Will Self https://will-self.com/ Mon, 19 Aug 2024 04:40:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 Will Self’s new novel: Elaine https://will-self.com/2024/08/19/will-self-new-novel-elaine/ https://will-self.com/2024/08/19/will-self-new-novel-elaine/#respond Mon, 19 Aug 2024 04:40:49 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5862 Will Self’s new novel Elaine will be published in September 2024.

]]> https://will-self.com/2024/08/19/will-self-new-novel-elaine/feed/ 0 Berwick literary festival October 12 https://will-self.com/2023/10/10/berwick-literary-festival-october-12/ https://will-self.com/2023/10/10/berwick-literary-festival-october-12/#respond Tue, 10 Oct 2023 21:18:36 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5818 Will discusses the impact of the web, the internet, social media and the handheld computer (also known as a ‘phone’) on the practice of reading in the 21st century. Drawing on his book Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, he’ll present a complex picture of discontinuous adaptation to new media, and interrogate whether the transition is a gain overall for the human psyche and its societies… or a net loss. Suitable for high school students. The event is given in memory of Simon Heald.

To buy tickets for this online talk on Thursday October 12 at 11am for £5, click here.

]]> https://will-self.com/2023/10/10/berwick-literary-festival-october-12/feed/ 0 BONUS: Martin Amis in conversation with Will Self (2010) https://will-self.com/2023/06/02/bonus-martin-amis-in-conversation-with-will-self-2010/ https://will-self.com/2023/06/02/bonus-martin-amis-in-conversation-with-will-self-2010/#respond Fri, 02 Jun 2023 11:06:57 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5812

Via Shakespeare & Company bookshop in Paris.

]]> https://will-self.com/2023/06/02/bonus-martin-amis-in-conversation-with-will-self-2010/feed/ 0 My obsession with Adrian Chiles’ column https://will-self.com/2023/05/19/my-obsession-with-adrian-chiles-column/ https://will-self.com/2023/05/19/my-obsession-with-adrian-chiles-column/#respond Fri, 19 May 2023 22:48:22 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5809 I think about Adrian Chiles’s cock more than is strictly necessary — which is pretty obviously: at all, unless you happen to be Adrian Chiles, his sexual partner, or his doctor (should Chiles be afflicted with a disease affecting his cock).

I didn’t even really know who Chiles was much before I acquired this problem – I had a vague idea he was a television and radio presenter, but since I don’t watch the former, and don’t listen to the radio station he broadcasts on, Chiles wasn’t in my world.

I did vaguely know he was in a relationship with Kath Viner, the editor of the Guardian, because I’d read a couple of columns he’d written for the paper that were such utter flim-flam (Wilde described wit as “the epitaph of an emotion”, and by extension, Chiles’s efforts are the epitaph of cogitation), that their presence in the paper was only explicable if his cock were in some way involved. Clearly, Ms Viner – if we accept the idea that she’s an even halfway decent newspaper editor – must be blinded by Chiles’s cock to at least this extent.

Read the rest here …

]]> https://will-self.com/2023/05/19/my-obsession-with-adrian-chiles-column/feed/ 0 Why Read in Tunbridge Wells https://will-self.com/2023/05/12/why-read-in-tunbridge-wells/ https://will-self.com/2023/05/12/why-read-in-tunbridge-wells/#respond Fri, 12 May 2023 10:00:13 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5806 Will is going to be at the Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival at the Amelia Scott, 7pm Saturday May 13 taking up some of the arguments he put forward in his latest book, Why Read, a collection of essays on writing and literature.

]]> https://will-self.com/2023/05/12/why-read-in-tunbridge-wells/feed/ 0 The mind-bending fiction of Mircea Cartarescu https://will-self.com/2023/04/07/the-mind-bending-fiction-of-mircea-cartarescu/ https://will-self.com/2023/04/07/the-mind-bending-fiction-of-mircea-cartarescu/#respond Fri, 07 Apr 2023 02:13:35 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5798 A review of Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu in the Nation.

]]> https://will-self.com/2023/04/07/the-mind-bending-fiction-of-mircea-cartarescu/feed/ 0 ‘The Queen is dead – and let’s try to keep it that way’ https://will-self.com/2023/02/10/the-queen-is-dead-and-lets-try-to-keep-it-that-way/ https://will-self.com/2023/02/10/the-queen-is-dead-and-lets-try-to-keep-it-that-way/#respond Fri, 10 Feb 2023 03:21:13 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5791 I thought my anti-monarchy feelings had become fairly torpid in recent years – there’s been so much to be unhappy and discontented about … But the slavish response of the British press and public to the Queen’s death, followed by an equally servile and sententious one to the publication of ‘Spare’ made me realise an important thing: no one seemed capable any more of framing their response to these royal ructions within an assumed – and profound – critique of the institution itself … Yet polling consistently shows that a third of the British population remain obstinately unhappy with our much-lauded – and ineffable – constitutional settlement … After the Queen died, my voice was deemed unacceptable in Britain – I wrote two pieces for the foreign press, in the US and France – and only now am I able to write for British readers of The New European what I truly think and feel: the Queen is dead – and let’s try to keep it that way …’

Out of their minds by Will Self

]]> https://will-self.com/2023/02/10/the-queen-is-dead-and-lets-try-to-keep-it-that-way/feed/ 0 Why Read to be published in November https://will-self.com/2022/10/18/why-read-to-be-published-in-november/ https://will-self.com/2022/10/18/why-read-to-be-published-in-november/#respond Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:48:25 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5771 A new collection of Will’s non-fiction writing (following on from Junk Mail and Feeding Frenzy), Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, is published by Grove Press in the UK on November 3, and by Grove Atlantic in the US on January 17 2023 – a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.

“Sharp, trenchant essays from an enfant terrible of modern letters…. Self effortlessly weaves his way from such lighthearted topics as shelves, the “very lynchpins of a form of bourgeois domesticity,” to a lengthy, dark, autobiographical piece on W.G. Sebald and the role of the Holocaust in his writing as well as an unfortunately timely piece about his visit to “coruscating” Pripyat, near Chernobyl, at the same time as the Fukushima disaster. …Plenty to ponder in this energetic, opinionated collection.” – Kirkus Reviews (for full review go here).

Why Read events:
Falmouth Book Festival, October 22
How To event at the Art Workers Guild in London, November 7
Blackwell’s Oxford, November 10
Brighthelm Centre, Brighton, November 11
Folkestone Festival, November 26

]]> https://will-self.com/2022/10/18/why-read-to-be-published-in-november/feed/ 0 On the Road with Penguin Classics https://will-self.com/2022/09/21/on-the-road-with-penguin-classics/ https://will-self.com/2022/09/21/on-the-road-with-penguin-classics/#respond Wed, 21 Sep 2022 10:36:51 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5769 Will is going to be in conversation with Henry Eliot about Thomas de Quincey (Confessions of an English Opium Eater) and William S. Burroughs (Junky) in Soho for the new series of the podcast On the Road with Penguin Classics released on September 29. Listen to the trailer here.

]]> https://will-self.com/2022/09/21/on-the-road-with-penguin-classics/feed/ 0 The British Monarchy Should Die With the Queen https://will-self.com/2022/09/13/the-british-monarchy-should-die-with-the-queen/ https://will-self.com/2022/09/13/the-british-monarchy-should-die-with-the-queen/#respond Tue, 13 Sep 2022 09:37:35 +0000 https://will-self.com/?p=5767 Read Will’s opinion piece on the monarchy at the Daily Beast.

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