Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
“For intelligence and ambition . . . inventive comedy, heartbreak and levity . . . Will Self belongs in the company of Nabokov, Pynchon, William Gaddis and Don DeLillo.” —The New York Times Book Review
Will Self has established himself as one of the most brilliant, daring, and inventive writers of his generation. My Idea of Fun is Will Self’s highly acclaimed first novel. The story of a devilishly clever international financier/marketing wizard and his young apprentice, My Idea of Fun is both a frighteningly dark subterranean exploration of capitalism run rampant and a wickedly sharp, technically acute display of linguistic pyrotechnics that glows with pure white-hot brilliance. Ian Wharton is a very ordinary young man until he is taken under the wing of a gentleman known variously as Mr. Broadhurst, Samuel Northcliff, and finally and simply the Fat Controller.
Loudmouthed, impeccably tailored, and a fount of bombastic erudition, the Fat Controller initiates Ian into the dark secrets of his arts -- of marketing, money, and the human psyche -- and takes Ian, and the reader, on a wild voyage around the edges of reality. As we careen into the twenty-first century, Self perfectly captures the zeitgeist of our times: money is the only common language; consumerism, violence, and psychosis (drug-induced and otherwise) prevail; and the human soul has become the ultimate product.
“For intelligence and ambition . . . inventive comedy, heartbreak and levity . . . Will Self belongs in the company of Nabokov, Pynchon, William Gaddis and Don DeLillo.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Will Self is a very cruel writer—thrillingly heartless, terrifyingly brainy.” —Martin Amis
“Self has already caused more of an electric ripple among readers than any British writer of his half-generation.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Great stuff, full of Updikean just-so observation with a nasty humorous twist”the kind of lines you’ll laugh out loud at, then be too embarrassed to share with anyone else.” —Seattle Weekly
“Self’s prose is wild and primeval”an invigorating blast of energy”pungent and idiosyncratic description”. Its effect is haunting and inspiring. It makes you feel good about the possibilities of language.” —Newsday
“Self proves himself a master chef, cooking up old-fashioned wordplay and new-fangled syntactical fricassees’a gluttonous feast of masterfully crafted guffaws and chortles.” —Philadelphia Inquirer
“Repellent, ingenious, resolutely grotesque. Self is even funny, if you like sick jokes and nervous laughter.” —Mirabella
“Impressively deranged”a novel that makes you want to laugh and vomit at the same time”. A parable for a decade when what trickled down was not money but scorn for those without it.” —Esquire
“Self has probably won more praise—and praise of a more uninhibited kind—than any other new writer to have emerged in the last decade.” —Vanity Fair
“Blackly comic, comically erudite and perversely bloody.” —Boston Globe
“Dazzling”. An unforgettably ghoulish tour of the modern soul”. Self leaves little doubt that we are in the presence of a gifted and courageous mind.” —Miami Herald
Will Self is the author of many novels and books of nonfiction, including Great Apes; How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year; The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Shark; Phone; the memoir Will; and the essay collection Why Read. He lives in South London.