Olympic hurdles
Posted by Chris H on May 11th, 2008Read Will’s latest Psychogeography column here
10.05.08
Book panel with Simon Mayo
Posted by Chris H on May 9th, 2008To listen to Will talking about The Butt on Simon Mayo’s Radio 5 Live programme on April 24 2008, sign up to the podcast.
Foreword to Nick Cave: The complete lyrics
Posted by Chris H on April 29th, 2008Some 20 years ago, I had a long wrangle with the music writer Barney Hoskyns about the relative virtues of rock lyricists. Barney’s view was (and I hope I’m not traducing him in any way) that simplicity was the key. The structure of pop songs - most of which derive from the holy miscegenation of the English ballad form and the eight-bar blues - the importance to them of melody and their fairly short duration: all of these factors meant that facile rhymes, basic narratives and straightforward sentiments made for the best lyrics.
‘I used to love driving … ‘
Posted by Chris H on April 29th, 2008This week, Will writes about how he overcame his motoring addiction
29.04.08
Dammit, Thanet!
Posted by Chris H on April 28th, 2008To Broadstairs, not to bathe – it being April – but merely take the air. The Isle of Thanet has always been a little problematic for me; I can’t even say it without recalling Ian Dury’s lines: ‘I rendezvoused with Janet / Quite near the Isle of Thanet / She looked just like a gannet … ‘ &c. Somehow the great bard of the Kilburn High Road perfectly summed up this, the very coccyx of Britain, with its seafowl and its foul maidens.
Will and Ralph, united at last
Posted by Chris H on April 25th, 2008For those of you frustrated by the absence of Ralph Steadman’s artwork when we publish Will’s Psychogeography columns from the Independent, here at last is an archive of them.
The Never-Ending Tour #4: The curate’s egging on
Posted by WS on April 23rd, 2008A children’s TV presenter had hanged himself at Paddington Station and his body wasn’t found for six days. Grim, but then big city rail terminuses always are: the temporary repositories of vice and despair; gutters through which the pure waters of the provinces are sluiced into the urban cesspit. Paddington isn’t helped by being within yards of St Mary’s Hospital, where, in the 1890s, heroin was synthesised for the first time. The station always has this peculiar smacklight: diffuse, dreamy, brown, and desperate. In my 1993 story Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo, the adulterous lovers rendezvous close to Paddington, at Sussex Gardens. The antihero parks the eponymous Volvo by the needle exchange Portakabin on South Wharf Road. A woman has written into the site, apropos of this blog, and asks is there any part of my life that is unobserved, unrecorded? All I can say in reply – paternalistically, patronisingly, and now, illegally – is that you don’t know one half of one half of one ten-thousandth of it, love.
The never-ending tour #3: The brilliance of the Brompton
Posted by WS on April 1st, 2008I’m not sure if sauntering up the road to Clapham Books counts as ‘touring’, but what the hell. Ed, Nikki and Al are lovely, gentle people, who took over the lease of the bookshop where they once worked and are now doing their level best to make it work in difficult times. Clapham Books is my local bookshop – not, you understand, that I live in Clapham – that would be hell. I say they’re lovely gentle people, but frankly, have you ever met a bookseller who wasn’t? I mean, they can be introverted and cantankerous in my experience, but they’re seldom aggressive, and never psychopathic.
Ask Will a question
Posted by Chris H on March 31st, 2008Here at www.will-self.com, we’re running a Q&A with Will to coincide with the publication of The Butt, which we’ll publish on the site and at Bloomsbury’s too. Simply email your questions to info@will-self.com and we’ll put the best of them to him. The deadline for sending in your questions is April 14.
Win a copy of Slump and The Butt
Posted by Chris H on March 27th, 2008Yes, it’s competition time again, to celebrate the publication of Will’s new novel, The Butt.
Will has kindly offered one of his very own copies of his first ever published work, a collection of cartoons he did for the New Statesman, Slump, as first prize (the winner will receive a copy of The Butt too). There were very limited numbers of the paperback book published by Virgin in 1985, and it remains one of the most collectable of Will’s books. Bloomsbury has also kindly offered nine more copies of The Butt as runners-up prizes.
