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Walking to Hollywood
This title is an extraordinary triptych in which Will Self burrows down through the intersections of time, place and psyche to explore some of our deepest fears and anxieties with his characteristic fearlessness and edgy humour.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2010
19 people are currently reading
302 people want to read
About the author
Will Self
172 books995 followersWilliam Self is an English novelist, reviewer and columnist. He received his education at University College School, Christ's College Finchley, and Exeter College, Oxford. He was married to the late journalist Deborah Orr.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
Self is known for his satirical, grotesque and fantastic novels and short stories set in seemingly parallel universes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
May 22, 2015
The notion of inverted worlds is given a bizarre twist with Self’s Walking to Hollywood, a novel divided into three sections, with each recounted by a fictionalized Will Self undergoing a different form of neurosis. The first section of this triptych (while chronologically linked, these three tales are loose enough to be read individually as novellas), “Very Little”, is the Character Self’s 100-page obsessive-compulsive breakdown and a continuation of the Author-Self’s career-long obsession with scale. Self reconnects with a childhood friend, Sherman Oaks, a dwarf who has now become a trendy, international pop-artist. When they were children, Self betrayed Oaks’ trust by having a fairly harmless sexual tryst with his sister, and a confused sense of guilt underlies each increasingly frequent and increasingly random encounter Self has with Oaks, as their paths keep crossing while the diminutive artist globe trots in his pursuit to plant colossal constructions of himself in bizarre locations such as the Easter Isles and the Great Salt Lake Desert. All the while, Self can barely keep his psyche together as he bumbles from one literary festival to the next, his obsession with the arbitrary nature of dimensions and amounts crippling him in profound ways.
The titular middle section makes up the meatiest portion of the book, and embarks a psychotic Self on a gonzo-quest narrative to find who is responsible for the death of cinema as the main means of artistic expression. While Self hounds the mean streets of Lullaby Town, he is beset by a slew of surrealistic adventures, such as fist fighting Daniel Craig, being kidnapped by Scientologists, conspiracies to conceal Tom Cruise’s penis size, transforming into a computerized avatar in a 1st-person video game shooter, an awkward dinner with Bret Easton Ellis, and escaping a CGI-generated riot over Justin Timberlake. Luckily, Self has occasional superpowers and allies, such as Scooby Doo, to help him with his dangerous investigation. This section is the most impressive of the three, considering its boundless momentum and refusal to let up recounting one insane scenario after another.
The third section, “Spurn Head,” is a melancholic slow-burner dealing with a final long walk along the Holderness coast as Self’s mind slowly deteriorates to Alzheimer’s. Much of the comic zaniness which propelled the first 2/3rds of this book are abandoned for a more subdued, grim attention to ecological disaster and the fleeting nature of memory, culminating with an encounter with an immortal creature borrowed from one of the many isles of Gulliver’s Travels.
What these three pieces form is a bit too nebulous to give a pat thematic summary, but as baggy as the experience may be, Walking to Hollywood is an often hilarious, horrifying, touching and profound glimpse into the personal and creative life of one of our best living authors, as well as being a caustic look at contemporary culture as an ominous cabinet of curiosities.
The titular middle section makes up the meatiest portion of the book, and embarks a psychotic Self on a gonzo-quest narrative to find who is responsible for the death of cinema as the main means of artistic expression. While Self hounds the mean streets of Lullaby Town, he is beset by a slew of surrealistic adventures, such as fist fighting Daniel Craig, being kidnapped by Scientologists, conspiracies to conceal Tom Cruise’s penis size, transforming into a computerized avatar in a 1st-person video game shooter, an awkward dinner with Bret Easton Ellis, and escaping a CGI-generated riot over Justin Timberlake. Luckily, Self has occasional superpowers and allies, such as Scooby Doo, to help him with his dangerous investigation. This section is the most impressive of the three, considering its boundless momentum and refusal to let up recounting one insane scenario after another.
The third section, “Spurn Head,” is a melancholic slow-burner dealing with a final long walk along the Holderness coast as Self’s mind slowly deteriorates to Alzheimer’s. Much of the comic zaniness which propelled the first 2/3rds of this book are abandoned for a more subdued, grim attention to ecological disaster and the fleeting nature of memory, culminating with an encounter with an immortal creature borrowed from one of the many isles of Gulliver’s Travels.
What these three pieces form is a bit too nebulous to give a pat thematic summary, but as baggy as the experience may be, Walking to Hollywood is an often hilarious, horrifying, touching and profound glimpse into the personal and creative life of one of our best living authors, as well as being a caustic look at contemporary culture as an ominous cabinet of curiosities.
May 24, 2011
As a fan of Will Self, this "novel" (really 3 bloated short stories) is particularly disappointing. Each section nominally relates to a psychiatric disorder propped up by a faux-memoir style (photos in the text, footnotes telling us that this is a clue that this is a faux-memoir).
