Will Self's Blog, page 5

On slangish

On slang as a form of communication and its standing in the education system.

Lincoln Book Festival

Will is going to be talking to Dr Guy Mankowski about his latest book, Will, and ‘whether it captures the diversity of his life or, as suggested in the Daily Telegraph, is “Just another Selfian character, subject to absolute authorial control, the fragmented derangement of his youth woven into an intricate and coherent whole by the mature author”‘ at the Lincoln Book Festival on 14 October at 6.30pm. Tickets cost £10 and can be bought here.

On Extinction Rebellion and royalty

Two recent New European columns: the first on Extinction Rebellion; the second on royalty.

On churchgoing

Will has written about being welcomed in church and religious identity for his latest New European Multicultural Man column.

Stephen Wright’s House of Dreams

Will’s latest New European column can be found here.

How big pharma helped create our mental health crisis

Will’s review essay on Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis by James Davies is available to read for free on the Prospect magazine website here during its two-week paywall holiday.

Ports Fest July 3

Tickets are available for Will’s talk and Q&A this Saturday online at 2-3.30pm at Ports Fest. The talk “will explore ways in which we remember the fiction we read during childhood and youth, the role of memory, and our views of facticity” and Will will also read from his latest book, Will: A Memoir.

How to be Creative

From an online talk for the How to Academy.

The empty theatre of Boris Johnson

“There’s something curiously out-of-focus about the Prime Minister, isn’t there? I mean, I’ve been up close and pretty personal with him on a number of occasions, and I still can’t help seeing him with a sort of fuzzy nimbus surrounding his roly-poly outline – as if he were one of those newborn babies covered with a lot of vernix. It’s widely bruited about that his dishabille is a deliberate affectation – like Harold Wilson’s pipe-smoking. In private the Labour premier and soi-disant ‘socialist’...

Littérature Live Festival

Will in conversation with Sylvain Bourmeau about his latest book, Will, and many other things at Villa Gillet for the recent Littérature Live Festival (translated in French).