Will Self - Free Library Land Online - Animals

Why Read: Selected Writings 2001 – 2021 (2022)

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 21:00:33 +0200

'Will Self may not be the last modernist at work but at the moment he's the most fascinating of the tradition's torch bearers.' New York
From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation' by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.
Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebald's childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary...

Will Self's Collected Fiction, Vol. 2 (2014)

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 22:31:59 +0200

Titles included in this collection include:
Umbrella
Walking to Hollywood
The Butt
Dr Mukti and other Tales of Woe
How the Dead Live
Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys

Elaine

Sat, 18 Oct 2003 22:37:25 +0300

Will Self's Collected Fiction, Vol. 1 (2014)

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 22:31:58 +0200

Titles include:
The Quantity Theory of Psychosis
Cock & Bull
My Idea of Fun
Grey Area
Great Apes
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis

Liver

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:42:54 +0200

In this collection of four linked stories, newly reissued by Grove, Will Self takes aim at the disease and decay that target the largest of human organs: the liver. Set in locales as toxic as a London drinking club and mundane as a clinic in an orderly Swiss city, the stories distill the hard lives of their subjects, whether alcoholic, drug addict, or cancer patient. In "Foie Humaine," set at the Plantation Club, it's always a Tuesday afternoon in midwinter, and the shivering denizens of this dusty realm spend their days observing its proprietor as he force-feeds the barman vodka-spiked beer. Joyce Beddoes, protagonist of "Leberknödel," has terminal liver cancer and is on her way to be euthanized in Zurich when, miraculously, her disease goes into remission. In "Prometheus," a young copywriter at London's most cutting-edge ad agency has his liver nibbled by a griffon thrice daily, but he's always in the pink the following morning and ready to make that killer pitch. If blood and...

Will (2019)

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 21:00:31 +0200

'Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation' Guardian
________________________________
Will's mother's hokey homily, Waste not, want not... hisses in his ears as he oscillates furiously on the spot, havering on the threshold between the bedroom and the dying one... all the while cradling the plastic leech of the syringe in the crook of his arm. Oscillating furiously, and, as he'd presses the plunger home a touch more... and more, he hears it again and again: Waaaste nooot, waaant nooot..! whooshing into and out of him, while the blackness wells up at the periphery of his vision, and his hackneyed heart begins to beat out weirdly arrhythmic drum fills - even hitting the occasional rim-shot on his resonating rib cage. He waits, paralysed, acutely conscious, that were he simply to press his thumb right home, it'll be a cartoonish death: That's all folks! as the aperture screws shut forever.

Why Read

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 14:20:37 +0200

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella, a world-girdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literature
From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed "the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation" by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.
Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback, and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell, and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebald's childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in...

The Quantity Theory of Morality

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:42:14 +0300

This dark yet hilariously satirical state-of-an-era novel sees Will Self's middle-class, middle-English characters apparently trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors, until one day someone says something to the effect of, 'This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen.' The Quantity Theory ofMorality finally solves the equation of time and money that dominates our lives, in a way that is simultaneously deranging, destabilizing and hilarious, showing Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humour and a sublime and thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life. With The Quantity Theory of Morality, Self provides the sequel to his award-winning debut of 35 years ago, The Quantity Theory of Insanity. That literary psycho-surgery proved there wasn't enough sanity to go around - now he's established what many of us fear to be the absolute truth: there isn't enough good to go around, either.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:20:45 +0200

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker - hilarious restaurant reviews by Booker nominee Will Self
'Most food writing and restaurant criticism is concerned with the ideal, with how by cooking this, or dining there, you can somehow ingurgitate a new - or at any rate improved - social, aesthetic and even spiritual persona. I aimed to turn this proposition on its head, and instead of commenting on where and what people would ideally like to eat I would consider where and what they actually did: the ready meals, buffet snacks and - most importantly - fast food that millions of Britons chomp upon in the go-round of their often hurried and dyspeptic lives.'
In this selection from his wickedly funny New Statesman Real Meals column, Will Self reviews the chains where most of us go to eat (KFC, Greggs, Yo! Sushi, Pizza Express and their like), delves into the ubiquitous Thai meal and Chicken Tikka Masala, and experiences hotel breakfasts, frozen TV dinners...

The Sweet Smell of Psychosis

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 07:26:29 +0200

A brief and brilliant satire of magazine hacks and fashionistas, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis shows Will Self—a writer hailed by Time as “brilliant, iconoclastic . . . one of Britain’s most original young writers”—at the top of his form. It looks like it’s going to be quite a Christmas for Richard Hermes, powdered with cocaine and whining with the white noise of urban derangement. Not so much enfolded as trapped in the bosom of the most venal media clique in London, Richard is losing it on all fronts: he’s losing his heart to Ursula Bentley, a nubile and vacuous magazine columnist; he’s in danger of losing his job at the pretentious listings magazine Rendezvous; he’s losing his mind courtesy of Colombia’s chief illegal export; and, worst of all, he’s losing his soul . . . to the king-of-all-media and sinister purveyor of opportunities—sexual, chemical, and professional—known only as Bell. Murky, paranoid, and...

The Quantity Theory of Insanity: Reissued

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:26:29 +0200

Shark

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 07:26:31 +0200

Grey Area

Fri, 14 Nov 1997 15:33:52 +0200

Will Self demonstrates his razor-sharp wit in these nine new stories. Self's method depends upon taking an ordinary aspect of the world and then pushing it to its limit in furious absurdity. The short stories in Grey Area reflect the technical brilliance and satiric voice that have made him one of the most highly praised comic writers in a decade. These are stories that delve into the modern psyche with unsettling and darkly satiric results. "Inclusion" tells the story of a doctor who is illegally testing a new antidepressant made from bee excrement. "A Short History of the English Novel" brings us face to face with a pompous publisher who is greeted at every turn by countless rejected authors. In "The End of the Relationship" a woman who has been left by her boyfriend provokes - "like some emotional Typhoid Mary" - the same reaction among all the couples she goes to for comfort. The narrator of "Between the Conceits" declares without hesitation that London is controlled by only eight individuals, and, thankfully, he is one of them. Self's world in these pieces is both curiously familiar and hauntingly strange. Nine new stories from the fiendishly witty Will Self, whose limitless imagination and technical brilliance have made him one of the most highly praised comic writers. Already published to critical acclaim in England, Grey Area is a dazzling collection by one of the most talented and original writers of his generation.

Cock and Bull

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:01:41 +0200

Carol, the heroine of Cock, is extremely dissatisfied with her married life. Realisation that her husband Dan is not the man for her has come too late and insult follows injury as Dan’s drinking problem gives way to an obsessive fervour for Alcoholics Anonymous. One evening while Dan is out, Carol discovers something entirely unexpected about herself that leads her into rather twisted and distinctly uncharted waters ...On the flip side, there is Bull. John Bull is a man’s man. A rugby player, a drinker. He’s also about to wake up to something of an anatomical surprise, a surprise that his doctor seems to be much more interested in than is entirely proper ...