"Walking to Hollywood" is Self recycling his recent "Psychogeography" journalism into a poorly edited set of fictions (how much clothing is "bespoke," how many skies "mackerel," how many times can you write "nuages maritimes"?). Each has his kind of journalistic style: an explicitly stated idea, some local colour (often in dialect British) as he walks somewhere, and descriptions of him taking a shit. Some of these ideas have real potential. The eponymous story is a return to Hollywood to discover what killed film as the predominant cultural form our imagination takes. The answer, it would seem, is video games (apparently he hasn't discovered the internet). But the choice to explore this through a kind of PG-13, lamely self-conscious rewrite of Bret Easton Ellis's 1998 novel "Glamorama" is particularly baffling.
The problem throughout is that Self spends far too much time explaining what he is trying to do instead of just doing it. That an overlong story about amnesia might be symbolically related to the eroding coastline he walks along hardly needs to be repeatedly pointed out. And so on.
If you are interested in reading Will Self (and you should be), do yourself a favour and pick up any other book by him.
"Walking to Hollywood" is Self recycling his recent "Psychogeography" journalism into a poorly edited set of fictions (how much clothing is "bespoke," how many skies "mackerel," how many times can you write "nuages maritimes"?). Each has his kind of journalistic style: an explicitly stated idea, some local colour (often in dialect British) as he walks somewhere, and descriptions of him taking a shit. Some of these ideas have real potential. The eponymous story is a return to Hollywood to discover what killed film as the predominant cultural form our imagination takes. The answer, it would seem, is video games (apparently he hasn't discovered the internet). But the choice to explore this through a kind of PG-13, lamely self-conscious rewrite of Bret Easton Ellis's 1998 novel "Glamorama" is particularly baffling.
The problem throughout is that Self spends far too much time explaining what he is trying to do instead of just doing it. That an overlong story about amnesia might be symbolically related to the eroding coastline he walks along hardly needs to be repeatedly pointed out. And so on.
If you are interested in reading Will Self (and you should be), do yourself a favour and pick up any other book by him.
November 2, 2010
Walking to Hollywood is a triptych based around three mental pathologies: obsessive compulsive disorder, psychosis, and Alzheimer's.
"Very Little" explores Self's permanent obsession with scale. "Walking to Hollywood" finds him investigating who murdered the movies. "Spurn Head" is a bleak walk along a crumbling coastline and a rumination on death.
The narrative mixes Self's psychogeography writing with mordant satire, surreal fantasy and personal reflection. The book's freewheeling absurdity is gloriously funny and insane, though the last part stretches the form to breaking point, and my interest waned as he sat discoursing cliffside with a Struldbug.
Packed with Self's wide vocabulary and unique prose pyrotechnics, this is his most intimate and verbose work yet.
"Very Little" explores Self's permanent obsession with scale. "Walking to Hollywood" finds him investigating who murdered the movies. "Spurn Head" is a bleak walk along a crumbling coastline and a rumination on death.
The narrative mixes Self's psychogeography writing with mordant satire, surreal fantasy and personal reflection. The book's freewheeling absurdity is gloriously funny and insane, though the last part stretches the form to breaking point, and my interest waned as he sat discoursing cliffside with a Struldbug.
Packed with Self's wide vocabulary and unique prose pyrotechnics, this is his most intimate and verbose work yet.
December 1, 2012
I picked this up because it is illustrated, and I'm trying to read all contemporary fiction that uses images. So my comments here have to do with that; I have something to say about the prose at the end.
In a book of fiction (well, experimental writing that combines journalism with bits of the novel, the memoir, and the travel account) the first image is always an unexpected guest. Here the first chapter opens with a description of a "dew pond" (not sure what that is, but never mind):
"A single cramped ash was reflected in the gunmetal disc of water, a disc that was ringed with pocked earth and cupped in a fold of cropped turf."
Seven pages later comes the first image in the book, which is unmistakably that "dew pond." So it's reasonable to assume that a reasonably interested reader will turn back seven pages to compare the description: and it fits. A next question might then be: why is the image on page 10, given that in the intervening pages the narrator has been remembering other times and places? The book opens with Self's friend, an artist supposedly called Sherman Oaks (modeled, I think, on a combination of Anthony Gormley and Corban Walker), ranting at the edge of the "dew pond." In the next few pages, before the first image appears, Self recalls other meetings with Oaks. The line on the bottom of page 9, just before the image, is:
"Then, in the late 1980s, there began the inexorable rise of Sherman Oaks, the artist."
Turning the page, we're brought back to the "dew pond" and the book's opening: but the prose seems not to notice, because it continues with memories of Oaks.
I do not propose this as a criticism: I mean that this is the kind of calibration that has to accompany any reading that is attentive to images. The detail with which the author describes the image and its placement in the text are the rules of a game of word and image that a reader might expect will continue through the book. But the next two images, the book's second and third, work entirely differently. They are on p. 24 (that is, a long way into the narrative), and they are snapshots of sheep and of a street stall offering handbags. Neither one connects securely to the prose in which they float. I can connect them -- I can guess -- but clearly these images are being used differently, with less care, as generic markers of places Self has been.
