I have enjoyed Wil Self's writings on these pages before, but this particular piece, I must say, is unfortunately self-indulgent beyond words, even though I hate to agree with those naysayers who have an aversion towards so-called 'big' words. It is ironic that Will Self counts Franz Kafka as one of his literary heros, for it was Franz Kafka who said, in critiquing Charles Dickens:
" Dickens's opulence and great, careless prodigality, but in consequence passages of awful insipidity in which he wearily works over effects he has already acheived... There is a heartlessness behind his sentimentally overflowing style... his use of vague, abstract metaphors." (Kafka cited in Gabriel Josiponvici's -- yep, the same Josiponvici of whom Self waxed lyrical about in his article above -- introduction to Franz Kafka's "Collected Stories", Everyman's Library, p. xv, my emphasis.)
Although Dickens' and Self's verbosity are of very different kinds, I think Kafka's trenchant critique against heartless overfloridity can be equally stinging where Self's writing in the above piece is concerned. Many commenters have already pointed out passages of "awful insipidity" and heartless, overwrought style in Self's writing above, so I won't belabour them here. I just want to say that it is a bit unfair to portray those critical of Self's style above as brainless philistines who can't be bothered learning big words. I myself love reading philosophical tracts by Continental philosophers in my spare time (yes, really); that doesn't mean that I am not allergic to overly florid writing that wants to wear the stamp of cleverness so earnestly on its sleeve. I can stomach, nay, actually admire, playful cleverness; but Self is just too woodenly displaying his learning (evidenced by the number of thesaurus words conspicuously showcased) in the above article for me to enjoy this piece. Sorry Will.
I also must agree with quite a few commenters here and say that Will Self has got his idea of modernism arse-backwards. What he's straining for is actually not modernism, but post-modernism. What he perceives as his "modernist" critique of pre-modernist writing (or Romantic writing) is actually postmodernist critique of modernist writing (linearity of structure; idea of straightforward progress; technical mastery -- all these are stylistic markers not just of modernist architecture but also of modernist literature, fuelled by a postwar optimism that in retrospect could look trite and naive and non-human.)
So unfortunately Self's bellyaching about not being able to find a 'modernist' way forward is precisely because he's misunderstanding about the task that lays before him. Sure, he made a side note about postmodernist writing not being up to the job by merely "copy-and-pasting" narratives. But that's doing postmodernism a disservice, since bricolage and pastiche are not the only tools at the postmodernist's disposal.
The things that Self admits to hankering after -- chief amongst which being the insertion of authorial will inside the story as a way to destablise and democratise text -- is something that another British novelist, the unabashedly postmodernist Mr. Gilbert Adair, does extremely well. Unfortunately, Will Self gave no indication that he's ever read the late Mr. Adair's work. And this omission seems especially jarring when Self goes on and on about how much he is hoping to find a way out of the modernist morasse to which English fiction has descended. And especially when he wrote about how JG Ballard found a way out via science fiction; he seems to have not realised that another British novelist has also found a way forward via pastiching genre fiction (in Adair's case, it's detective fiction), where Adair entertainingly inverts the well-worn tropes of detective novels to create wonderful spaces not visible in conventional narrative arcs and characterisation.
So whilst I applaud Will Self for nailing the malaise of English novels on its head by arguing that the avant-garde is not about saying the 'unsayable' by merely injecting the taboo into the conventional a la Martin Amis and Irvine Welsh; that it is actually about writing the 'unwritable' by boldly experimenting with form and confounding readers' narratival expectations; Self is entirely mistaken by casting himself as the Lone Mariner in the above article struggling against the tide where none had gone before him. Not only has the late Gilbert Adair already shown us the way through the murky waters of English fiction by his rhetorical brilliance; other contemporary writers are also figuring out ways to move the English novel forward (cf. Jennifer Egan, David Mitchell). Although Egan and Mitchell may well be described as 'bantamweight' writers (to borrow another commenter's useful metaphor), and Adair's novels are sadly neglected by the mainstream (not unexpected given that he was one of the very first to have bravely swam against the conventional tide), it is completely disingenuous (and self-indulgent) of Self to portray himself as a lone voice in the wilderness and forget to pay his debt to others already shining the beacon before him.Rather than being the first truly 'modernist' (or 'postmodern') English novel as Self is so painstakingly portraying his latest work as, 'Umbrella' will have to compare itself with the benchmark set by the late Adair.
