Will Self's Blog, page 40

Real meals: Jamie Oliver’s Diner

Jamie Oliver – like the poor he so adores – seems always to be with us; to be with us and to have been with us always as well, although it’s only 14 years since he first thrust his meat and two veg at us in the television series The Naked Chef. Since then, not a year has passed without some new Oliver production: cookery books, more TV, many Sainsbury’s advertising campaigns, restaurants, delicatessens, food product ranges and latterly a number of campaigns aimed at improving the eating habit...

Snake Dance by Patrick Marnham – review

At the dead centre of this book’s snaking path down the friable face of human history stands Aby Warburg, a scion of the well-known banking family and a dilettante scholar at a time – and in a place – when to be so was still intellectually respectable. When Patrick Marnham writes that Warburg “mocked the keepers of academic purity as ‘border police’”, I suspect a strong sense of identification is at work. Michael P Steinberg, the translator of Warburg’s discipline-transgressing monographs on...

The madness of crowds: Autopia

“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles,” or so the opening line of Bret Easton Ellis’sLess Than Zerowould have it. For myself, I’ve never seen the least evidence for this, any more than I have that happy families are all alike. Everywhere I’ve ever driven in LA, its inhabitants have cheerfully braided me into their steely weave until I too have merged with their all-consuming automotive abandon.

This time, arriving from Dallas, I was offered for $40 extra per day a retro-styled...

A Point of View: JFK’s assassination

You can read Will Self’s latest A Point of View for BBC Radio 4here, or listen to it here.

On (and in) the Thames

“A few years ago, I decided to walk on the foreshore of the Thames from Battersea Park as far to the east as I could. I had observed over the years that, at especially low tides, quite large areas of hardened mud were exposed; these were either studded with pebbles and flints, or gave way to chunks of concrete slipway, or elided into true shingle. Naturally, being the sort of man I am, I hadn’t made a comprehensive survey of either the littoral or the tide table, so I soon found myself wading...

A Point of View: Pity the young

Listen to Will Self’s latest A Point of View, on the malign influence of the older generation on the young, on the BBC Radio 4 website here.

Umbrella playlist

In largeheartedboy.com’sBook Notesseries, Will Self has created – and discusses – a music playlist that relates to his most recently published book, Umbrella, from the Kinks’ “Ape Man” to”Don’t Let it Die” by Hurricane Smith.

David Shrigley

An interview with and piece on David Shrigley, ahead of the Turner prize exhibition, from the Guardian Review, here.

Real meals: Itsu

Itsu is a Japanese-inspired chain of some 40 takeaways and a brace of proper restaurants that are scattered across London’s financial district with a few outliers, including one in Oxford. Itsu – which is a Japanese prefix meaning “when” – was founded by Julian Metcalfe, who is also responsible for Pret A Manger, so you get the semantic synonymy.

I ate in a branch of Itsu near St Paul’s a couple of weeks ago, and for some perverse reason I so enjoyed the experience that I returned to see wheth...

Flytopia short film

You can watch the trailer of a film version of Will Self’s short story Flytopia from his collection Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys today at 1pm on Film4 and read what Will has to say about it too. Flytopia has been filmed by Karni & Saul, and it will be premiering online from Friday.