And so it continues. The photos in this book are almost all indifferent, uninteresting, uncomposed, and that's fine: it's clearly intentional. But it becomes clear that Self's interest in linking his images to his text is uneven, intermittent, uncommitted, disengaged. Sometimes the images are referred to in the text, but even then the references in the text rarely make me look at the image for more than a millisecond (as I did with the opening photograph). Self explains his Barbour jacket at length, making it an emblem of his OCD and his travel anxieties (p. 34): but when we see it, it's just been thrown into a corner of a toilet stall, and none of the details he describes are visible. That photograph (p. 37) is actually a good exemplar of his idea of images: the photo also features his bare knee, because, as the text informs us, he's sitting on the toilet. That's actually an interesting thing to be showing readers, but again nothing is made of it.
I think the book is non-visual, because it just isn't engaged, one way or the other, with its images. I can only imagine snapshots are mnemonics for Self, but why does he think readers don't need to be informed about how he thinks about images? Is an image such an intractable thing that its uses can't be addressed? Or such a non-verbal thing that it doesn't need to be integrated into a narrative? Or such a self-explanatory thing that it doesn't need explanation? Or such an uninteresting thing that it can't be dissected?
And why doesn't it matter that the low-grade loneliness of the images contrasts incomprehensibly with the effervescent and fiercely social autobiography?
--
A small note about the text. I couldn't finish this book. Self's style, to me, is a kind of incessant struggle for quirky cleverness. Every sentence is tweaked and twisted so it uses English in a slightly striking way. For what kind of reader is this entertaining? I suppose for a reader who needs a continuous series of faint jolts of interest to remain engaged. For me, it's a kind of hypertrophy of the English newspaper habit that requires every headline, even on serious events, to be some sort of clever pun. That's always driven me batty. What does it accomplish? It isn't a satire of world events: it's just an unending registering of the journalist's snide wit, which sprays itself over everything from gossip reporting to war. On p. 44 Self proposes a succinct self-criticism (as a "micro-critic"): it's an affecting moment. He has all sorts of interesting qualities, but the volume of wit is turned up too high for me.
In a book of fiction (well, experimental writing that combines journalism with bits of the novel, the memoir, and the travel account) the first image is always an unexpected guest. Here the first chapter opens with a description of a "dew pond" (not sure what that is, but never mind):
"A single cramped ash was reflected in the gunmetal disc of water, a disc that was ringed with pocked earth and cupped in a fold of cropped turf."
Seven pages later comes the first image in the book, which is unmistakably that "dew pond." So it's reasonable to assume that a reasonably interested reader will turn back seven pages to compare the description: and it fits. A next question might then be: why is the image on page 10, given that in the intervening pages the narrator has been remembering other times and places? The book opens with Self's friend, an artist supposedly called Sherman Oaks (modeled, I think, on a combination of Anthony Gormley and Corban Walker), ranting at the edge of the "dew pond." In the next few pages, before the first image appears, Self recalls other meetings with Oaks. The line on the bottom of page 9, just before the image, is:
"Then, in the late 1980s, there began the inexorable rise of Sherman Oaks, the artist."
Turning the page, we're brought back to the "dew pond" and the book's opening: but the prose seems not to notice, because it continues with memories of Oaks.
I do not propose this as a criticism: I mean that this is the kind of calibration that has to accompany any reading that is attentive to images. The detail with which the author describes the image and its placement in the text are the rules of a game of word and image that a reader might expect will continue through the book. But the next two images, the book's second and third, work entirely differently. They are on p. 24 (that is, a long way into the narrative), and they are snapshots of sheep and of a street stall offering handbags. Neither one connects securely to the prose in which they float. I can connect them -- I can guess -- but clearly these images are being used differently, with less care, as generic markers of places Self has been.
And so it continues. The photos in this book are almost all indifferent, uninteresting, uncomposed, and that's fine: it's clearly intentional. But it becomes clear that Self's interest in linking his images to his text is uneven, intermittent, uncommitted, disengaged. Sometimes the images are referred to in the text, but even then the references in the text rarely make me look at the image for more than a millisecond (as I did with the opening photograph). Self explains his Barbour jacket at length, making it an emblem of his OCD and his travel anxieties (p. 34): but when we see it, it's just been thrown into a corner of a toilet stall, and none of the details he describes are visible. That photograph (p. 37) is actually a good exemplar of his idea of images: the photo also features his bare knee, because, as the text informs us, he's sitting on the toilet. That's actually an interesting thing to be showing readers, but again nothing is made of it.
I think the book is non-visual, because it just isn't engaged, one way or the other, with its images. I can only imagine snapshots are mnemonics for Self, but why does he think readers don't need to be informed about how he thinks about images? Is an image such an intractable thing that its uses can't be addressed? Or such a non-verbal thing that it doesn't need to be integrated into a narrative? Or such a self-explanatory thing that it doesn't need explanation? Or such an uninteresting thing that it can't be dissected?
