Will Self

Berwick literary festival October 12

Will discusses the impact of the web, the internet, social media and the handheld computer (also known as a ‘phone’) on the practice of reading in the 21st century. Drawing on his book Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, he’ll present a complex picture of discontinuous adaptation to new media, and interrogate whether the transition is a gain overall for the human psyche and its societies… or a net loss. Suitable for high school students. The event is given in memory of Simon Heald.

To buy tickets for this online talk on Thursday October 12 at 11am for £5, click here.

My obsession with Adrian Chiles’ column

I think about Adrian Chiles’s cock more than is strictly necessary — which is pretty obviously: at all, unless you happen to be Adrian Chiles, his sexual partner, or his doctor (should Chiles be afflicted with a disease affecting his cock).

I didn’t even really know who Chiles was much before I acquired this problem – I had a vague idea he was a television and radio presenter, but since I don’t watch the former, and don’t listen to the radio station he broadcasts on, Chiles wasn’t in my world.

I did vaguely know he was in a relationship with Kath Viner, the editor of the Guardian, because I’d read a couple of columns he’d written for the paper that were such utter flim-flam (Wilde described wit as “the epitaph of an emotion”, and by extension, Chiles’s efforts are the epitaph of cogitation), that their presence in the paper was only explicable if his cock were in some way involved. Clearly, Ms Viner – if we accept the idea that she’s an even halfway decent newspaper editor – must be blinded by Chiles’s cock to at least this extent.

Read the rest here …