Will Self is going to be talking about Alice in Wonderland tonight at the British Library, 6.30pm.
Conspiracy theories
“Conspiracy theories are articles of faith for the masses in an age of unbelief. You will have had the same experience as me on numerous painful occasions: a perfectly ordinary exchange with someone about current political events suddenly veers off-piste and disappears down a crevasse yawning with credulousness. ‘Everyone knows,’ your interlocutor asserts, ‘that Princess Di was assassinated by MI5 to stop her having a Muslim baby … that the September 11 attacks were mounted by the Bush government to provide a pretext for their Iraq oil-grabbing venture … that global warming is a fiction devised by the scientific establishment in order to stop us enjoying our city breaks … ‘
“It’s altogether pointless trying to winch these people out of their crevasse with a thin cable of reason, because they’ve already made the brave leap into believing something for which there is no real empirical basis whatsoever. Indeed, if you do challenge them along these lines, they simply turn on you with words to the effect that you cannot prove your version of these events, while they, at least, are maintaining a healthy scepticism – the implication being that you’re merely another dupe.
“What got me thinking about the collective insanity of the conspiratorial laity – besides running into it almost every day – was the experience of a young friend of mine who is studying philosophy at a perfectly respectable university. She was given by her tutor the assignment of watching on YouTube a ‘documentary’ called Loose Change. This, for those of you fortunate enough not to have seen it, is a series of ‘facts’ and ‘observations’ that, taken together, are intended to support one of the ‘arguments’ above; namely, that it wasn’t a group of Islamist jihadists who engineered the destruction of the twin towers and the attack on the Pentagon, but elements within the federal government itself who conspired to take the lives of thousands of their own citizens.
“When my young friend taxed her tutor with the ridiculousness of this thesis, she was told that watching Loose Change was integral to her study of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
“That the September 11 attacks should have generated so much conspiratorial guff is woefully predictable. Loose Change is only a wilder and more explicit version of the thesis bruited by Michael Moore’s asinine Fahrenheit 9/11. In that feature-length exercise in infantile tendentiousness, Moore made great play of the connections between the Bin Laden and Bush families, hinting that these were causally implicated in the attacks. The truth is that it would be surprising if the Bin Ladens – whose vast construction company is by appointment to the House of Saud – didn’t hobnob with the Bushes.”
Read the rest of the latest Madness of Crowds column here.
Lent talks
Will Self kicks off a series of Lent Talks on Radio 4 on Wednesday February 24 at 8.45pm, reflecting on the relationship between art and spirituality.
There is also a version of Self’s talk in the New Statesman here.
In Our Time
“Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time has become something of a badge to be worn with pride by the contemporary British dilettante. I often find myself groping for conversation, when my interlocutor, perhaps sensing my abstraction, will reveal that she listens to – and loves – the Radio 4 discussion programme on the history of ideas. I, too, am happy to concede that I’m an In Our Time fan, preferring to catch up on it via podcasts listened to on my iPod when I’m walking the dog.
“There is always a measure of surprise – from one dilettante to another – when we admit to this fondness for Bragg’s programme. In part, this has to be because of the peculiar position he himself occupies in the sixth-form common room of British culture: though a self-confessed swot, his face displays the sheen of populism – the result of several decades’ spraying by television’s incontinent regard. While other pupils have come and gone, he remains; and when it was announced last year that, after 30 years, Bragg’s principal vehicle, The South Bank Show, would be ceasing transmission, there was – among those I spoke with – a feeling that this was the end of an era: the barbarians were at the gate. Moreover, we would miss Melvyn’s perkily browned features – like those of a handsome walnut – as the camera cut away from this or that artistic nabob, to show him bobbing and grinning assent (shots that are known in the industry as ‘noddies’).”
Read the rest of Will Self’s Diary piece in the London Review of Books here.
10 rules for writing fiction
Will Self’s 10 rules for writing fiction, from the Guardian Review:
1. Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work, which is all in …
2. The edit.
3. Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper, you can lose an idea for ever.
4. Stop reading fiction – it’s all lies anyway, and it doesn’t have anything to tell you that you don’t know already (assuming, that is, you’ve read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven’t, you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction).
5. You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing, and should be cherished.
6. Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.
7. By the same token remember how much time people spend watching TV. If you’re writing a novel with a contemporary setting there need to be long passages where nothing happens save for TV watching: “Later, George watched Grand Designs while eating HobNobs. Later still, he watched the Shopping Channel for a while … ”
8. The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement – if you can’t deal with this, you needn’t apply.
9. Oh, and not forgetting the occasional beating administered by the sadistic guards of the imagination.
10. Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.
The Burning Leg
Self has written the foreword to The Burning Leg: Walking Scenes from Classic Fiction by Duncan Minshull, which will be published on April 30 by the Hesperus Press.
Will Self readings and events spring and summer 2010
David Eagleman, the neuroscientist and author of Sum, is going to be in conversation with Will Self on March 25 at a rare appearance at Conway Hall in London. For further details and to book tickets, go here.
Solihull Arts Complex, May 20, 7.30pm, £15. Further details here.
Perth Festival of the Arts 2010, Perth Theatre, May 28, 7.30pm. For details, visit here.
Lincoln Jackson Lecture Theatre, University of Lincoln, July 11 2010, 2pm. Self will “give a reading of his work followed by a Q and A session on his own work, and on writing in the 21st century”. For further details, go here.
Hotel breakfasts
“One of the realest meals there is in the so-called developed world is a hotel breakfast. I say this for a simple reason: no one – unless they are close to expiring – refuses it. You may stagger back to your chipboard hutch, which fronts on to some godawful bypass, at 1.30am, swearing never again to drink with colleagues/clients/long-lost siblings, but the card lying on the bed still gets you salivating.”
“Because the whole point about the hotel breakfast is that it’s included: you’ve paid your £65.99, so you may as well have it. It’s not only included in the hotel bill, it is also, by extension, inclusive of all the guests. Good morning, Britain! Good morning, all you munchers and crunchers and belchers – wherever you may be. Speaking personally, the novelty of having breakfast served to me in my room has long since palled. I find the whole experience of staying in hotels alone alienating, and the mornings are worst of all: lonely Onan, in his pants, caffeine-jittery and staring at the traffic coursing by the unopenable window like so many steely worry beads on a tarmac string.”
Read the rest of the latest Real Meals column at the New Statesman here.
Literateur interview
There’s a long Q&A with Will Self at The Literateur Magazine, which you can read here.
The Daily Politics
You can watch Will Self on the BBC’s Daily Politics show here until Monday Feb 15. Subjects include climatology research, Alastair Campbell’s emoting and the MPs expenses scandal.
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