Subjects Discussed: The overlapping relationship between The Book of Dave and Psychogeography, topographical narrative, Nicholson Baker, Nabokov’s rule about topographical necessity and novels, John Updike’s Brazil, the Post-It notes in Self’s writing room, early plotting efforts with 3×5 cards, short-term memory, Self’s use of arcane words, My Idea of Fun, working with a large vocabulary, Peter Carey’s “The Cartographers,” why Self uses “minatory,” lexical blending, “kidults,” writing 1,000 words a day, Anthony Burgess, the writers who showed Self the way, David Markson, NADSAT vs. Mockney, Russell Hoban’s Ridley Walker, George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex,” bodily functions and literature, J.G. Ballard, starting from corporeal qualities for characters, Jonathan Swift, Oliver Rackham as armchair historian, Karrie Higgins’s review, austere terms for psychogeography, why Self went to the obvious tourist spots, the Situationists’s failure to account for family, on having two passports and national identity, being a citizen of London and trying to get out of the city, the problems with the travel industry, the cigarette as a narrative unit, airline travel, Marx and Guy Debord, Self’s definition of the dérive, walking 25-30 miles a day, Self’s theories about Our Young, Roving Correspondent’s anxieties over long walks and drab details, how long walks become variegated, expanding one’s curiosity, Self’s difficulty in talking with people, and learning more about people through a system.
Tags / will self
Tagged with “will self”
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The Bat Segundo Show: Will Self
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Guardian short stories podcast | Will Self reads ‘On Exactitude in Science’ by Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges’s combination of the anecdotal, philosophical and the literary showed Will Self how to achieve the ‘truly veridical’. He gets his coordinates from ‘On Exactitude in Science’.
Tagged with jorge luis borges will self guardian
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Will Self: Stockwell Bus Garage
As part of the lecture series ‘Critic’s Choice: London’s Most Important Building’, author Will Self has proposed the Stockwell Bus Garage designed by Adie, Button and Partners, with the engineer A E Beer for its revolutionary, beautiful and highly utilitarian form. When constructed in 1952 it was the largest area enclosed by a single roof in Europe. The whale-backed roof made of reinforced concrete, shows how shortages - in this case of steel - can produce aesthetic as well as functional solutions. Having passed it everyday he has appreciated it as ‘a working building, integrally connected to London’s public transport’.
Tagged with will self stockwell architecture
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Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place
Evoking places as far flung as Iowa and India, Will Self teamed with legendary Gonzo illustrator Ralph Steadman to explore the intimate effects of geographical environment on human emotion and behavior.
Tagged with will self psychogeography
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Will Self - The Minor Character
An exclusive for will-self.com. Listen to Will Self reading The Minor Character, an unpublished short story, which was part of his collection of short stories, The Undivided Self.
Self recorded The Minor Character while he was narrating an unabridged audio version of Liver.
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openbook: Will Self, dead lovers and comic novels
Mariella Frostrup talks to writer Will Self about cuts to UK libraries. He explains why he’s lending his voice to a campaign to preserve funding for local libraries, but he also examines how a crisis can be turned into an opportunity.
Novelists Joseph O’Connor and Maggie O’Farrell discuss why dead lovers haunt the pages of their books, as well as the back catalogue of English literature.
Plus, have young novelists forgotten how to be funny? Open Book responds to a reader’s query for new comic fiction from writers under the age of thirty-five - comedian Robin Ince is on hand to offer guidance.
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Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death
An obsession with the nature of death lies at the heart of the human experience, but have the technological advances and scientific discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries led us to believe we can somehow cheat it?
Join John Gray and Will Self as they discuss the great implication of Darwin’s ideas - that natural selection makes humans into animals like any other.
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Will Self on life, love and liver
Tagged with book:author=will self book:title=book of dave
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Will’s World Pt4 - The Penguin Podcast: Penguin Podcast 21
Today’s podcast is our last featuring Will Self, prolific author, commentator, journalist and broadcaster, to celebrate the launch of his critically acclaimed new book, The Book of Dave. The podcast features the rest of the answers Will gave to questions…
http://thepenguinpodcast.blogs.com/podcast/2006/06/penguin_podcast_6.html
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Will Self and Martin Amis on appearing in their own books
Adam Thirlwell, Will Self and Martin Amis discuss fictional characters bearing their authors’ names
Tagged with books guardian will self martin amis