Will Self revised edition (incorporating Deborah Orr RIP)

[gilbertharding]

Wondered what CaB thought of the author Will Self, in the light of his alleged behaviour towards his very ill wife.

Found this thread (I contributed... and then forgot, apparently): https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,63811.0.html. Most people seemed to think he was decent, but were divided about his writing.

Probably disrespectful to start a thread which ought to be a tribute to Orr, but instead is a chance for everyone to agree that Self is probably extremely horrible - but remain divided about his work.

Probably. All very sad, anyway.

[holyzombiejesus]

What was the alleged Orrible behaviour?

[gilbertharding]

It's hard to tell... but apparently they split up (I don't know why) and he tried to sell their house while she was living there, and sick. I say it's hard to tell, because I only 'knew' about it from people who are on her side, and scrolling back several months on her twitter. Not exactly impartial - but it's the truth now, as far as anyone's concerned.

I know he has a serious blood condition FWIW.


I won't particularly miss his books if I end up having to burn them, to be honest. Could do with the shelf space...

[idunnosomename]

always benefited from being confused with A.A. Gill who was unarguably a much bigger cunt

[holyzombiejesus]

Quite enjoyed his son's response to Will's article stating the novel was doomed.




Dunno if it was a response to the same article but Orr's comment was fun too.

"Imagine him standing over you sneering in real time as you read your Sally Rooneys."

[gilbertharding]

Hmmm... looking at Luther Self's twitter now. Poor sod - hope he's got people around him now. Maybe his dad.

I didn't know D Orr was ill until I was looking at twitter when I was in hospital after my crash. It was quite hard to read her feed in that situation.

And I know *everyone dies* but it does look as if the treatment she got was badly fucked up.

[Bizarro Mark Bosnich]

Doesn't like comics but dances to anime.

https://twitter.com/richinbees/status/856210849089949696

[Pranet]

Read him a lot in the early days, interest probably sparked by the cult book slot he did on Mark Radcliffe's show.

At some point reading How the Dead Live I made a promise to myself once I finished it never to read any of his fiction ever again.

Have occasionally read his work for magazines and newspapers and quite enjoyed it, and saw him do a talk a few years ago and it was entertaining.

I've kept my promise to myself regarding his fiction.

Edit- just realised I said almost exactly the same thing in the old thread. Oh well always worth revisiting the classics.

His restaurant reviews for the Observer I liked at the time.

[Sebastian Cobb]

He is the anti-Vonnegut.

[Famous Mortimer]

I tried a few of his books ("The Book of Dave", too soon after I'd read "Riddley Walker") but I just didn't like them. I got the feeling there was nothing to them - just a deeply miserable man's loading of too-weighty words on a nothing narrative.

A friend of mine was once the only person who turned up to a book signing of his - which presumably was not advertised correctly - so he took her out for dinner and was apparently a great bunch of lads. I liked him on "Shooting Stars", and find him often good value when he shows up on a show talking about something or other. But I'm glad I never married him or was fathered by him.

[holyzombiejesus]

A girl I used to go out with wrote to him after reading one of his books and he wrote back and was really nice by all accounts. Apart from the Orr stuff (which is a pretty one-sided account of a messy divorce), he seems to be a decent man.

[Funcrusher]

He stole the title for How The Dead Live from Derek Raymond.

[Phil_A]

[Twit 2]

Echoing Bill Burr's "Believe all women? What about the 12% who are crazy?" there's a chance that their relationship ending badly wasn't entirely his fault. There seems to be a bit of obituary code going on that hints she might have been difficult. I also seem to remember a few comments by Self expressing bafflement and sadness at her mental state and vitriol towards him. Obviously it's all speculation and not really important to anyone except her surviving friends and family. My guess is they were just two messed up people who probably shouldn't have been together or had kids, same as most. From what I recall some of the complaints she made was that he was too selfish and wrapped up in his own shit. Imagine! The navel-gazing druggy writer won't come out of his office! Anyway, no one knows what really goes on in such things. I don't doubt Self would be an utter nightmare to live with at the absolute minimum. Horrible abusive cunt? Maybe.

As for the man:

As a public intellectual turning on TV being interesting and being put in unusual situations? Great.
As a journo? Uneven but mostly great.
Short story writer? Good.
Novelist? Not good.

[idunnosomename]

yes his red cup incident with francois put me on team self

also he did a point of view - the awfully white, conservative slot on radio 4 Sunday mornings - that was fucking progressive and self deprecating last December. I remember because I was on the M60.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001kcr

fuck sarah dunant though. absolute bourgeois bitch.

[touchingcloth]

He wrote most of Mrs Brown's Boys, apparently.

[Funcrusher]

This article by Deborah Orr struck me at the time as the epitome of out of touch Polly Filler North London twaddle, and reads just as badly now:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/10/zero-hours-contracts-worse-jobs-for-life-work-unions

Sometimes, the left ignores positive aspects of an ideology they're broadly against. Conservative rhetoric about entrepreneurship and flexibility, when it's routinely railed against by the left, alienates people who passionately want social justice and want to carry on teaching a few yoga classes, doing up bits of furniture and selling them on the internet, running a few food stalls at a few festivals, sleeping in with the kids when they get an Airbnb client, slowly working through a correspondence course and keeping it all going with a zero-hours contract.

One of the really harsh lessons of deindustrialisation was the folly of economic monoculture. So many towns and cities that relied on just one thing – one thing that seemed permanent but proved not to be – are still now unemployment blackspots. Sure, it was cruel, telling whole communities brought up to believe they would have a certain kind of life that now they had to get on their bikes, adapt, change. Maybe, even now, capitulating to that feels too much like the enemy won. But sometimes you have to beat the enemy on its own ground.

