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Richard Littlejohn, Nicky Campbell and Will Self

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18:13 / 11.03.02

Will Self and Richard Littlejohn, on Nicky Campbell's show, because they both write books, right?

transcript

This may not mean much to anyone outside the US, and you may have seen it already, but it made me spill my dinner down my front. Which considering it involved a radioactive tomato sauce, was not a good idea.

18:23 / 11.03.02

'The British people are tolerant and they are understanding.'

18:31 / 11.03.02

Glorious!

SELF: Does it turn into Tolstoy at page 205?

LITTLEJOHN: No it doesn't turn into Tolstoy. I don't set out to be Tolstoy. It is a much more complex book than that.

Arse!

19:22 / 11.03.02

I'd shag Will Self because I may get some skag for my performance.

I'd marry Richard Littlejohn and persuade him to throw Nicky Campbell off a cliff. In Texas.

Hence killing two cunts, sorry, birds, nope sorry again, cunts, with one (large vertical) stone.

Ooops, sorry - wrong thread ...

19:26 / 11.03.02

So is Will Self a good writer then, I read a little book of his, one of those little books you get if you travel on the sleeper...what does everyone think of him on Shooting Stars (why's nobody talking about shooting stars, you all liking it?)

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:54 / 11.03.02

Yeah, Self is pretty damn good. Try reading "Great Apes"- that's a really clever novel.

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:01 / 11.03.02

I just love the start!

quote:NICKY CAMPBELL: Your book is called How the Dead Live, Will, and basically it's a horror story - somebody dies and then stops being dead. Well you tell us. You wrote it anyway.

WILL SELF: I did write it and you manifestly haven't read it.

CAMPBELL: Well, you know, there's a lot to do on this programme.

23:14 / 11.03.02

Will Self shits me so much - I think Mordant's description of his book as 'clever' is v. accurate, if you want to read a couple of hundred pages of a posh wanker being 'clever' you'll probably enjoy it. That said, the quote Flyboy just posted is indisputably ace.

07:45 / 12.03.02

I don't like the chap much meself, and is clearly a waste of a chair on Shooting Stars - however, Richard Littlejohn makes me want to puke, the wretched little guttersnipe.
That someone actually employed that fat shite to spew forth his bile on the pages of a national newspaper and paid the motherfucker to do it is a disgrace to the country I like to call Brenda.

Ahhhh..... vent.

07:59 / 12.03.02

I'd be a grumpy fucker too though, going through life with a surname which announced to the world that I had just a little john. That'll be why he's so hung up about sex.

08:45 / 12.03.02

The Richard probably doesn't help.

Eh, Dick?

Then again, Will Self is probably some sort of Post-Nietzschean concept name.

08:51 / 12.03.02

I'm not a huge fan of Will Self, but I tend to take the side of anyone who argues with Richard Littlejohn. Even if it were Jamie Oliver.
OK, maybe that's going a bit too far...

The Planet of Sound

08:51 / 12.03.02

Will Self is the finest writer in English today, a true heir to both Swift and Orwell. Read all of his books (especially 'The Quantity Theory...', novice psychologists and social anthropologists), admire his mastery of the comic form on Shooting Stars, wonder at his debauched behaviour, and fall down on your knees and worship, worship, unbelievers. His vivisection of the hideous Campbell-thing is yet another string to his mighty bow.

10:16 / 12.03.02

quote: Will Self is the finest writer in English today

This is both the most depressing and the least accurate sentence I can remember reading. I'm tempted to list the writers who are better, but since I'd rather read my mum's shopping list than Self's tedious, smarmy, self-promotional shit it would take, literally, forever. He is an unbelievably boring wanker and it makes me angry that he's alive, much less allowed to publish books.

10:24 / 12.03.02

Wow, if we change the name "Will Self" for say, Warren Ellis or Alan Moore we'd have a thread fit for the fattest of fanboy beards.

11:35 / 12.03.02

I noticed the date on the article at the BBC shortly after posting it to plasticbag.org - so it's not quite a topical as I might have hoped... Still - it's kind of entertaining, nonetheless...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:37 / 12.03.02

Sound, I think you exaggerate Self's good qualities. Crunchy, I fear you exaggerate his bad ones.

But not by much.

The Planet of Sound

11:55 / 12.03.02

Crunchy, don't you think it's wise to read books before commenting on them? Or do you just burn them first? Please, tell me the name of a better writer; I hear that Richard Littlejohn's quite good.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:59 / 12.03.02

quote:Originally posted by The Planet of Sound:
Or do you just burn them first? Please, tell me the name of a better writer; I hear that Richard Littlejohn's quite good.

And the prize for "quickest descent into accusations of Nazism" goes to...

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

12:01 / 12.03.02

Ah, it's the quality of debate on Barbelith I love.

Sound, is it possible that Crunchy *has* read Self and been unimpressed by him?

