Will Self

Anyone read any of his books? Any good?

I've been reading his books for a few years now. I started with the Quantity Theory of Insanity, a collection of short stories, and have moved on through quite a few of the collections, and into the recent novels, Great Apes and How the Dead Live. As I am sure you have guessed, I quite like his stuff, his perspectives on humanity and humour are not entirely different to mine in many cases, and it is a nice change to have a similarly skewed view presented well on paper. That said, if I'd started with How the Dead Live, I may not have finished the book, based on the first fifty pages.

I'm in the middle of The Book of Dave, which I am quite enjoying, but still expecting the pay off I expect from Self.

I was looking at the Book of Dave but the reviews suggested it might be a tad involved, what with the glossary an' all. I love short stories though, that might be a good intro to his writing. Would you recommend a particular collection?

adam

The Quantity Theory of Insanity (published by Penguin I think), is a very good introduction, and features the short story that became How The Dead Live. Some of his more accessible stories are here, as well as the plain silly, such as the one about the guy who finds this tribe in the middle of nowhere who are the world's most dull people.

He tends to use a lot of the same characters by the same names for certain things. For example Anthony Bohm regularly turns up as a slightly suspcious and incompetent doctor in a few books, Zack Busner is the pop-psychologist, etc. In some ways, it is a little like reading Comedia d'el Arte in novels and short stories.

If you go to will-self.com there's some short writing of his there. (I think it's his work; I'm only going on the Google caches.)

Thanks for that Bluebeard, ordering it now.