Sam Leith
Divine Knowledge
Ever since his brilliant debut collection, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Will Self has occupied a peculiar and somewhat frustrating position. A fantastically inventive writer of short stories, he has never, quite, pulled off a novel. With the exception of My Idea of Fun – strange, twisted, and extraordinarily funny, but not really a novel, though God knows what it was – his full-length outings look more like short stories stretched to breaking point. They might have been entertaining to read, but all were propelled by the same short-haul motive force that distinguished his stories: a good pub conversation; a funny joke; a neat conceit.
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'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress
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Hilary Mantel reviewing Margaret Atwood: a #BookerPrize double-header from the archive.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-realist-with-wings
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