Author Will Self appeared at two separate events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. On Sunday 13 August he was in conversation with writer, critic and former Man Booker Prize judge Stuart Kelly. Here the focus of conversation was on Phone, the new novel from the author. The following day Self took part in an event with sociologist Richard Sennett, where the pair discussed cities within literature and how different authors write about urbanism.
Phone is the concluding book of a trilogy that began with Umbrella, which in turn was followed by Shark. When Stuart Kelly introduced Will Self he mentioned that during his time as a Booker Prize judge he was instructed to “find a novel that has done something that the novel has never done before“. With Phone, Self has done this and presented a unique book that looks at recent warfare and mental illness. During the event Self talks passionately about research, the influence of Oliver Sachs and how it is possible to write a 600 page book with no chapter breaks. It turns out you just do it! Clearly Will Self enjoys playing with form and what is possible in a novel and his witty responses to audience questions underlined this.
During the event with Richard Sennett the topic of conversation was different. This event is part of the Writing The City strand at the Book Festival. This programme looks at how writers depict the cities and urban landscapes. The main focus was the Italo Calvino novel Invisible Cities. Calvino had an atypical approach to navigating a city. He would walk up and down the long boulevards of New York and devour the architecture, people, sights and sounds. Self draws parallels with the Parisian Situationist movement, who called upon people to ignore the purpose of the city and walk the streets without preconceptions, in order to inspire the imagination. As you can imagine the conversation between Self and Sennett was animated and covered a vast range of topics and this is what you would expect from two exceptional writers.
Both the events with Will Self at the Edinburgh International Book Festival were insightful, entertaining and showcased a novelist that is filled with ideas and imagination and is more than happy to discuss his work.