Psycho Too - Hardcover

Will Self

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408802287 ISBN 13: 9781408802281

Publisher: bloomsbury usa (december 22, 2009), 2009

Synopsis

Will Self and Ralph Steadman join forces once again in a further post-millennial meditation on the vexed relationship of psyche and place in a globalised world; Psycho Too brings together a second helping of their very best words and pictures from 'Psychogeography', the columns they contributed to the Independent for half a decade.The introduction, 'Journey Through Britain' is a new extended essay by Self, accompanied by Steadman's inimitable images. It tells of how Self journeyed to Dubai, that Götterdammerung of the contemporary built environment, in order to walk the length of the artificial Britain-shaped island, in the offshore luxury housing development known as 'The World'.Ranging from Istanbul to Los Angeles and from the crumbling coastline of East Yorkshire to the adamantine heads of Easter Island, Will Self's engaging and disturbing vision is once again perfectly counter-pointed by Ralph Steadman's edgy and dazzling artwork.

About this title

About the Author

Will Self is the author of The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Grey Area, Cock & Bull, My Idea of Fun, Junk Mail, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis, Great Apes, Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys, Dorian, How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year 2002, The Book of Dave, Psychogeography and The Butt. He lives in South London. Ralph Steadman is the author of many illustrated books, including Sigmund Freud, I Leonardo, The Big I Am and The Scar-Strangled Banner. He is also the author of the novel Doodaaa and the memoir The Joke's Over: Memories of Hunter S. Thompson, and the illustrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Alice, Animal Farm, The Devil's Dictionary and Psychogeography. He lives in Kent.

From Publishers Weekly

The travel essays and fantasias in this raucous sequel to Psychogeography register the psychic impact of place while mapping out the author's idiosyncratic mental terrain. Novelist Self views his surroundings through the lens of his gripes, alternately dire and whimsical, with modernity, embodied by the “vertical desert†of Dubai's soulless skyscrapers. He's not overly fond of antiquity, either: during a visit to Jerusalem, the Wailing Wall and the Via Dolorosa strike him, respectively, as “a large pile of breeze blocks and a rather smelly alley.†(Sometimes his surroundings fight back, as when he's attacked by seagulls in Scotland.) His ramblings sometimes wander into fictional riffs, like an imaginary trip to Bill Gates's house to discuss space-time and an account of “The Great Vomit Wave of '08,†during which the world's insupportable debt is physically regurgitated. Self's scabrous, amphetamine prose revels in odd details and twisted associations; for him, every map is a Rorschach blot that brings national sexual perversions leaping to mind. (Steadman's evocative illustrations, which look as if Jackson Pollock had dripped on cartoons by Picasso, provide an appropriately demented visual commentary.) Self is far from a reliable tour guide, but his eye for seldom-trod byways and offbeat insights make him a diverting travel companion. (Jan.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: bloomsbury usa (december 22, 2009)
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408802287
• ISBN 13: 9781408802281
• Binding: Hardcover