Will is going to be at the Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival at the Amelia Scott, 7pm Saturday May 13 taking up some of the arguments he put forward in his latest book, Why Read, a collection of essays on writing and literature.
The mind-bending fiction of Mircea Cartarescu
A review of Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu in the Nation.
‘The Queen is dead – and let’s try to keep it that way’
I thought my anti-monarchy feelings had become fairly torpid in recent years – there’s been so much to be unhappy and discontented about … But the slavish response of the British press and public to the Queen’s death, followed by an equally servile and sententious one to the publication of ‘Spare’ made me realise an important thing: no one seemed capable any more of framing their response to these royal ructions within an assumed – and profound – critique of the institution itself … Yet polling consistently shows that a third of the British population remain obstinately unhappy with our much-lauded – and ineffable – constitutional settlement … After the Queen died, my voice was deemed unacceptable in Britain – I wrote two pieces for the foreign press, in the US and France – and only now am I able to write for British readers of The New European what I truly think and feel: the Queen is dead – and let’s try to keep it that way …’
Out of their minds by Will Self
Why Read to be published in November
A new collection of Will’s non-fiction writing (following on from Junk Mail and Feeding Frenzy), Why Read: Selected Writings 2001-2021, is published by Grove Press in the UK on November 3, and by Grove Atlantic in the US on January 17 2023 – a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.
“Sharp, trenchant essays from an enfant terrible of modern letters…. Self effortlessly weaves his way from such lighthearted topics as shelves, the “very lynchpins of a form of bourgeois domesticity,” to a lengthy, dark, autobiographical piece on W.G. Sebald and the role of the Holocaust in his writing as well as an unfortunately timely piece about his visit to “coruscating” Pripyat, near Chernobyl, at the same time as the Fukushima disaster. …Plenty to ponder in this energetic, opinionated collection.” – Kirkus Reviews (for full review go here).
Why Read events:
Falmouth Book Festival, October 22
How To event at the Art Workers Guild in London, November 7
Blackwell’s Oxford, November 10
Brighthelm Centre, Brighton, November 11
Folkestone Festival, November 26
On the Road with Penguin Classics
Will is going to be in conversation with Henry Eliot about Thomas de Quincey (Confessions of an English Opium Eater) and William S. Burroughs (Junky) in Soho for the new series of the podcast On the Road with Penguin Classics released on September 29. Listen to the trailer here.
