Will Self

Author Will Self spends only a few pages on the Situationist origins and subsequent history of the psychogeographical enterprise in this book. He then proceeds to undertake it in something of the form developed by other recent practitioners, such as Peter Ackroyd, Cathy Turner, Nick Papadimitriou, and Iain Sinclair. The 56-page introduction "Walking to New York" seemed very similar in genre and method to Sinclair's The Last London, the principal work in this field that I've previously read, although Self's book was published a full decade earlier. (Dates on the copyright page seem to indicate that portions had been published up to four years prior to that.)

The introduction was slow reading, with its density of introspection and extravagant diction. It recounts Self's "walk to New York" from his home in England--interrupted by a trans-Atlantic airplane flight, of course. Throughout the book, Self boasts his status as one of a dwindling tribe to which I proudly belong. We are transport pedestrians, willing to use our feet to get to places where more conventional members of our societies would use automobiles. But there are many points in the book where he documents his use of other forms of transport. Just as the focus is not exclusively perambulatory, neither is it solely urban.

After "Walking to New York," the book's remaining two hundred pages flashed by. They entirely consist of two-page vignettes by Self, originally columns in the Independent. Each is accompanied by a full page or two of illustration by the inimitable Ralph Steadman. Steadman's contributions were in fact a chief attraction for me to borrow this book from my local public library. They are reproduced in full color. Self writes, "I wonder sometimes if, like Obelix, Ralph was dropped in a vat of some hallucinogenic potion when he was a child" (175), introducing his collaborator abruptly at the end of an essay on visiting the Netherlands. Steadman's own experiences form the basis for one essay on an encounter with an urban fox (197-9).

The fifty-odd short pieces are not arranged chronologically or geographically. They see-saw among reminiscences of frequently-intoxicated younger adulthood and musings on middle age and parenthood, all concerned with "the modern conundrum of psyche and place." Much of Self's travel has clearly been motivated by his writing, whether in a journalistic mode or researching backgrounds for his fiction "in the interests of verisimilitude" (175). The anecdotes are reliably wry and often very funny. I was especially amused by "Bouncy Metropolis" (145-8) and "Spain - The Final Frontier" (183-6). Often enough, there is an overt punchline, such as the one in "Hitler in Rio" (123-5).

Those already familiar with and agreeable toward psychogeography should enjoy this book. To the less informed reader, I might recommend starting with the Wikipedia article on the topic, followed by the short essays in this book, and then finishing with the long introduction. The contents of this volume still merit readers' attention in a world where "psyche and place" have only become more estranged in the ensuing years.… (more)

Structurally, this is a novel preceded and followed by novellas, seemingly unrelated, though there are a few scattered allusions in the last two to the events described in the first work. The main novel describes a surreal walk through Los Angeles by a superhero detective attempting to discover the identity of the individual who murdered the movies, whilst occasionally dropping in on the set of a movie being made about his walk. The first novella describes in sarcastic detail the pretentions of the art world as the narrator follows around a boyhood pal, a dwarf who globetrots the world constructing installations which are giant images of himself. The final novella narrates the findings of a sufferer from dementia as he walks an English coastline pitched somewhere between surrealism and minimalism. Yes, blurbers, the author is witty and erudite--I might have appreciated the erudition more if he hadn't sent me to the dictionary multiple times per page-- but , too long by half, this book is more to be appreciated than enjoyed. I never looked forward to my time with it.… (more)

Almost every time I picked up this book to read it, I fell asleep. Now that may be a coincidence, but it's certainly not an endorsement.

Umbrella tells the story of Audrey Death, a munitions worker during the Great War, who contracts a brain disease and is confined to a lunatic asylum in a state of catatonia. The other key character is Dr Zack Busner, the psychotherapist who is treating her decades later.

The book is written as one continuous stream; there are no chapters and few paragraph breaks. Self frequently shifts his narrative to a different time, setting and protagonist in the middle of a sentence. I often found myself re-reading a page a couple of times to figure out what he was on about now. This is made worse by his repeatedly chucking in italicised words and phrases to no discernable purpose.

I suppose this is all supposed to represent the chaos going on inside Audrey's diseased mind but it is really irritating. The book is almost 400pp already; it doesn't need to be made any more verbose. Self's narrative is simply not interesting enough to put up with these mannerisms.

There is the germ of a good story here, but this Self-indulgent writing style has turned it into a snooze-fest - in my case literally.… (more)