This reads like the bit where Alan Partridge tells the Irish journalist that the potato famine was what happens when you're a picky eater.

[Twit 2]

Does anyone remember seeing him on some book quiz thing on tv (was it actually called THE BOOK QUIZ??)? This must have been 10 - 15 years ago. Anyway, he just smashed the quiz to smithereens. Everyone just sat there agape while he answered absolutely everything in milliseconds. All the other panelists were just laughing out loud by the end. It was the most impressive quiz performance I've ever seen.

Just looked at his son Luther's twitter feed. Very sad: both the public grieving and the fact that he seems to be the social media equivalent of Kevin the Teenager. Must be hard for Will Self to know his kids are proudly illiterate.

I actually agree with Self that the novel is dead. Young people do not read novels. Even my parents have given up reading in favour of mindless iPad scrolling. It'll be an evermore niche interest as the older people who read/used to read die. Sales figures are very grim for all writers except the few top sellers who are heavily marketed. Anyway, maybe a subject for another thread but I think it's a bit cheap to say Self thinks the novel is doomed just because his didn't sell.

[Bizarro Mark Bosnich]

I wonder if pointing out Orr was a 'gender critical' feminist/Glinner sympathiser would change some people's takes on this.

[The Culture Bunker]

I suspect my thoughts on Self have already been surmised by others: was vaguely aware of him when I was in my teens, probably through him being on HIGNFY, but I thought he was ace on Room 101 in how he seemed to greatly irritate Paul Merton. Got a collection of his short stories from the library that was fine, much preferred a selection of his journalism (Junk Mail), read 'How the Dead Live' and thought it awful enough so that I've not gone near his fiction since.

Credit to him for doing Shooting Stars and engaging with some of the absurdity - his bit in the Geordie Jumpers was a fine bit of comic acting - "check it out".

[Bennett Brauer]

Edit- just realised I said almost exactly the same thing in the old thread. Oh well always worth revisiting the classics.

He is the anti-Vonnegut.

Three can play at that game. If only his middle name was Ferrell.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

He looks like Sarah Jessica -Parker In Male drag.

Also going to repeat my classic Facebook status: " Note to Self: Stop writing pretentious books, Horseface."

[chveik]

liked the idea for The Book of Dave but not the execution. also read his Dorian Gray AIDS 'homage', which was wank.

alright cheers

[gloria]

I too first encountered him via his excellent Cult Book Corner on the Mark and Lard show. His short stories, novellas and non-fiction are all pretty much great. His actual novels I find without exception interminable. The fun is in the language and the ideas but he can't make you invest emotionally in anything lengthy.

[gilbertharding]

I stand by My Idea of Fun as a novel by him which is worth reading. How the Dead Live, Book of Dave and Great Apes are good ideas and that's all there is really (though I really liked Dave and Apes at the time). The early short story collections - Grey Area is my favourite - are also good.

The trouble with this latest furore is all the people who never liked him or his work now coming out with "I told you I was right" about both things - never reflecting that it's just their prejudice (none of these people will admit to having prejudices, of course...).

None of them know what happened, or what happened before what happened. Or, more importantly, considered the children who still have a parent. But you've got to pick a side. Got to pick a side.

Does Louis Barfe still post on here?

[Famous Mortimer]

Sales figures are very grim for all writers except the few top sellers who are heavily marketed. Anyway, maybe a subject for another thread but I think it's a bit cheap to say Self thinks the novel is doomed just because his didn't sell.

This has always been the case, surely? When three of the best selling 10 or so novels of all time were released in the last twenty years, I'm not sure how dead the novel is. But there's almost certainly a bad trend in this that I'm glossing over.

[Twit 2]

That fact could as much prove my point as disprove. It seems you can be hyper-successful or struggling with very little middle ground. Authors who used to be able to make a living from their writing are unable to do so. Advances are getting smaller. Literate, articulate kids who would have read through their teenage years just stop reading at teenage years. I don't know a single teenager who reads books regularly. I don't think "''twas ever thus" applies: the way people live and consume information has totally changed.

[Famous Mortimer]

That fact could as much prove my point as disprove. It seems you can be hyper-successful or struggling with very little middle ground. Authors who used to be able to make a living from their writing are unable to do so. Advances are getting smaller. Literate, articulate kids who would have read through their teenage years just stop reading at teenage years. I don't know a single teenager who reads books regularly. I don't think "''twas ever thus" applies: the way people live and consume information has totally changed.

Probably worth its own thread, but I remember the "kids don't read any more" stories from before the Boy-Wizard phenomenon, after which we got "kids are reading too much". I read articles about lots of people doing well off of e-publishing, too, but admittedly this is a few data points and might not a trend.

Remind me (if you do start a thread) to bang on about pulp horror and those ultra-violent western novels for a bit.

[sponk]

I stand by My Idea of Fun as a novel by him which is worth reading. How the Dead Live, Book of Dave and Great Apes are good ideas and that's all there is really (though I really liked Dave and Apes at the time). The early short story collections - Grey Area is my favourite - are also good.

The trouble with this latest furore is all the people who never liked him or his work now coming out with "I told you I was right" about both things - never reflecting that it's just their prejudice (none of these people will admit to having prejudices, of course...).

None of them know what happened, or what happened before what happened. Or, more importantly, considered the children who still have a parent. But you've got to pick a side. Got to pick a side.

Does Louis Barfe still post on here?

[gilbertharding]

Hence the question.

Pompous, sure of himself, never wrong... fucking twat.