Wolverhampton Literary Festival: Author Will Self speaks ahead of event

It’s part of the promo game, the means to selling tickets and putting bums on seats.

Except when Will Self answers the phone to talk about his Wolverhampton Literary Festival talk on January 28 at the town’s Art Gallery from 5.30pm, we’re both too knowing to do that. So, instead, we make each other laugh.

When I open with a gentle entrée – are you looking forward to the show, Will? – he laughs at the banality of it all. And then, after a few seconds of mirth, he steels himself. He can’t bring himself to say things he doesn’t mean, to offer effusive soundbites about having always wanted to visit the working class city in the heart of the Black Country. It’s not his style. People would see through him.

“Well, these things are pretty bog standard,” he says. “There’ll be a reading from the book, a bit of a discussion with the moderator……”

Rebellion gets the better of him. “I’m not going to strip naked and dance around. Actually, maybe I will. How would you like that?”

Talking at literary festivals is part of his job. His career has coincided with the rise of literary festivals and he’s been putting his shoulder to the wheel for a very long time. Literary festivals help to sell books. And Will needs to do that the same as Walker’s need to sell crisps.

The former Booker Prize shortlistee, who has written for The Times, Playboy, The Guardian, Harper's, The New York Times and the London Review of Books, among others, will be talking about his new work, Phone, which was published last year. The stream-of-consciousness novel continues the story of psychiatrist Zack Busner, concluding Self’s modernist trilogy, which also featured Umbrella and Shark.

Like so many of Self’s books, Phone concerns itself with psychiatry and mental illness. It focuses on Alzheimer’s, a subject he’s keen to discuss. “So many of our ageing population are suffering from it. I think people are quite happy to talk about the experiential side but there’s little discussion of what it means to have such a significantly ageing population. I’m surprised that people under 40 don’t complain about it more. The young are in a minority. I’m waiting for the youthquake.

“I’m surprised there’s less articulation of anger about this big, fat middle-aged arse that is sitting on them and crushing the life out of them. The national wealth is bound up in the middle age. The novelist’s job is to portray those issues.”

Self spends a year or two writing his novels, making notes before sitting down to write. He has seen huge change in the media and literature since beginning his career, after graduating from Execter College, at the University of Oxford, an establishment whose other alumni included William Morris, J. R. R. Tolkien, Richard Burton, Roger Bannister, Alan Bennett, and Philip Pullman.

“I wrote for the media for years. People saw my stuff in The Times or Guardian and would say ‘I saw your piece in such and such’. That’s gone for me. I haven’t felt that for print journalism for years. And I certainly don’t feel it with the literary work. People know me from off the telly, really, that’s why I’m well known. People stop me in the street but I don’t really think they have a clue what I actually do for a living.”

Ah yes, the TV years. Self has been a regular contributor to such shows as Have I Got News for You and Shooting Stars in addition to featuring on current affairs programmes such as Newsnight and Question Time. He is also a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 4.

“Back in the early 2000s, people still watched terrestrial telly and Have I Got News For You would be watched by six million people. That’s far, far more than have ever read my books. Throughout my career, I haven’t sold more than one million books.”

And so in interview, he’ll play games with his interviewers. Dropping in references to books that those who are not well-read will miss. Happily, our discussion avoids such obvious faux pas and we talk a while about Great Apes, his 1997 novel that is being adapted for the stage and will open soon in London.

These days, Self spends much of his time lecturing students and continuing to write. He avoids social media – though he realises it's important.

”I don’t do social media at all. Again, the last few days, my feeling now is that if you don’t do social media, you’re dead in the water as a media commentator. Even this interview is just the afterimage of my former notoriety. It’s not a question of social media killing print. What I’m beginning to notice is that because the social arena is the field within which all possibility exists, if you’re not in that field people forget you exist.

“I think initially when social media got going, I was already famous. I was having enough difficulty answering emails every day. So the idea of being instantaneously involved in the feedback loop would have been crippling. That’s why I didn’t engage.

“If you’re well known, social media is like a depth charge to your past. Besides, I don’t need to get in touch with the a-holes I was at school with; they are constantly getting in touch with me anyway.”

Self is one of our finest thinkers and linguists. His works are rich with vivid new ideas and the sort of stunning language that James Joyce would have admired.

“I think I got a reputation for being, as Vic Reeves used to call me, a wordy b-. It partly came out of my first novel, which featured a character who was a word fanatic. A bit like all writers, I’ve always been interested in words. It’s cocking a snook at the dumbing down culture. The point about English is that it’s three or four languages joined together. It’s fun to play with. I’m equally alive to slang. I like it.”

As well as distancing himself from social media, Self also doesn’t engage with contemporary writers. For one, he doesn’t have time. “Being a fiction writer is about getting people to suspend their disbelief. It’s like being a seal and balancing a ball on your nose.

“In my case, I’ve always been a very multi-faceted figure. I must be the only person in the country who has united a career in entertainment with heavy literature. You don’t see Kazuo Ishiguro doing an open mic. I’m the only one.”

Tickets for Will Self’s talk are available from the venue.