to ask me what I did, I would say, “I lie in bed and read philanthropic novels”. Somewhere round the house is an edition of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu which I re-covered entirely so that the spine read “Lying in bed reading philanthropic novels” because that’s all I fucking did, you know. When I did Slump for the Statesman, I had that and I had a gig at City Limits, the frontispiece cartoon on the letters page. One paid me 35 quid, the other paid me 70, that’s 105. I had a free flat. And that was it. It took me a morning to do the cartoons. The rest of the time I did nothing. Between ’82 and when I started in a serious suit and tie business in ’86, I did very little. That was the nadir of my idleness.”

Read the full interview online

Feeding Frenzy – Guardian Review

January 29, 2006

From The Guardian review of Feeding Frenzy by Zulfikar Abbany, November 11, 2001

Feeding Frenzy sets a marker on Self’s career, not least because the unorthodox restaurant reviews he wrote for The Observer, from 1995-97, are collated here – reviews that afforded him a notoriety with which he colluded. While readers choked on their laughter, cooks across the country were after Self’s blood.

The selection in Feeding Frenzy is vast. Essays taken from art catalogues sit comfortably next to travel pieces and a notable interview with Salman Rushdie, a man, who, perhaps not unlike Self, has been ‘demonised by the media and popular perceptions’. But before reading any of Feeding Frenzy, it is advisable to consult the index, which covers not only the usual ‘people, places and things, but also ideas, obsessions and my own irritating stylistic tics’, so as to include ‘tongues, locking’, matching socks and shoes, co-ordinated foot- and sockwear’, and ‘snicker-snack, fateful, of psychosis’.

Self has always considered himself a writer, as opposed to either an author and/or a journalist. He writes to commission. And although there are certain things he would rather not touch, such as reviewing the screenplay of Natural Born Killers, throughout this collection he displays a severe knack for turning the merest detail into the most essential one. Just turn to the index and look up Barratt Homes and read how Self indulged one Friday morning in ‘reverse commuting’ to discover that there existed at least one word that, until then, he didn’t know: ‘flaunching’.

Read the full review online

David Shrigley – Why We Got The Sack From The Museum

January 29, 2006

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David Shrigley – Why We Got The Sack From The Museum

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Will Self wrote the introduction for David Shrigley’s book of drawings and observations.

From the Amazon.co.uk review: “As Will Self concedes in his introduction to Shrigley’s new book Why We Got the Sack from the Museum, it is virtually impossible to explain the crude, anarchic humour and energy of Shrigley’s drawings and observations. In fact, Shrigley’s work can hardly be described as “drawing” at all, so unusual are his child-like, line depictions and comments on the dysfunctional urban world which he sees around him. Bees with human heads refuse to land on vegetation dismissed as “crap”; Shrigley invites the reader to attach postcards to car windows informing their owners that they are in fact the result of laboratory experiments involving rat droppings; a hastily drawn cup of tea is advertised for sale, £100 or nearest offer, white with two sugars. And so the book goes on, extremely funny and playful. Its darker and more cynical moments are made even funnier, and then disturbing, by the sheer naivety of the drawings.”

At the Sylver Surfer

January 27, 2006

The River Thames is a pewter-grey surface, ruckled by a chilly breeze. The South Lambeth Road is a hard S of tarmac. In one curve there are the Portuguese cafes, in the other a Days Inn Hotel that, quite frankly, none of us believe ever has any clients. I’m sitting in the Sylver Surfer Internet Cafe posting the first of what I hope will be many many blogs for this site. Why the Sylver Surfer? Well, it’s notionally the closest cyber-gaff to my own home, and I quite like the conceit of wending further and further away from the Self natal cleft as I make these posts. There’s this, and there’s also the fantastic obsolescence of my own computer equipment – which I haven’t upgraded for the past nine years. I’ve never deleted an email message either – there are over 15,000 in the inbox – and nor have I downloaded any of the software required to read the more advanced websites of today. As a result, my own site, put together by the inestimable Chrises, Mitchell and Hall, appears as a uniform field of colour on my home computer, which takes about fifteen minutes to download.

I agonise about upgrading. While I agonise I can almost hear the measured, robotic tread of technological advance as it stalks past my door. Why bother to try and catch up? Perhaps it would be better not only to post these blogs from cyber cafes, but also to do the rest of my writing at them? My friend Tony, who’s some sort of massively powerful Uber-geek at the BBC, tells me that Google will give me a couple of gigabytes of cyberspace in which to store my shit. I like the idea of every thought and observation I make being dumped in this electronic lumber room, while I, joyously unencumbered, tie my mangy collie Tim on to a length of old packing tape, and proceed to Vauxhall Park for a few cans of super-strength lager and a gobbing session with my mates.

I think you may be getting my drift: it’s the sheer profligacy of computing power that strikes me dumb with Luddite inanition. The idea that the average teen, goofing out on MSN, has more calculating capability at his or her fingertips than the entire guidance systems of all the ICBMs aimed during the Cold War, makes me feel an awful dizziness. I stare down between my feet at the deep, deep time, wherein tens of thousands of generations of humans struggled to find exactly the right way to hit one flint with another so as to achieve a decent cutting surface. We’re not fit for such jewells at these VDUs. It’s all going to end badly.

P.S. I don’t have a mangy collie called Tim, just in case you’re intending to put the ALF on to me. I haven’t had a dog in years – and the idea of picking up ordure in the streets, then wiping my fingers on the net, does not appeal.

Perfidious Man

January 15, 2006

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Will Self – Perfidious Man

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Synopsis:
Through text and pictures, this book will explores what it is to be a man at the turn of the century, whether masculinity can be said to have any currency any more, and asks “where have all the real men gone?”

Sore Sites

January 15, 2006

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Will Self – Sore Sites

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Synopsis:
A collection of articles from Building Design architectural magazine which present Will Self’s idiosyncratic view of the built environment.

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

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