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Will Self (born September 26 , 1961) is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School, Christ's College Finchley, and Exeter College, Oxford. He is married to journalist Deborah Orr. Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
Life Highly articulate, Will Self has made several appearances on British television, notably as a contestant on Have I Got News for You (to date he has made eight guest appearances, a record jointly held with Germaine Greer) and as a regular on Shooting Stars and Grumpy Old Men as well as an appearance on Room 101. He gained a degree of infamy in 1997 when he was sent by the British broadsheet The Observer to cover the electoral campaign of John Major, and was subsequently fired from the newspaper after taking heroin on the Prime Minister's jet. His Psychogeography column appears in the magazine section of the Saturday edition of Independent. Literary style Like Salman Rushdie, Will Self loads his fiction with references and allusions to modern culture (both high and low) and like Rushdie he is probably the only person able to recognise them all. The influences on his fiction mentioned most frequently include J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson often not for purely literary reasons. Alongside these he has cited such diverse writers as Jonathan Swift, Franz Kafka, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Heller and Louis-Ferdinand Celine as formative influences on his writing style. Martin Amis is often mentioned alongside Self; Self went to interview him but they ended up having more of a discussion about each other's work and lives — it is known that they have tremendous respect for each other. Fiction Short Fiction Non-Fiction 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. Awards Quotes "All my work is highly personal; it's more personal than me. You know, reading my books is having a far more intimate relationship with me than having a relationship with me." "I want to be misunderstood. And the other thing that amuses me is: I don't particularly want to be liked. Nobody goes into the business of writing satire to be liked. Whether I am or am not a nice bloke is neither here nor there. It's not part of the task I've set myself in my art." | ||||||||
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