will self

I think a lot of literary fiction, what is perceived as being the significant contemporary literary fiction still seems incredibly recondite. Well, not recondite. Incredibly reactionary to me. It’s like Modernism never happened a lot of the time, isn’t it? They’ll write three-decker kind of Victorian novels, A. S. Byatt or Ian McEwan. They seem very recherché to me and also what’s permissible within them still seems very toned down. That being said, there’s still no avant garde. It’s not about taboos. So do I feel influenced. Well, I feel influenced by everything I’ve ever read. Which is a lot, as you’d imagine. It’s interesting.

It’s nice being middle aged. It’s quite exciting, because you get to re-read stuff that was very formative in your late teens early twenties. Increasingly, I write introductions and things like that. I look at texts again, and that’s interesting because then you see what the ambit of that influence is. Do I feel I’m contributing to anything? I just don’t know, I don’t know. I get very pessimistic about this because of this salad bar. I think when the avant-garde existed you could feel you’d done a good job just by writing the word fuck. You know, there seems to be so much literature, to me. Doesn’t there seem an awful lot published to you?

Will Self is awesome. It's nice being middle aged!