Will Self

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The Littlejohn thing is just as unbelievably funny as it was twenty years ago. Whenever I read it I remember the "more complex than Tolstoy" payoff but never remember it comes after Self's synopsis of Littlejohn's book which includes a policeman who is "incidentally graphically depicted masturbating with a truncheon" and an impossible gay left-wing law firm, and it hits me again.

[Smeraldina Rima]

 

I think Self has used the "talented mediocrity" line a few times in the past, almost as praise of sorts, including himself in those it groups together. I remember a line from one of his articles, something like "The English love a talented mediocrity" - as in, someone with talent who doesn't rise - in profile terms - to the very top of their field in the manner of (for example) the Beatles or JK Rowling.

In "Slack Attack" included in Junk Mail he presents himself as a slacker and attributes the line to G.K. Chesterton:

'In British Industry slackers are given the recognition they deserve, and often promoted over the heads of their more tediously active colleagues. I think it was G.K. Chesterton ('think' because I can't summon up the energy to look up the reference) who said that the British love a talented mediocrity; by this he obviously meant someone who can slack with a certain panache.'

But in the article about Orwell, citing Chesterton again, the focus is different, almost the opposite:

'"The English," GK Chesterton wrote, "love a talented mediocrity." Which is not to suggest that we don't also have a reverence for the charismatic and gifted, or that we're incapable of adoring those with nothing to recommend them.

Still, overall, it's those individuals who unite great expertise and very little originality - let alone personality - who arouse in us the most perfect devotion.'

Whole text here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28971276

I'm not sure if Chesterton did say that or Self just stuck with the half-remembered version. Chesterton's view of mediocrity was to do with the depreciation of general theories, strong rhetoric and ultimate ideas of religion and philosophy (or it not being possible to take big ideas seriously anymore):

A hundred years ago our affairs for good or evil were wielded triumphantly by rhetoricians. Now our affairs are hopelessly muddled by strong, silent men. And just as this repudiation of big words and big visions has brought forth a race of small men in politics, so it has brought forth a race of small men in the arts. Our modern politicians claim the colossal license of Caesar and the Superman, claim that they are too practical to be pure and too patriotic to be moral; but the upshot of it all is that a mediocrity is Chancellor of the Exchequer. Our new artistic philosophers call for the same moral license, for a freedom to wreck heaven and earth with their energy; but the upshot of it all is that a mediocrity is Poet Laureate. I do not say that there are no stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men stronger than those men of old who were dominated by their philosophy and steeped in their religion? Whether bondage be better than freedom may be discussed. But that their bondage came to more than our freedom it will be difficult for any one to deny.
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/heretics.all.html

Chesterton associated good writing with oratory that could speak directly to the masses and he understood mediocrity - like bookishness - as a blind middle state that couldn't appreciate the easy communication between the saints and the mob or the literary and the rude. Ironically, he was criticised by modernists more usually associated with Self's ideas about linguistic expression. Ezra Pound called Chesterton 'a symbol for all the mob's hatred of all art that aspires above mediocrity'.

Incidentally, the mediocre Poet Laureate was Alfred Austin, preceded by Tennyson and Wordsworth.

[The Culture Bunker]

In "Slack Attack" included in Junk Mail he presents himself as a slacker and attributes the line to G.K. Chesterton:

'In British Industry slackers are given the recognition they deserve, and often promoted over the heads of their more tediously active colleagues. I think it was G.K. Chesterton ('think' because I can't summon up the energy to look up the reference) who said that the British love a talented mediocrity; by this he obviously meant someone who can slack with a certain panache.'

But in the article about Orwell, citing Chesterton again, the focus is different, almost the opposite:

'"The English," GK Chesterton wrote, "love a talented mediocrity." Which is not to suggest that we don't also have a reverence for the charismatic and gifted, or that we're incapable of adoring those with nothing to recommend them.

Still, overall, it's those individuals who unite great expertise and very little originality - let alone personality - who arouse in us the most perfect devotion.'

That's an interesting 180 from Self, thank you. Unlike Self, seemingly, I have true to the ideals an idle wanker and couldn't be arsed looking up the article as you did.

Fuck knows what Chesterton would have made of Boris Johnson if he thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer back then was a mediocrity.

[Pranet]

When he was on the graveyard shift with Mark Radcliffe, I won a book (Confessions of an Opium Eater) and when he read out my name as one of the winners he said it was "extraordinary". Not in a complementary way. I've forgiven him, and my name is a bit stupid.

[chveik]

I went off him after he called Orwell a mediocrity.

he was right

[Bigfella]

he was right

Take care.  You may be on shaky ground there, mucker. Just kidding!

[Johnny Foreigner]

Who is to say: did he write badly or well? To the connoisseur, it will self-explain.

I'll cook me tea now.

[chveik]

Take care.  You may be on shaky ground there, mucker. Just kidding!

i don't understand why we are supposed to uncritically worship a trostkyist bore.

[Bigfella]

i don't understand why we are supposed to uncritically worship a trostkyist bore.

That's okay, you don't need to understand.  You can worship anyone you like, uncritically or otherwise.

[badaids]

I've tried very hard to like his books, but fuck me they are hard work.  His ideas and conceits are only bearable in the short story format.  It's when he tries to expand them out into a whole novel that they become so tedious.  I'm very pleased to hear he's released a new book but I'll never be arsed to read any of them.

[chveik]

That's okay, you don't need to understand.  You can worship anyone you like, uncritically or otherwise.

got to love those garbage new posters

[Bigfella]

got to love those garbage new posters

No offence intended, had a few refreshments last night.

[Barry Admin]

got to love those garbage new posters

Don't start your shit again or you'll be looking for a new proxy.

[gilbertharding]

Here's another thread: RIP Shelf Abuse