And why doesn't it matter that the low-grade loneliness of the images contrasts incomprehensibly with the effervescent and fiercely social autobiography?
--
A small note about the text. I couldn't finish this book. Self's style, to me, is a kind of incessant struggle for quirky cleverness. Every sentence is tweaked and twisted so it uses English in a slightly striking way. For what kind of reader is this entertaining? I suppose for a reader who needs a continuous series of faint jolts of interest to remain engaged. For me, it's a kind of hypertrophy of the English newspaper habit that requires every headline, even on serious events, to be some sort of clever pun. That's always driven me batty. What does it accomplish? It isn't a satire of world events: it's just an unending registering of the journalist's snide wit, which sprays itself over everything from gossip reporting to war. On p. 44 Self proposes a succinct self-criticism (as a "micro-critic"): it's an affecting moment. He has all sorts of interesting qualities, but the volume of wit is turned up too high for me.
May 22, 2011
Friday evening, it was thought, however erroneously, that a viewing of Sofia Coppola's film Somewhere would be of benefit as I was completing Will Self's fictional memoir. Despite the centrality of the Chateau Marmont to both narratives, Coppola's effort appeared by the numbers, numbing and a waste of time for everyone involved. Nothing could be more removed from the gripping prowess of Self's triptych.
September 19, 2023
This is a tricky one to rate, because I found certain parts of it incredibly meaningful and a delight to read, but other sections were difficult to fully get into. The book is part travelogue, part fiction, part memoir, part satire, part polemic, part confessional, part vicious attack on the modern world, and it is hard to classify.
The book is split into three sections, each a novella in length and each based on a different theme of mental health: OCD, psychosis, and dementia. Separately, they cover a walking journey by the author, delving into the mental health issues but also going into incredible depth/detail on the surroundings.
Inevitably, it's beautifully written, and Self's playfulness with language comes to the fore over and over again. He's a master of the snide aside, or the cutting assessment of a person/situation in very few words.
I found the final section, on dementia, the most insightful and enjoyable, whereas the larger central part was frankly a difficult read. I grant that this is intentional, because it is narrated by someone (Self?) suffering from psychosis and sociopathy, but it is continually jarring and unsettling. There are laugh-out-loud moments, and I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of the rap group who translate latin as they go, but some of viciousness can get a little too much.
The book is split into three sections, each a novella in length and each based on a different theme of mental health: OCD, psychosis, and dementia. Separately, they cover a walking journey by the author, delving into the mental health issues but also going into incredible depth/detail on the surroundings.
Inevitably, it's beautifully written, and Self's playfulness with language comes to the fore over and over again. He's a master of the snide aside, or the cutting assessment of a person/situation in very few words.
I found the final section, on dementia, the most insightful and enjoyable, whereas the larger central part was frankly a difficult read. I grant that this is intentional, because it is narrated by someone (Self?) suffering from psychosis and sociopathy, but it is continually jarring and unsettling. There are laugh-out-loud moments, and I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of the rap group who translate latin as they go, but some of viciousness can get a little too much.
December 25, 2014
Disappointing. Very disappointing.
I have found fiction by Will Self when he is "on his game" to be reliably intelligent, playful, satiric and entertaining. I wish I'd found the same here. This triptych of a story, a meta-fictional travelogue cum quest cum faux memoir, has much of what one looks for from Self. It has the fantastic, the magical and outrageous imagery which, when deployed sparingly, are literarily delightful. Unfortunately this book is less fantastical than it is confusingly and disjointedly surreal. Sadly, Self seems to have become overfond of that most egotistical of post-modern tropes - metafiction. He plays with identity, self-identity - or rather Self-identity - in a seemingly endless series of loops which, when assembled from its constituent parts, identifies itself as something akin to a broken Kline bottle. In other words this work is too self-indulgent by half.
Does the book have meaning or purpose. Assuredly. I'm not astute enough to winkle significant meaning or purpose out of it but I am supremely confident that generations of earnest Eng Lit post-grads will happily engage Self in a monumental circle-jerk.
I have found fiction by Will Self when he is "on his game" to be reliably intelligent, playful, satiric and entertaining. I wish I'd found the same here. This triptych of a story, a meta-fictional travelogue cum quest cum faux memoir, has much of what one looks for from Self. It has the fantastic, the magical and outrageous imagery which, when deployed sparingly, are literarily delightful. Unfortunately this book is less fantastical than it is confusingly and disjointedly surreal. Sadly, Self seems to have become overfond of that most egotistical of post-modern tropes - metafiction. He plays with identity, self-identity - or rather Self-identity - in a seemingly endless series of loops which, when assembled from its constituent parts, identifies itself as something akin to a broken Kline bottle. In other words this work is too self-indulgent by half.
Does the book have meaning or purpose. Assuredly. I'm not astute enough to winkle significant meaning or purpose out of it but I am supremely confident that generations of earnest Eng Lit post-grads will happily engage Self in a monumental circle-jerk.
