Will Self

Will Self
Born	William Woodard Self 26 September 1961 (1961-09-26) London, England, UK
Occupation	Journalist, novelist
Nationality	English
Citizenship	British
Education	Bachelor of Arts
Alma mater	Exeter College, Oxford
Period	1991–present
Genres	Satire
Notable work(s)	The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys, Cock and Bull
Spouse(s)	Kate Chancellor (1989–1997) Deborah Orr (1997–present)
Influences Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift, J. G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Alasdair Gray, Hunter S. Thompson, Martin Amis, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Heller, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Mikhail Bulgakov
www.will-self.com

William Woodard "Will" Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English novelist and short story writer. His fictional style is known for being satirical, grotesque, and fantastical. He is a prolific commentator on contemporary British life, with regular appearances on Newsnight and Question Time. He has also appeared on the comedy panel show Have I Got News for You.

Early life

Self was raised, in his words, in "an effortlessly dull" North London suburb (East Finchley, although he sometimes lays claim to Hampstead Garden Suburb) by "intellectually snobbish parents". He is the son of Peter Self, Professor of Public Administration at the London School of Economics and Professor of Urban Research at the Australian National University, and a Jewish-American immigrant who worked as a publisher's assistant. Through his father, Self is a descendant of Nathaniel Woodard. Despite the intellectual encouragement given by his parents, Self was an emotionally confused and self-destructive child, harming himself with cigarette ends and knives before getting into drugs in his teenage years. His parents separated when he was 9, and divorced when he was 18.

Self was a voracious reader from a young age. At ten an interest in science fiction grew, with notable works such as Frank Herbert's Dune, J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick reflecting the precociousness of Self's reading. Into his teenage years, Self claimed to have been "overawed by the canon", stifling his ability to express himself. Nevertheless, Self's dabbling with illegal drugs grew in step with his prolific reading.

Self was addicted to heroin, as well as many other drugs, in the past, but has abstained, except for caffeine and nicotine since 1998.

Of Self's background Nick Rennison has written that he:

is sometimes presented as a bad-boy outsider, writing, like the Americans William S Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr, about sex, drugs and violence in a very direct way. Yet he is not some class warrior storming the citadels of the literary establishment from the outside, but an Oxford educated, middle-class metropolitan who, despite his protestations to the contrary in interviews, is about as much at the heart of the establishment as you can get, a place he has occupied almost from the start of his career."

Education

Self attended University College School, an independent school for boys in Hampstead in North London, with Hugh Dennis where they played rugby together. He later attended Christ's College, Finchley of which his memories are "fairly hazy", followed by Exeter College at Oxford, where he read philosophy, politics and economics.

His reasons for not studying English literature were discussed by Self in an interview with The Guardian newspaper:

I [had] a pretty thorough grounding in the canon, but I certainly didn't want to be involved with criticism. Even then it seemed inimical to what it was to be a writer, which is what I really wanted to be.

Career

After graduating from Oxford, Self worked for the Greater London Council in a role that included road sweeping. He then pursued a career as a cartoonist for the New Statesman and other publications and as a stand-up comedian. He has made many appearances on British television, notably as a panelist on Have I Got News for You, as a regular on Shooting Stars and Grumpy Old Men, a guest appearance on Satisfied Fool and an episode of Room 101. In December 2008, November 2009, March 2010 and most recently January 2011 Self appeared on the BBC's Question Time. 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. At the time, he claimed "I'm a hack who gets hired because I do drugs".

Since 2009 Self has written two alternating fortnightly columns for the New Statesman. Madness of Crowds is a wry look at strange social phenomena and group behaviour, and in Real Meals he visits "ordinary" high street food outlets. He has described himself as a modern flâneur.

Literary style

According to M. Hunter Hayes, Self has given his reason for writing as follows: "I don't write fiction for people to identify with and I don't write a picture of the world they can recognise. I write to astonish people."

Self writes much of his fiction with references and allusions to modern culture (both high and low)^{[citation needed]}. The influences on his fiction mentioned most frequently include J.G. Ballard whom he considers "a great mentor", William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson. He has cited^{[citation needed]} such diverse writers as Jonathan Swift, Alasdair Gray, Franz Kafka, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Heller and Louis-Ferdinand Celine as formative influences on his writing style. Martin Amis is often mentioned alongside Self^{[citation needed]}; Self went to interview him, but the writers, who are known to respect each other's work, ended up having more of a discussion about their work and lives.

Zack Busner is a recurring character in the fiction of Will Self, appearing in the short story collections The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Grey Area, Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe, as well as in the novels Great Apes and The Book of Dave. Busner is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practising in London, and is prone to self-promotion at the expense of his patients. He is often the antagonist of the stories he appears in, although not always with villainous intent.

