Will Self's Blog, page 53

Insight Radio podcast

Listen to Will Self talking about Umbrella on Insight Radio .

Madness of crowds: Personal pronouns

You don’t need to know this – but here goes: due to some acquired infantilism, I feel compelled to fall asleep listening to the radio. On a good night I’ll push the frail barque of my psyche off into the waters of Lethe accompanied by the midnight newsreader – on a bad one it’s the shipping forecast. Somewhere in between the two lies Book of the Week, which goes out at 12.30am on Radio 4. I try to give this programme a swerve – my main occupation is writing books, and listening to other peopl...

Shortlist interview

A recent interview with Will Self in Shortlist magazine, taking in Umbrella, the Booker, the Olympics and more besides.

Real meals: Tender Greens

It’s worth recalling the infamous “black dinner” from J-K Huysmanns’s Á Rebours, the so-called immoral book that the prosecution counsel insisted on reading lengthy passages from during Oscar Wilde’s trial for gross indecency. Ostensibly the cataloguing of the decadent aristo Des Esseintes’s weltschmerz, far from being particularly shocking what will probably strike the modern reader most is how funny the book is – that and how extensively Wilde stole from it for his The Picture of Dorian Gra...

Beyond Kafka’s Wound

Will Self discusses a range of issues provoked by his digital essay Kafka’s Wound at thespace.lrb.co.uk with Nicholas Spice and Helen Jeffrey from the London Review of Books, and Dan Franklin, Digital Publisher at Random House.

Is this unique digital essay a proto-form for a new type of deeper engagement with long form content on the web? What can modernism tell us about the digital storm sweeping through our world? How might collaborative digital authorship move forward? What next?

Kafka and Dissonant Bohemia

Following on from Will Self’s recent “digital essay” on Kafka, he’s going to be talking about “Kafka and Dissonant Bohemia” as part of the Kings Place Notes & Letters festival in London on Sunday October 7 at 2pm. To buy tickets (£9.50) and for more details, go here.

Umbrella reading and introduction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9bPUUM8w2k

Will Self introduces Umbrella.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDuV2AsWqzA

Will Self reading from Umbrella.

Umbrella reading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDuV2AsWqzA

Will Self reading from Umbrella.

The Wreford Watson lecture

Scotland on Sunday has extracted this piece by Will Self from Decontaminating the Union: Post-Industrial Landscapes and the British Psyche, the Wreford Watson lecture to be given at the University of Edinburgh on Thursday.

Open Book

Listen to Will Self talking about Umbrella on Open Book here.