April 18, 2011
In his new book, a perpetually wayward Will Self investigates all manner of madness the only way he knows how – by strapping on his boots and walking to airports. Staged as a “memoir,” we follow the author as he meanders from London to LA to Yorkshire Cliffs. Along the way, he gleefully prods at conceptual art, dissects a bloated, self-reflexive Hollywood, repeatedly catalogs his compulsive disorders, and peers into the void of his own diminishing mind. A fantastical skewering of psychosis and modern culture, Walking to Hollywood is yet another riotous trip from this mordant and masterful 21st century satirist.
February 28, 2012
Melting buildings and melting type, a distorted portrait of Self himself looking like eighty million dollars worth of Edvard Munch painting... the lurid orange cover of this recent Will Self triptych of feverish fabulations immediately made me think of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and inevitably of the film adaptation thereof. Turns out the cover was in fact actually done by Thompson's longtime favorite collaborator (and Will Self's own frequent illustrator) Ralph Steadman, according to the fine print on the back—so at least my instincts were good.
It seems likely that Self himself did spend quite a lot of time on foot in the city where, famously, nobody walks (although I myself used to walk to work and back when I lived there, back in the 1990s). Walking to Hollywood, and especially its eponymous middle section, is filled with a delirious wealth of hyperrealistic detail about Los Angeles—to whose accuracy I can attest, although I'm not sure Self's pedestrian itinerary as a whole would stand up to being mapped out. There's a nod to one of my favorite little oddball venues, the Museum of Jurassic Technology. There's also an impassioned essay on one of my favorite films, "Blade Runner" (pp.197-198), that includes accurate details about the Bradbury Building and the nearby Grand Central Market, as well as a neat little aside on p.172 that I couldn't resist quoting elsewhere, when I synchronistically ran across a weblog post about the same thing: "It reminded me of overtaking a truck with a shiny aluminium tank, [...] all this in '94, on the Santa Ana freeway, with Polly Borland in the passenger seat, filming our reflection in the mirrored belly of the grunting beast with a Super 8 camera." (see Rob Beschizza's post on bOINGbOING entitled "Trompe l'oil". I could've been on the freeway right next to him... right place, right time.
As only befits a book which is, loosely speaking, about one man's epic quest to discover "who killed cinema," Walking to Hollywood is also filled with sly Hollywood film references, to the du Maurier adaptation "Don't Look Now" (look for the red raincoat on p.56) and Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (HAL's unable to find work except as a security camera, p. 137), for a couple of specific examples.
However, the three novellas which comprise Walking to Hollywood are also global in scope. Even Portland, Oregon gets a nod of sorts, on p.220. It's almost as if the guy were following me around... but no, that's just paranoia. Right?
*
I think Self is one of the most original prose stylists we have working for us these days—he doesn't use self-consciously literary language, no lofty phrases or obscure vocabularity, just simple words, yet freighted with unusual nuance in nearly every sentence. For example: "On the back of the bathroom door hung a terry-towelling robe with a monogram that implied the hotel and I were one." (p.53)
That originality produces occasional brilliance ("she swansoned from chamber to chamber," (p.144) with its echoes of "swanned" and "swan song" packed into the overt reference to Gloria Swanson) as well as, to be sure, the much more infrequent misfire {such as the realization—as if no one could have realized or mentioned it before—that Evian spelt backwards is "NAIVE" (p.64)}. It's a style that tends to make me want to forgive issues like the all-too-common confusion between "ordinance" (a written rule) and "ordnance" (explosives) that appears on p.390.
There were some other elements of this book that made it less than perfect, at least for me. Interspersed throughout the text, muddy and characterless black-and-white reproductions of color photographs appear, snapshots adding an air of banal authenticity to Self's first-person musings. The photographs were often disconnected by many pages from the text they were presumably intended to illustrate, though. For one example, the image of the shrine "I LOVE FREDDY" appears on p.339, where the paragraph about it doesn't show up until p.352.
The unexplained reappearance of the "motos"—living creatures birthing vehicles, an odd triumph of genetic engineering, as seen in The Book of Dave—also confused me a bit, inserted as they were into an otherwise entirely contemporary narrative.
*
As with so many works of the surreal, Walking to Hollywood has been labeled as "satire," and perhaps even "comic," but it is primarily a serious and even angry examination of mental deterioration, the manifestations of mental illness all, as Self's own Afterword explains, "displacements of a single phenomenon." (p.432). It's a work of (again to use Self's own words) "...such jocular savagery it can be accepted uncritically as wholesome entertainment" (p.213)—although I would encourage you to look for the depth that's there as well.
