Will Self | The Last Trump: Fiction in the Age of Uncertainty Title (2017)

Will Self gives a lecture entitled ‘The Last Trump: Fiction in the Age of Uncertainty’ at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. The lecture was hosted by the University College Dublin Clinton Institute for American Studies.
Will Self is an English journalist, novelist, political commentator and satirist, and television personality.
His fiction is highly political and satirical, as well as being dystopian and grotesque and draws upon subject matter such as drug abuse and mental illness.
Prominent as an outspoken public intellectual, Self is also a regular contributor to The Guardian, The New York Times and the New Statesman and has also been a columnist for The Observer, The Times and the Evening Standard.
His 2012 novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker fiction prize.
In 2012, he was appointed professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University.
The Royal Irish Academy is an all-Ireland academic body that promotes study and distinction in sciences, humanities and social sciences. It was founded in 1785.
UCD Twitter: / ucddublin
UCD Facebook: / universitycollegedublin
UCD Instagram: / ucddublin
UCD Homepage: www.ucd.ie

[@loumariebel]

What a lucid , lively and extremely funny man Self is. I found myself laughing out loud in the solitude of my chamber. Thanks !

[@shanelevene4864]

Seriously? That makes me terribly sad.

[@davis7099]

Have been told by an academic friend that Self simply makes his lectures up as he goes on stage. He strings words together that fit his lecture title template. He "mugs" his audience with a fog of long words. Its a kind of showmanship.

[@Johnconno]

I believe it's known as bullshit, or winging it ?

[@teddyvision7563]

jaye see how is it bullshit he’s just pointing out literature’s influence has reduced and people read less, it’s a simple point

[@Johnconno]

@@teddyvision7563 Sorry.

[@mainstreet3023]

Before I read something from now on it must pass ‘The Will Self Test’.

[@anothersucker-Youcantfixstupid]

Will Self by far the most interesting man on KZbin. But you wouldn't want to stand next to him in a bus shelter.

[@tomgeorgearts]

I feel exactly the same about courses in popular music. I live near to the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts where rich kids from around the world come get taught how to write songs, how to move on stage etc. They come out as safe, polished twerps with nothing to say. All the best artists teach themselves, very few can explain what they do or would want to so. Unfortunately for Will Self and those who agree with him, this is the way the world is going.

[@ZnenTitan]

It's like an article I read years ago about how going to art school will never make you into another Edward Hopper. You can't teach creativity of innovation, it just can't be done.

[@avantgardenovelist]

This will go down as one of the key historical texts of the dawning of the Networking Age.

[@jalijali8448]

Sorry I missed him, thanks for posting!

[@anthonyperry7296]

i want to take Will home and gently inform him that he's lost the plot, and drifted back to his formative years when he was in love with his voice, and the only one laughing at his jokes. Perhaps a mere hug would help more than words.

[@Aprilforevergreen]

I very much enjoyed that talk.

[@modernborefare1684]

I actually clicked on this video hoping to hate everything he said, ready to write a comment about this 'self absorbed obnoxious prick'. Then I started listening, and agreed with a lot of what he talked about. Damn it!

Life can be so cruel.

[@operaforlife6551]

I'm finding with his lectures that the two aren't mutually exclusive :p

[@carlmurphy2416]

Everyone has a novel inside them...and in most cases that's where it should stay!

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

These novel readers are geniuses! I have enjoyed reading the Mr Men books by Roger Hargreaves.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

I have read 'The Time Machine' ( 1905 ) and most of 'The War of the Worlds' ( 1897 ) by HG Wells ( 1866 - 1946 ). I have read an abridged children's version of 'Black Beauty' ( 1877 ) by Anna Sewell ( 1820 - 1878 ).

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

I have read 'Exploring The Earth and Moon' ( 1980 ) by Patrick Moore ( 1923 - 2012 ). I found it demanding even though it is aimed at a juvenile audience. It has lovely juicy colour pictures in it.

[@sprobablycancr4457]

For me, Mr rush is the quintessential Hargreaves.

[@quagapp]

I'm of two minds re this. It was well spoken and some good points made. I suspect he is not as 'radical' a writer as he thinks he is. But I haven't any more than part of one novel which I find interesting indeed so far ('How the Dead Live") and a book of essays, some of which were very good. I think he definitely has a point about Rushdie's book. I am of an older generation than Self so I excuse myself for not reading Rowling. I am not so sure of his critique of creative writing courses, and the idea of writing about the novel one writes is interesting. Kenneth Goldsmith who writes 'uncreative writing' loves the internet (although I also can understand Self's move back to a typewriter to work as I copy a lot of things by hand from books, knowing that I could have bought myself a tablet of similar. I agree and disagree on certain points. He is certainly passionate. A kind of latter day W H Auden perhaps. Interesting his exchange of emails. Certainly and interesting chap! (No, I am not English except by parentage, I am from NZ.)

