What does Veeky Forums think of Will Self? Fraud or talented?

I think he's a lovable asshole honestly

he always seemed like a huge douche to me, but then i saw this video of him playing with toys and it charmed me into ordering one of his books

youtube.com/watch?v=rmiOOGtJ8rQ

more like kill self

That's his most important work, IMO, and what he'll be remembered for.

Does it suddenly get harder?

I went in seeing the size of BoD and expected, from his reputation, verbose purple prose. I was mildly surprised to find it an easy fucking read. Pretty inventive and i enjoyed the concept - even if the ending was pretty weak.

I've never made it past the first 10 pages of Umbrella and I've tried a few times for some misguided reason or another.

I get the feeling he knows he's writing tedious shit and tries to make up for it by putting on this persona of some intellectual malcontent that must surely be writing interesting literature.

What really grates me about him is the way he's tried to imply he's this cool bohemian junkie that lived on the streets and hates literary fiction. But he's actually just another Oxford cunt who writes bloated literary fiction for the braindead middle class.

no self will

I liked his story about trying to walk from JFK airport into Manhattan. Was a good insight into urban decay.

I watched a documentary about Nietzsche in which Self featured. He was awful.

Which one is that?

There's an article Will Self wrote for the BBC website in which he argued George Orwell's essay on writing in plain english -- use the active and not the passive, never use a fancier word than necessary, etc -- presupposed an ideological framework of colonialism and racism, and therefore, George Orwell was a bit of a twat. It seems to me like reductionism to fit a narrative, and frankly, Will Self seems like a profiteering pundit whose opinions are conjured on the spot to specification on things he's uninformed about -- which makes him a twat.

Here's the article: bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28971276

His other articles online that I've read are similarly stupid. A lot of English figures ruin themselves by exposing their stupidity in articles written for British publication. For instance, Armando Iannucci and Stewart Lee.

>trying to walk from JFK airport into Manhattan
Sounds like a fucking nightmare.

Second that Book of Dave is half decent, not amazing but an an ejoyable read and weird read.

Umbrella is I think my favourite of his books although I've not read all of them (thought The Butt) was uninspiring.

As another user mentioned his writing on psychogeography is quite interesting as well (the walking to and from airports etc).

But yeah, Umbrella is definitely worth a read if you like confusing fractured narrative type stuff.

Don't know what happened with the grammar, repetition etc in that post, it's all over the shop. Sorry lads.

Sounds to me like it's just an argument against prescriptive rules for writing. DOn't see anything about colonialism and racism.

Just call it a fractured narrative.

Why are today's Euro authors so damn ugly? Between this guy and the French edgelord...

Knausgaard's pretty gorgeous, IMO

so two authors?

apart from the hair he's unremarkable