Oooh! Nice find, Theo! His approach to writing is incredibly gutsy (as we say in Australia - do other places say that, too?) It would take a lot of courage and a lot of confidence to be as gung-ho in your approach as he says he'd like to be.
Not for the faint-hearted.
If you got it wrong, the lynching would be
epic!
Yeah, I mean, I really, *really* searched for that one. I like to give back to the community, ya know?
Not, erm, read the Saturday Gruniad anyway or anything.
For some reason, there was a rash of novels at one time which used the author as a character - Will Self, Douglas Coupland did it in jpod (love that book), Jonathan Safran Foer in Everything Is Illuminated (although I've not read that so I don't know if it's author as character or or character with name of author), Stephen King ...
There is a novel called
The Quiddity of Will Self (in the UK Kindle sale for 99p at the moment, bargain fans). I've not read it (I've not read any Self, either - he's got a ticket and is waiting for a window to become free) but it is a pleasingly demented idea. (And no, that one is nothing to do with Self as far as I'm aware and I am fairly aware on this one. The author's agent reps the kinds of books I wish I wasn't too bogged down in realism to write).
Even with the help of a dictionary a lot of that article went over my head, but I understood enough to both admire and roll my eyes at his approach. Will Self can afford to please himself. Anything he writes is guaranteed publication, no?
The day you understand a Will Self article all the way through without outside help is the day you have truly arrived. Forget graduating, marriage, birth of your kidders - understanding a Will Self article is the really special day in your life. (Anything by him prompts a slew of boasting/complaining letters to the paper - it is a bit of an in-joke).
I don't think it would be guaranteed (but that's opinion, not fact). He's getting a lot of attention at the moment because he's been longlisted for the Booker, and I think that will certainly help, but I don't think he's an auto-top-ten-bestseller like Martin Amis or Ian McEwan are, although you'd certainly find him on the front shelf of the bookshop. I've certainly seen more of his other work (punditry, newspaper columns, TV) than his books.
He mentions in that article :
True, I do remember that when I submitted my most obviously modernist story "Scale" to my then agent he called me up and said he didn't understand it, and was disinclined to submit it to my publisher. (Vindication came in the form of upwards of 100,000 sales in the Penguin 60s edition.)