William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English novelist, journalist, political commentator and television personality.[2][3][4]
Self is the author of eleven novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas, and five collections of non-fiction writing. His work has been translated into 22 languages; his 2002 novel Dorian, an Imitation was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.[5] His fiction is known for being satirical, grotesque, and fantastical, and is predominantly set within his home city of London. His subject matter often includes mental illness, illegal drugs and psychiatry.
Self is a regular contributor on British television, initially as a guest on comic panel shows such as Have I Got News for You. In 2002, Self replaced Mark Lamarr on the anarchic BBC comedy panel show Shooting Stars[6][7] for two series, but was himself replaced by comedian Jack Dee when the programme returned in 2008 [8]. He has since appeared on current affairs programmes such as Newsnight and Question Time. Self is also a frequent contributor to the BBC Radio 4 programme A Point of View[9], to which he contributes radio essays delivered in his familiar "lugubrious tones"[10]. In 2013, Self was in talks to become the inaugural BBC Radio 4 Writer-in-Residence[11], but later backed out of the talks[12].
Self's parents separated when he was nine, and divorced when he was 18.[23] Despite the intellectual encouragement given by his parents, he was an emotionally confused and self-destructive child, harming himself with cigarette ends and knives before getting into drugs.[24]
Self was a voracious reader from a young age. When he was ten, he developed an interest in works of science fiction such as Frank Herbert's Dune and those of J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. Into his teenage years, Self claimed to have been "overawed by the canon", stifling his ability to express himself. Nevertheless, Self's dabbling with drugs grew in step with his prolific reading. Self started smoking marijuana at the age of 12, graduating through amphetamines, cocaine, and LSD to heroin, which he started injecting at 18.[25] Self struggled with mental health issues during this period, and at the age of 20 became a hospital outpatient.[26]
I [had] a pretty thorough grounding in the canon, but I certainly didn't want to be involved with criticism. Even then it seemed inimical to what it was to be a writer, which is what I really wanted to be.[30]
Of Self's background Nick Rennison has written that he:
is sometimes presented as a bad-boy outsider, writing, like the Americans William S Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr, about sex, drugs and violence in a very direct way. Yet he is not some class warrior storming the citadels of the literary establishment from the outside, but an Oxford educated, middle-class metropolitan who, despite his protestations to the contrary in interviews, is about as much at the heart of the establishment as you can get, a place he has occupied almost from the start of his career.[31]
Career
Self at a 2002 book signing
After graduating from Oxford, Self worked for the Greater London Council, including a period as a road sweeper, while living in Brixton.[28] He then pursued a career as a cartoonist for the New Statesman and other publications and as a stand-up comedian.[28] He moved to Gloucester Road around 1985. In 1986 he entered a treatment centre in Weston-super-Mare, where he claimed that his heroin addiction was cured.[25] In 1989, "through a series of accidents", he "blagged" his way into running a small publishing company.[32][33]
Self joined the Observer as a columnist in 1995.[1] He gained negative publicity in 1997 when he was sent to cover the election campaign of John Major and was caught by a rival journalist using heroin on the Prime Minister's jet, and was fired as a result.[30] At the time, he argued "I'm a hack who gets hired because I do drugs".[36] He joined the Times as a columnist in 1997.[1] In 1999 he left Times to join the Independent on Sunday,[1] which he left in 2002 for the Evening Standard.[1]
He has made many appearances on British television, especially as a panellist on Have I Got News for You and as a regular on Shooting Stars. Since 2008 Self has appeared five times on Question Time. He stopped appearing in Have I Got News for You, stating the show had become a pseudo-panel show.
Since 2009, Self has written two alternating fortnightly columns for the New Statesman. The Madness of Crowds explores social phenomena and group behaviour, and in Real Meals he reviews high street food outlets.
In 2012, Self was appointed Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University.[37] In July 2012, Self received his first Man Booker Prize longlist nomination for Umbrella, which The Daily Telegraph described as "possibly Self's most ambitious novel to date".[38] The book was later placed on the prize shortlist.
For a May 2014 article in The Guardian, Self wrote: "the literary novel as an art work and a narrative art form central to our culture is indeed dying before our eyes", explaining in a July 2014 article that his royalty income had decreased "dramatically" over the previous decade. The July article followed the release of a study of the earnings of British authors that was commissioned by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society.[39]
According to M. Hunter Hayes, Self has given his reason for writing as follows: "I don't write fiction for people to identify with and I don't write a picture of the world they can recognise. I write to astonish people."[41] "What excites me is to disturb the reader's fundamental assumptions. I want to make them feel that certain categories within which they are used to perceiving the world are unstable."[42]
Zack Busner is a recurring character in Self's fiction, appearing in the short story collections The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Grey Area and Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe, as well as in the novels Great Apes, The Book of Dave, Umbrella and Shark. Busner is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practising in London, and is prone to self-promotion at the expense of his patients. He is often the antagonist of the stories he appears in, although not always with villainous intent.
Among Self's admirers is the American critic Harold Bloom.[44] Journalist Stuart Maconie has described him as "that rarity in modern cultural life, a genuine intellectual with a bracing command of words and ideas who is also droll, likeable and culturally savvy."[45]
Political views
In the 2015 UK general election, Self voted Labour in a general election first time since 1997. He wrote in May 2015: "No, I'm no longer a socialist if to be one is to believe that a socialist utopia is attainable by some collective feat of will – but I remain a socialist, if by 'socialism' is understood an antipathy to vested interests and privileges neither deserved nor earned, and a strong desire for a genuinely egalitarian society."[46] In March 2017 he wrote: "Nowadays I think in terms of compassionate pragmatism: I'll leave socialism to Žižek and the other bloviators."[47]
Self's mother died in 1988.[32] He was married from 1989 to 1997 to Kate Chancellor. They have two children, a son Alexis and a daughter Madeleine. They lived together in a terraced house just off the Portobello Road.[50] In 1997, Self married journalist Deborah Orr, with whom he has sons Ivan and Luther. In 2017, Orr and Self separated, and Self was living in a rented flat in Stockwell.[51] Self has stated that he has abstained from drugs, except for caffeine and nicotine, since 1998.[52] He sent his children to private schools, due to his children being bullied at state schools in Lambeth.[53]
He has described himself as a psychogeographer and modern flâneur and has written about walks he has taken.[54] In December 2006, he walked 26 miles from his home in South London to Heathrow Airport. Upon arriving at Kennedy Airport he walked 20 miles from there to Manhattan.[52] In August 2013, Self wrote of his anger following an incident in which he was stopped and questioned by police in Yorkshire while out walking with one of his sons, on suspicion of being a paedophile. The police were alerted by a security guard at Bishop Burton College. He had asked the security guard for permission to cross the school grounds.[55][56]
Self is 6' 5" tall,[57] collects vintage typewriters[58] and smokes a pipe.[59] His brother is the author and journalist Jonathan Self.[60]
Self has been shortlisted three times for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award: in 2002 for Dorian, in 2004 for "Dr Mukti" in Dr Mukti and other tales of woe and in 2006 for The Book of Dave.
Self has also compiled several books of work from his newspaper and magazine columns which mix interviews with counter-culture figures, restaurant reviews and literary criticism.
^Bloom, Harold (2002). Genius : a mosaic of one hundred exemplary creative minds. New York: Warner Books. p. 648. ISBN0-446-69129-1. There are a few affinities, except perhaps with the admirable Antonia Byatt, in the generation after: novelists I also now admire, like Will Self, Peter Ackroyd, and John Banville.
^Stuart Maconie. "My People". Radio Times 2–8 February 2013, p.125