It seems likely that Self himself did spend quite a lot of time on foot in the city where, famously, nobody walks (although I myself used to walk to work and back when I lived there, back in the 1990s). Walking to Hollywood, and especially its eponymous middle section, is filled with a delirious wealth of hyperrealistic detail about Los Angeles—to whose accuracy I can attest, although I'm not sure Self's pedestrian itinerary as a whole would stand up to being mapped out. There's a nod to one of my favorite little oddball venues, the Museum of Jurassic Technology. There's also an impassioned essay on one of my favorite films, "Blade Runner" (pp.197-198), that includes accurate details about the Bradbury Building and the nearby Grand Central Market, as well as a neat little aside on p.172 that I couldn't resist quoting elsewhere, when I synchronistically ran across a weblog post about the same thing: "It reminded me of overtaking a truck with a shiny aluminium tank, [...] all this in '94, on the Santa Ana freeway, with Polly Borland in the passenger seat, filming our reflection in the mirrored belly of the grunting beast with a Super 8 camera." (see Rob Beschizza's post on bOINGbOING entitled "Trompe l'oil". I could've been on the freeway right next to him... right place, right time.
As only befits a book which is, loosely speaking, about one man's epic quest to discover "who killed cinema," Walking to Hollywood is also filled with sly Hollywood film references, to the du Maurier adaptation "Don't Look Now" (look for the red raincoat on p.56) and Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (HAL's unable to find work except as a security camera, p. 137), for a couple of specific examples.
However, the three novellas which comprise Walking to Hollywood are also global in scope. Even Portland, Oregon gets a nod of sorts, on p.220. It's almost as if the guy were following me around... but no, that's just paranoia. Right?
*
I think Self is one of the most original prose stylists we have working for us these days—he doesn't use self-consciously literary language, no lofty phrases or obscure vocabularity, just simple words, yet freighted with unusual nuance in nearly every sentence. For example: "On the back of the bathroom door hung a terry-towelling robe with a monogram that implied the hotel and I were one." (p.53)
That originality produces occasional brilliance ("she swansoned from chamber to chamber," (p.144) with its echoes of "swanned" and "swan song" packed into the overt reference to Gloria Swanson) as well as, to be sure, the much more infrequent misfire {such as the realization—as if no one could have realized or mentioned it before—that Evian spelt backwards is "NAIVE" (p.64)}. It's a style that tends to make me want to forgive issues like the all-too-common confusion between "ordinance" (a written rule) and "ordnance" (explosives) that appears on p.390.
There were some other elements of this book that made it less than perfect, at least for me. Interspersed throughout the text, muddy and characterless black-and-white reproductions of color photographs appear, snapshots adding an air of banal authenticity to Self's first-person musings. The photographs were often disconnected by many pages from the text they were presumably intended to illustrate, though. For one example, the image of the shrine "I LOVE FREDDY" appears on p.339, where the paragraph about it doesn't show up until p.352.
The unexplained reappearance of the "motos"—living creatures birthing vehicles, an odd triumph of genetic engineering, as seen in The Book of Dave—also confused me a bit, inserted as they were into an otherwise entirely contemporary narrative.
*
As with so many works of the surreal, Walking to Hollywood has been labeled as "satire," and perhaps even "comic," but it is primarily a serious and even angry examination of mental deterioration, the manifestations of mental illness all, as Self's own Afterword explains, "displacements of a single phenomenon." (p.432). It's a work of (again to use Self's own words) "...such jocular savagery it can be accepted uncritically as wholesome entertainment" (p.213)—although I would encourage you to look for the depth that's there as well.
June 19, 2019
psychotically deep, brilliant, fascinating
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January 23, 2024A remarkable mixture of fact, fancy, memoir and invention.
January 30, 2012
The very thing that causes me to enjoy reading Will Self is what put me off in this book: his writing is a constant surprise. Every book of his I've read previously, this has been its strength. This time, however, even to the last page of Walking... I had no idea what was going on.
Though it's a continuous narrative, it's divided into three distinct parts. Each one follows its own arc and (it's revealed most plainly in the authour's afterword) each one is devoted to a different mental illness.
'Very Little,' which deals with paranoia through the tale of a dwarf artist and his friend (who may or may not be Self) was a little confusing and ultimately confounding, feeling like an experiment at our expense. An interesting story, sacrificed to style.
The eponymous middle part is the longest, approaches psychosis via the authour's (or his acting representatives') walking tour from London to Hollywood (with the necessary flights between), and is the least comprehensible. It veers from parody to social commentary to outright lunacy, namedropping and pop-culture citing throughout. A fun ride, but ultimately dissatisfying, feeling rather like a lesser writer's attempt at Fear And Loathing in Los Angeles.
The final section, 'Spurn Head,' addresses Alzheimer's Disease in the most straight-forward piece of the book. The man we've been with so far in the book decides to try to make sense of all that's passed by taking another walking tour, this time along the Yorkshire coast. As his condition declines, he attempts to piece together what he's doing and where he's come from, as illustrated by Self's wordplay in repetition and replacement.
To suggest that I really 'got' this book would be giving myself too much credit. It will take some time before I'll want to read this again, but hopefully a re-read will be more rewarding than the initial one.
Though it's a continuous narrative, it's divided into three distinct parts. Each one follows its own arc and (it's revealed most plainly in the authour's afterword) each one is devoted to a different mental illness.
'Very Little,' which deals with paranoia through the tale of a dwarf artist and his friend (who may or may not be Self) was a little confusing and ultimately confounding, feeling like an experiment at our expense. An interesting story, sacrificed to style.