[@mainstreet3023]

Didn’t pass The Will Self Test.

[@patrickmccormack4318]

Neil Postman sent me here. "This is wonderful, by the way. Sitting here on television and you're thumbing through a book. Is there anyone watching at this point?" -- Neil Postman :)

[@alannolan3514]

Diss dah! Brilliant.

[@TurboGoth]

I agree. Speaking your mind off the cuff is the whole point. Reading prepared crap would just be a service to the blind or the illiterate. And Andy Kaufman already did that joke using The Great Gatsby.

[@myleswalsh6854]

The internet has destroyed my ability to read - which was my only refuge.

[@CatCasual]

Thank you for posting. If you disabled the comments I would feel better about culture. In a very lazy way.

[@wgaule]

You're comment seems somewhat disabled.

@Dennis Nelson The First Amendment of the Constitution Act 1939 amended the Constitution to extend the constitutional definition of "time of war" to include a period during which a war occurs without the state itself being a direct participant. It was introduced and signed into law on 2 September 1939, the day after the Invasion of Poland by Germany and allowed the government to exercise emergency powers during World War II although the state was neutral. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland

[@markrowe5992]

Good talk

[@sattarabus]

I admire Will Self, writer, flâneur, psychographer, and outstanding protégé of JG Ballard. In this lecture he has very casually tried to punch above his weight. I sympathize with Prof Kennedy who invited him to give this desultory discourse on latter-day fiction as 'terminal moraine'. Will deprecates Jo Rowling for her 'execrable prose'. He rubbishes Rushdie's controversial novel without any cogent reasons. Literature is no longer the cynosure around which branches of contemporary arts and culture revolve. He gleefully deplores 'literature and scholarship' copulating at the end of time'. What did he lack ? Preparation ? Or half a bottle of whisky to compensate for the ubiquitous desiderata? Incidentally, 'cynosure' and 'desideratum' are two of his favourite words.

[@bernardliu8526]

Do you mean unattainable desiderata ?

Great to read the opinion of a fan of J.K. Rowlings work who also likes the Satanic Verses. Wait no not great tedious, yes tedious.

[@MarsBorg]

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988) is a book by Neil Sheehan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bright_Shining_Lie

[@mc2594]

Isn't there a disconnect from the paper form to the event though? people can write connected to an event and become part of the event without a space inbetween the two. I don't want to read my own connection to an event I want to interact with it and prefer others to do so, reading and writing reaction are focused in time and space because there is no disconnect unless you create one or are disconnected. This may require the event to BE a Morris Traveller but if the driver is headed towards an on coming red light then no amount of page searching, proofing and editing is going to help me not do the same is it? Books and novels would be a break from that, where a disconnect is what's desirable, in themselves they are the desert island.

[@kurisensei]

Given the title, I’d have hoped for more on Trump himself, or notions of truth perhaps. Some funny and interesting remarks, and I think he’s right about The Satanic Verses

[@liam314]

Look at all the creative writing students in the comments!😜😂

[@allosaurusfragilis7782]

liam314 .....their fingertips, their digits, stabbing out digital thoughts, across the network , as nuerons carry impulses through the network in our brains......

[@MannyJazzcats]

just noticed the audiances faces reflected in the lectern

[@JAMAICADOCK]

Roth like all great writers, is a prophet. The media narrative of Watergate is way more interesting than the books or movies produced about Watergate. Nixon's demise played out like a Shakespearean tragi/ comedy live on television. Thus the media itself is writing its own narratives, rendering art as a tautology. Art now seems relegated to some auxiliary role, a play within a play as it were, or rather a narrative within a narrative. I suppose it all started with that first mass media Greek tragedy - the JFK assassination. I mean how can any fictional characters really compete with Oswald, Ruby, Jackie Kennedy,. Walter Cronkite choking back the tears. Totally enthralling. Which explains all the endless conspiracy theories, given it doesn't feel real; it must have a hidden hand. There must be a great master behind the scenes writing the script. At one time, only after a period of reflection would an event be mythologized in literature, painting, music - sometimes centuries after the event, but the mass media instantly mythologizes an event in real time, the narrative spontaneously generated. I suppose one could argue media narratives are duplicitous, unreliable and like all graven images - a sin, but of course that just reinforces the media's fictive power - its endless self organizing ability to pump out narratives. Thus no artist can offer a better insight into the JFK assassination than the media narrative we've all watched unfold over the last 50 odd years. Not Mailer, not DeLillo, not Oliver Stone And the same applies to 911, the Fall of Qaddafi, the rise of Trump - and other such Wagnerian assaults on the visual cortex. In fact turn down the volume and play Wagner over the images, and see how they synthesize beautifully. Before the advent of mass media, fiction often surpassed reality in its representation - or at least held its own. Shakespeare was the equal of Elizabeth I; Dickens was the equal of Victorian industry; the War Poets the equal of WW1. a neat, juxtaposition between the real and the imaginary, But now that juxtaposition is over - the media has stolen art's reflected glory, For all extents and purposes it has become an art-form in of itself; or rather it merges the fictive and the real in a seamless modulation. if Faction took fact and put it to the service of fiction, the mass media does the opposite - it takes fictive means and puts them to the service of fact.