I think he's all right, personally. A little too much in love with his own cleverness, and not in fact nearly as clever as he thinks he is. Too interested in expressing the media creation that is Will Self through his texts, and too consciously advertsing himself as a columnist and celebrity rahter than just trying to get the job done. I would suggest that if you were trying to make a list of pretty good mainstream writers - that is, in this case, writers for people not interested enough in writing to explore very far, but quite keen on looking down on Robert Grisham fans, he might well be on it.

The Planet of Sound

12:01 / 12.03.02

A reference to Ray Bradbury, aksholly.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

12:09 / 12.03.02

Oh, don't be silly, or at least sillier than you must be. Any accusation of book-burning covers a broad variety of cultural buttons, Fahrenheit 451 and Nazi Germany being among them. If you had accused him of being a "fireman", then you could perhaps have narrowed down the referent.

[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: The Haus of Horror ]

The Planet of Sound

12:11 / 12.03.02

quote:Originally posted by The Haus of Horror:
writers for people not interested enough in writing to explore very far.

Will Self, in 'Great Apes', does for genocentrism what Swift did for ethnocentrism, and what Orwell did for Stalin. Satire upon and explorations of academic institutions, London's nepotistic literary culture, ritalin, car design, insect societies, yardie culture, prison culture; I can't think of any other popular writer whose scope comes near any of this. And 'popular' here is an issue, and Self is undeniably a self (ho.Ho.)-promoter, as embodied in the curiously (yes, Neitzschean) coincidence of his name. But why shouldn't writers promote their work or persona? Would we remember Swift, Orwell, Wells if they weren't shameless self-publicists? Swift's Essay on the Irish Problem was designed to provoke widespread discussion, and Dickens; eventually terminal reading tours come to mind. I admire Will Self immeasurably.

Now, Alex Garland, on the other hand, I would gladly spit upon in the street...

12:14 / 12.03.02

quote:Originally posted by The Haus on The Couch:
I think he's all right, personally. A little too much in love with his own cleverness, and not in fact nearly as clever as he thinks he is.

The Planet of Sound

12:14 / 12.03.02

Further parallels with Self and Orwell; both columnists, both on the radio a lot, um, both a bit lanky. Bad hair?

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

12:24 / 12.03.02

Yes. If you go back to your English grammar, you may see that the noun being described by "not interested enough in writing to explore very far" is "people".

In this case, the description is a sort of zeugma, to describe people not very interested in a) exploring very far into the world of literature and b) literally exploring very far into the shop, as Will Self books are nicely placed near the front.

I'm sure no same human would demur for a second if confronted by the proposition that the subject matter of Self's work is incredibly varied, and certainly not concerned purely with the English Middle Classes and how they view themselves (as monkeys, as it turns out) and other classes. But then, Janet and Allen Ahlberg have very varied subject matter. Does that make them best?

12:26 / 12.03.02

Yes. You can't beat Burglar Bill.

The Planet of Sound

12:29 / 12.03.02

Never heard of them. Are they at the front or the back of Waterstones?

I'm certainly not trying to engage in a 'my writer's better than yours' debate; if anyone can recommend their own Finest (Popular) Writer in English Today, I'll be more than willing to pop down to Borders and take the plunge. I probably won't give up my membership of the Will Self fan club, though.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

12:30 / 12.03.02

You can't beat Burglar Bill.

Simpleton. The little Worm Book is superior both in conception and execution. But I bet you burnt that before you could read it.

Eh?

Eh?

[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: The Haus of Horror ]

12:38 / 12.03.02

Look, any book which makes poncey jokes about the Diet of Worms is clearly inferior to Burglar Bill.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

12:41 / 12.03.02

You whitebread poltroon. Burglar Bill has no ambition beyond telling a story, diverting as that story may be. The Little Worm Book has a far more ambitious project. It's like comparing "Professional Foul" to "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead".

12:52 / 12.03.02

Oh, balderdash. How can you say that? Burglar Bill is clearly a condensed version - a precis, if you will - of the European ur-narrative. In comparison, Worms is a jeux d'esprit.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

12:57 / 12.03.02

Oh, that's exactly the kind of fly-blown nonsense I would expect from a historian. To mega biblion ison to mega kakon, as Callimachus would say. To make claims for Burglar Bill beyond "well-realised central figure, briefly divereting sequence of qaballistic metaphors" is nothing more nor less than typical reactionary revisionism.

The world has changed since Fred and Queenie, you know.

[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: The Haus of Horror ]

13:07 / 12.03.02

And *that* is exactly the kind of specious reasoning I would expect from a classicist. Taking Callimachus utterly out of context and attempting to apply his statement to a twentieth-century text is an appalling distortion. Amd you call me a revisionist?

Bert and Queenie occupy a totally different place in the story - they are mechanicals, and you know it.

[ 12-03-2002: Message edited by: Kit-Cat Club ]

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

13:14 / 12.03.02

Oh, what fresh nonsense is this. How dare you even speak the name of Callimachus?

Is there no end to your primitive flammery?

I bet you are going to suggest that Burglar Bill is better tyhan Jan Pienkowski's pop-up oeuvre next, aren't you? Go on - try to deny it. I thought your kind died out in the 70s...

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