The eponymous middle part is the longest, approaches psychosis via the authour's (or his acting representatives') walking tour from London to Hollywood (with the necessary flights between), and is the least comprehensible. It veers from parody to social commentary to outright lunacy, namedropping and pop-culture citing throughout. A fun ride, but ultimately dissatisfying, feeling rather like a lesser writer's attempt at Fear And Loathing in Los Angeles.
The final section, 'Spurn Head,' addresses Alzheimer's Disease in the most straight-forward piece of the book. The man we've been with so far in the book decides to try to make sense of all that's passed by taking another walking tour, this time along the Yorkshire coast. As his condition declines, he attempts to piece together what he's doing and where he's come from, as illustrated by Self's wordplay in repetition and replacement.
To suggest that I really 'got' this book would be giving myself too much credit. It will take some time before I'll want to read this again, but hopefully a re-read will be more rewarding than the initial one.
January 16, 2012
'Walking To Hollywood' (WTH) surprised me. I am a fan of Will Self, although more of his short stories - so far I had only read one novel, 'The Book Of Dave', which I loved. Technically, WTH is a collection of three stories, although they can be treated as three parts of the same larger novel, each linked to a mental disorder - obsessive-compulsive disorder, psychosis, and Alzheimer's.
Each story has a different feel, all of them being centered on different episodes of the main character's - a writer called Will Self - life. The first features Self's usual cynical humor through his obsessions with scale and particularly with a childhood friend of limited height, the second is a wild and demential psychotic ride through Los Angeles, throwing everything along for the ride, from angry scientologists to a mad Hulk-like rampage through the streets of L.A.
But it's the final story that shines, and it was it that justified the fourth star on my rating. It is a beautifully touching tale of loss - of memory, of identity, of life -, that had me wanting to keep on reading and not leave the book until the very last page. Although the rest of the book was enjoyable, it was not the best I had read of Self - but the last 100 pages compensated for that and are truly Self at its best.
Each story has a different feel, all of them being centered on different episodes of the main character's - a writer called Will Self - life. The first features Self's usual cynical humor through his obsessions with scale and particularly with a childhood friend of limited height, the second is a wild and demential psychotic ride through Los Angeles, throwing everything along for the ride, from angry scientologists to a mad Hulk-like rampage through the streets of L.A.
But it's the final story that shines, and it was it that justified the fourth star on my rating. It is a beautifully touching tale of loss - of memory, of identity, of life -, that had me wanting to keep on reading and not leave the book until the very last page. Although the rest of the book was enjoyable, it was not the best I had read of Self - but the last 100 pages compensated for that and are truly Self at its best.
May 21, 2011
This is a pretty difficult book to read, which I suspect is part of its point, and part of its value. The OCD, psychotic, amnesiac narrators prevent the world from ever appearing flat and readily understood. They make even the most familiar geographical or cultural terrain insistently strange, new, and bewildering. The cultural lenses we see the world through--particularly Hollywood movie tropes--are represented here as collective psychosis. But the only escape to an unmediated now is through a different kind of loss of the mind.
The uplifting part is how brilliantly inventive the language of this novel is, as usual for Will Self. Who else would describe a showerhead as getting lachrymose.
The uplifting part is how brilliantly inventive the language of this novel is, as usual for Will Self. Who else would describe a showerhead as getting lachrymose.
April 2, 2012
I parted company with Mr Self and his fiction several years ago as I found the constant dictionary referral quite tiring on the arms.However I like his personal style and found his column in the Independent entertaining,but unfortunately the Psychogeography books are beyond my economic means at present,so I plumped for this.
As with some of the other reviewers I found the title section with its abundance of surrealist sidetracking hard going at times,though the other two stories flow a little easier and require less backtracking to find when there's been a scene change or what mode his mind is in.Overall though it was entertaining to sit in on what is at times a celebrity therapy session,although unless you have an IQ over 150 you'll be needing a good dictionary on hand.
As with some of the other reviewers I found the title section with its abundance of surrealist sidetracking hard going at times,though the other two stories flow a little easier and require less backtracking to find when there's been a scene change or what mode his mind is in.Overall though it was entertaining to sit in on what is at times a celebrity therapy session,although unless you have an IQ over 150 you'll be needing a good dictionary on hand.
November 2, 2011
I hated this book. It felt like I was reading it for an eternity. I skimmed through the last chapter. I read whole pages only to forget what was written a mere 30 seconds later. Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand what he's trying to say or trying to do. There were whole paragraphs where I had no idea what he was talking about. I admire authors and artists who try to do something challenging, different, personal. There were a few funny moments, but mostly I was just waiting for something to happen. I didn't like the characters, didn't loathe them, didn't feel ANYTHING for them. This book was definitely not for me.
