Will Self

The most important harbinger of America’s hardships is, was, and may always be Dopey: Yes, the four horsemen are really seven dwarves — at least I think they’re seven dwarves, it’s kinda difficult to tell in this low, orangey light… Anyway, their wayward leader is the most risible of all — … Continue Reading

“Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.” So asserted Oscar Wilde; and, as one of the wittiest people ever to have razzed a US customs official, he knew what he was quipping about. When I was reworking his Modernist myth, The Picture of Dorian Gray, for a film adaptation, I went through the text and … Continue Reading

The great French philosopher of the quotidian, Michel de Certeau, argued that “space is practiced place.” What he meant by this is that while places are given spatio-temporal locations, commonly assented to, space is the particular way we choose — both as individuals and groups — to inhabit or … Continue Reading

On the wall of the sitting room in my small, Edwardian villa in the inner-London suburb of Stockwell (think Brixton, then walk back towards the center of town a little), I have hung a panorama of London. Drawn, then engraved and hand-colored, this handsome hybridization of a map and a prospect was … Continue Reading