Why read : selected writings 2001-2021 / Will Self.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Self, Will, author.

Standardized Title:

Works. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading.

Authorship.

Self, Will.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

325 pages : 22 cm

Edition:

First Grove Atlantic US hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, 2023.

Summary:

"From the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella, a world-girdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literature. From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed "the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation" by The Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature. Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback, and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell, and Conrad. He writes movingly on W. G. Sebald's childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers how, what, and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self's trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humor infuse every piece. A book that examines how the human stream of consciousness flows into and out of literature, Why Read will satisfy both old and new readers of this icon of contemporary literature"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Why read?

The death of the shelf

Absent Jews and invisible executioners: W.G. Sebald ad the Holocaust

Chernobyl

Kafka's wound

A care home for novels: the narrative art form in the age of its technical supersession

The last typewriter engineer

Isenshard

How should we read?

Junky

Being a character

Australia and I

The rise of the machines

Literary time

The printed word in peril

The secret agent

What to read?

On writing memoir

Apocalypse time

The technology of journalism

St George for the French

Will self-driving cars take my job?

Reading for writers.

Other Format:

Online version: Self, Will. Why read.

ISBN:

9780802160249

0802160247

OCLC:

1343209682