Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Is anything by Will Self worth reading? Novel-wise, I mean.

3 comments:

broseph said...

"Great Apes" is pretty good, I reckon. Overhyped at the time but still funny and well executed. "My Idea of Fun" is a laugh too, I suppose. Everything he's written since is a bit of a slog. Couldn't finish "How The Dead Live" or "Dorian". Both yawn-tastic despite interesting premises.

Of course, he's very posh and went to Oxford, so yr mates from the decades blogs may well pop in soon to tell us how he should be shot and hung from a lamp post for the crime of not being sufficiently "real" or Northern enough. Good times.

carl said...

thanks broseph...

someone just gave me exactly the opposite advice!

Anonymous said...

Self is a phenomenal short story writer but an extremely patchy novelist. Personally though, I'm a huge fan of "How the Dead Live" and "The Book of Dave". Those are the only Self novels that really hold together, for me. Of course, I suspect that liking Self is deeply uncool and non-ontologically-correct, so if anyone asks: I did not say this, I was not here.