July 10, 2013
I like Will Self. I like many of his novels, I like his cultural commentary on radio and television, I like his newspaper columns, and I like him as a person/personality; Self seems interesting in the right kind of way, or at least the way that appeals to me. What I did not like, however, was this book. It literally gave me a headache and made me feel sick. Perhaps that was the point. I found Walking to Hollywood infuriating, an uphill struggle from page 1. Though I don't dislike it for being difficult, nor even for being wilfully difficult (even in the most pompous Modernist guise of 'difficult literature') - I disliked it for being utterly, crushingly, dull and hollow.
August 2, 2011
It's a Will Self book, so you should have an idea of what to expect. A quirky tall fellow, called Will Self oddly enough, moves through life trying to find meaning maybe? The idea of fame?
Will's life is a tangled skein of obsessions (with art and little people), walking (from Pearson International to downtown Toronto) and ultimately of Hollywood, and a mystery ensues - who killed film?
It's a sideways look through a wonky glass. Only Self fans need read.
Will's life is a tangled skein of obsessions (with art and little people), walking (from Pearson International to downtown Toronto) and ultimately of Hollywood, and a mystery ensues - who killed film?
It's a sideways look through a wonky glass. Only Self fans need read.
June 17, 2012
Self's most recent novel plays, as others have noted, on some of the theme's from his "Psychogeography" journalism, which is fabulous in itself. Though uneven, and I haven't quite finished it yet (somehow, except for "The Butt" I get worn out by Self's novels, and I have to come back to them a few times, though the experience is exhilarating)Self does manage to mirror Rabelais and far supersede American John Irving, along with a few others, in mere pages.
January 9, 2013
Was prompted to read this by a brilliant lecture which Will Self gave to Google employees in 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVEgOi...
Didn't enjoy this book though. The use of a walking narrative to explore semi-autobiographical mental illness states could of worked but didn't. The main section about walking around Los Angeles was particularly disappointing. My friend Lisa did this much better on her website walklawithme website.
Didn't enjoy this book though. The use of a walking narrative to explore semi-autobiographical mental illness states could of worked but didn't. The main section about walking around Los Angeles was particularly disappointing. My friend Lisa did this much better on her website walklawithme website.
May 16, 2013
I supposed it takes a certain type of personality to enjoy this book. My coworker recommended it to me so obviously someone liked it! I just couldn't get into it. I forced myself to get half way and then I gave up.
The book was just all over the place, really hard to follow the thought process of the main character - storyline jumped around too much. I get that he has some mental issues so perhaps that's the point but I struggled to enjoy it.
The book was just all over the place, really hard to follow the thought process of the main character - storyline jumped around too much. I get that he has some mental issues so perhaps that's the point but I struggled to enjoy it.
June 8, 2011
Weird, but strangely compelling. Great writing, and often made me smile. Blurred photos, and fictional autobiography suggest a homage to W G Sebald? No story at all, just some linked themes. I was reading other, plot-driven books at the same time, which stopped me losing patience with this one. I wouldn't recommend it, but if it interests you, give it a try. It lingers...
June 24, 2011
I didn't finish this. Got halfway through the titular middle section and there just wasn't a compelling reason to pick it up again. Perhaps, like the first part it would have gotten more gripping for me at the back end, but I didn't care enough. An example of great sentences but lacking an oomph to grip me. Perhaps not in the right mood at the moment.
Read
July 30, 2011Psychotic author explores dementia and compulsion. or is it compulsive author explores psychosis and dementia or is it ... any way a lot of introspection for those into that sort of thing. With cover work by Steadman it is sort of Thompson meets Burroughs without being 1/2 as good as either of those guys.
September 6, 2011
Three stories of which the longest is awful (a satire on such an easy target as hollywood can't be so clumsily over the top even if the ottness is precisely what the author is attempting to skewer) while the others are more decent. Given that Self's psychogeography is usually his strong point this is a surprisingly weak collection.
October 5, 2014
Oh dear, I had to stop reading this it's so bad. An interesting concept in part-fictionalising his life, but much like Doctor Mukti and Other Tales of Woe it's all over the place, random scattergun ideas with hardly any story. If it wasn't for the Book of Dave I'd give up on Self, but I still think he has it in him somewhere.
December 19, 2014
I am sill reading it and not making much progress because of our short stort competition and outstanding manuscripts.
It's interesting like all books by Will Self but I had to abandoned it for now because of publishing duties.
Finally read it. I thought a bit hard work
It's interesting like all books by Will Self but I had to abandoned it for now because of publishing duties.
Finally read it. I thought a bit hard work
August 10, 2011
willfully perverse? using bespoke 8 times in one novel.
Believe it or not this gonzo novel actually has a creeper effect and is in it's subtle way, a whole novel about what is really important in life and how one can recognize that importance, even while losing your mind.
to be cont
Believe it or not this gonzo novel actually has a creeper effect and is in it's subtle way, a whole novel about what is really important in life and how one can recognize that importance, even while losing your mind.
to be cont
September 5, 2013
By far my favourite of Will Self's books that I've read. But, like most of his work, quite difficult to review. Clever but not incomprehensible, the way he builds on memoir may be why the central character is easier to hold onto than in some of his other work. Brilliant.
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