Personal life

Self has been married twice. He was married to Katherine (Kate) Sylvia Chancellor, from 1989 to 1997. Kate is a daughter of John Chancellor and his first wife Hon. (Mary) Alice Joliffe (herself daughter of William Jolliffe, 4th Baron Hylton and a great-granddaughter of H. H. Asquith, British Prime Minister in the early 20th century). Kate is also the older sister of actress Anna Chancellor, and the niece of journalist Alexander Chancellor. Together they had two children, a son Alexis and a daughter Madeleine.

In 1997, Self married Deborah Jane Orr, a journalist, with whom he has two sons called Ivan and Luther. His brother is the author and journalist Jonathan Self.

He currently lives in Stockwell, South London, and has written about hikes he has taken around the city, of distances up to 100 miles. In December 2006, he walked 26 miles from his home in South London to Heathrow Airport. Upon arriving in the United States, he walked a further 20 miles from Kennedy Airport to the Crowne Plaza in Manhattan.

Works

Fiction

• 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 Mr Broadhurst who takes the boy on a disturbing and often violent journey.
• Great Apes (1997) — a man wakes up in a world where chimpanzees evolved to be the species with self-awareness, while humans are the equivalent of chimps in our world.
• How the Dead Live (2000) — an old lady dies, only to be moved to a London suburb where the dead have taken residence.
• Dorian, an Imitation (2002) — a modern take on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• The Book of Dave (2006) — Set between 1987 and 2003, against a backdrop of Fathers for Justice protests, it is the story of a London cab driver who suffers a mental breakdown due to failed relationships, estrangement from his son and an obsession with The Knowledge. He writes a book of rantings which he buries, that is discovered 500 years later and used as the sacred text for a religion that has taken hold in the flooded remnants of London.
• The Butt (2008) — a man flicks a cigarette butt from the balcony of his apartment while on vacation in a foreign land and soon finds himself enmeshed in the bureaucratic nightmare of native law.
• Walking to Hollywood (2010)

Short fiction

• The Quantity Theory of Insanity (short stories) 1991
• Grey Area (short stories) 1994
• "License to Hug", published in Esquire magazine, November 1995
• The Sweet Smell of Psychosis (illustrated novella) 1996
• Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo (short stories) 1998
• Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (short stories) 1998
• Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe (short stories) 2004
• Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes (short stories) 2008
• The Undivided Self: Selected Stories (short stories) 2010

Non-fiction

Self has also compiled several books of work from his newspaper and magazine columns which mix interviews with counter-culture figures, restaurant reviews and literary criticism.

• Junk Mail (1996)
• Perfidious Man (2000) photography by David M. Gamble
• Sore Sites (2000)
• Feeding Frenzy (2001)
• Psychogeography (2007)
• Psycho Too (2009)

Scheduled

• Entirely Women TBA

Introductions and forewords

• Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille (2000)
• Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (2002)
• Junky by William S. Burroughs (2002)
• Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon (CD liner notes, 2002)
• Before the Poison by Marianne Faithfull (CD liner notes, 2004)
• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007)
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (2010)
• The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller (2010)
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (Visual Editions, 2010)
• Little People in the City: The street art of Slinkachu by Slinkachu (2008)

Narration

• Narration on "5ml. Barrel" from the album Clear (1995) by Bomb the Bass

• Narration on "The Happy Detective" from the compilation album series Late Night Tales, by The Cinematic Orchestra, Groove Armada, Midlake and Snow Patrol

Awards

• 1991: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for The Quantity Theory of Insanity
• 1998: Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review for Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys
• 2008: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction for "The Butt"

Self has been shortlisted three times for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award: in 2002 for Dorian, in 2004 for "Dr Mukti" in Dr Mukti and other tales of woe and in 2006 for The Book of Dave.

External links

• Official Will Self site
• Will Self at the Internet Movie Database
• Will Self at Contemporary Writers
• Will Self on why he writes
• "The Principle", short fiction by Will Self
• 2010 Sebald Lecture audio from the British Centre for Literary Translation
• Will Self Profile from the New Statesman

Interviews

• Guardian Books author page: Will Self
• Will Self article in Issue 08 of Tate Etc magazine
• Interview with 3:AM/Big Issue in the North
• A short interview: BBC
• Interview: Spike Magazine
• Salon interview (audio)
• Self interview from the International Necronautical Society
• Transcript of Self's encounter with Richard Littlejohn interviewed on Radio Five Live by Nicky Campbell