Will Self

Will Self (born September 26 , 1961) is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School and Exeter College, Oxford. He is married to journalist Deborah Orr.

Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes. These include:

Cock and Bull (1992) — the stories of a man and a woman who develop sexual organs of the opposite sex.
My Idea of Fun (1993) — a lonely boy grows up just outside Brighton in a caravan park with his over-sexual mother and Samuel Northcliff who takes the boy on a disturbing and often violent journey.
Great Apes (1997) — a man wakes up in a world where chimpanzees have taken the place of humans.
How the Dead Live (2000) — an old lady dies, only to be moved to a London suburb where the dead have taken residence.
Dorian (2002) — a modern take on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The Book of Dave (2006) — The story of a London cab driver who is slightly mad, and writes a book of his rantings then buries the book, which is discovered 500 years later and used as the sacred text for a religion that has taken hold in the flooded remnants of London.

On his writing:

"All my work is highly personal; it's more personal than me. You know, reading my books is having a far more intimate relationship with me than having a relationship with me."

His shorter fiction includes:

The Quantity Theory of Insanity (Short Stories) 1991
Grey Area (Short Stories) 1994
Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (Short Stories) 1998
Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe (Short Stories) 2004
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis (Illustrated Novella) 1996

Like Salman Rushdie, Will Self loads his fiction with references and allusions to modern culture (both high and low) and like Rushdie he is probably the only person able to recognise them all. The influences on his fiction mentioned most frequently include J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson often not for purely literary reasons. Alongside these he has cited such diverse writers as Jonathan Swift, Franz Kafka, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Heller and Louis-Ferdinand Celine as formative influences on his writing style. Martin Amis is often mentioned alongside Self; Self went to interview him but they ended up having more of a discussion about each other's work and lives — it is known that they have tremendous respect for each other.

Self has also compiled several books of work from his newspaper and magazine columns — Junk Mail (1996), Sore Sites (2000) and Feeding Frenzy (2001) — which mix interviews with counter-culture figures, restaurant reviews and literary criticism. Highly articulate, he has made several appearances on British television, notably as a contestant on Have I Got News for You (to date he has made eight guest appearances, a record jointly held with Germaine Greer) and as a regular on Shooting Stars and Grumpy Old Men. He gained a degree of infamy in 1997 when he was sent by the British broadsheet The Observer to cover the electoral campaign of John Major, and was subsequently fired from the newspaper after taking heroin on the Prime Minister's jet.

Quote:

"I want to be misunderstood. And the other thing that amuses me is: I don't particularly want to be liked. Nobody goes into the business of writing satire to be liked. Whether I am or am not a nice bloke is neither here nor there. It's not part of the task I've set myself in my art."

External links

[Official Will Self site]
[Will Self] at [www.contemporarywriters.com]
[Guardian Books author page: Will Self]
[The Sweet Smell of Excess: Will Self, Bataille and Transgression] (An essay examining Self's work and parallels with Georges Bataille.)
[A short interview]: [BBC]
[Interview]: [Spike Magazine]
[Audio Interview (available in Real Audio or mp3)]: [Salon.com]

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