[@deadsparrow28]

Will Self is, without a doubt, one of the most self-satisfied and toadlike members of the British chattering class.

Your bovine fear is tedious.

[@Hutch41]

liveshitehawk28 is without a doubt one of the the most brain dead and yellow bellied members of the British self-abusing class. Note … that 28 is both his IQ and his chest measurement.

[@mainstreet3023]

Toad of Toad Hall or The Celebrated Jumping Frog?

[@iankelly5797]

A lot of negative shite from fecal luddites. For the last three nights I have listened to your lectures and laughed out loud at the hypocrisy of some of your recollections (in a good way). Keep up the good work.

[@colinr0380]

I wonder if this is just a result of the 'circle of intellectualism' widening, in the sense that probably the same literary circles *are* getting the same education in the same proscribed selection of shared novels, but now so many people that have not had that legacy of a 'classical education' have access to the tools of production and broadcasting. They can transmit their own knowledge and perspective on the world between each other without having to wait for a proscribed elite to provide them with a few works classed as suitable for their circle (from 'popular literature' to soap operas) and can both move into the literature that was previously walled off to them as well as having the ability to ignore all senses of a cultural history or weight of legacy at all and instead create their own world for themselves. That might be terrifying to those with a classical education, but its not such a bad thing. It is just different (and more inclusive) with a new series of positives and negative aspects to it. And I'm sure that in the end even such an incomprehensibly broad set of work and people reading it will themselves split off into their own exclusionary circles, unfortunately, before the cycle begins anew...

[@geoffreynhill2833]

"Everyone's in showbiz, everybody a Superstar," Will! (Ray Davies, Kink) 😉

[@geoffreynhill2833]

try my green fire tommy & ruthie's blues amazon 🌈🦉

[@spyke1of24]

Makes a fabulous point at around 33mins.

[@anthonyperry7296]

Well, he did find one person who agreed.

[@domdom9496]

3:22 farinaceous adjective consisting of or containing starch. "farinaceous foods"

[@jamwri6718]

Just got this,dono why,up with Stephen Fry on grasping your full attention.

[@ghostfires]

In response to comments below: Will kicked all drugs years ago, except for tobacco (see his novel The Butt for a hilarious account of trying to quit).

[@destroydate7887]

Does any one hear echos of Ambrose Bierce, Jonathan Swift or Voltaire in Will Self's delivery of important issues in the modern age?

[@frogsnsnails9046]

Destroy Date Not familiar with A. Bierce. From my memory of Swift, yes and to his credit

[@pocketsand6776]

google the word "panglossian" and one is greeted with a picture of trump at a rally - how apt

[@seanlennon5986]

All the real intellects BTL it seems.

[@aristorein3051]

A great mind like Will Self's will always be criticized upon by those with a low intellect such as the negative commenters below. Do yourself a favour and read a book of his. It'll make you think - an act which I'm sure has been foreign to you up until this moment in your life.

[@davis7099]

Great mind he isn't. He is a wordy journalist. Self is the court jester of the famed British London chattering classes. I have been told by an Academic who has met Self that he makes it up as he goes on, rather like a stand up comedian. A mess of words comes out prompted by the lecture title templates on his cue cards. It shows here.

[@MsPriscilaXavier]

@@davis7099. Stand up comedian's absolutely prepare their material....

[@kc2823]

@@davis7099 'he makes it up as he goes on' you mean he talks off the cuff. It's hardly the same as 'making it up'. Did you even listen to him EXPLAINING WHY he doesn't prepare notes? do you realise that it takes intelligence to do that? 'I have been told by an academic' not a terribly persuasive statement, is it? are you able to think for yourself? 'the famed British London chattering classes' famed? is there such a thing in London? nope. it's just a meaningless statement you MADE UP! cut along now.

[@colinr0380]

@49:30 Imagine being the parent of a child and having to read Fifty Shades of Grey to them!

[@kevinfalls662]

Someone should rescue the people stuck in the lectern.

[@mbcahill6707]

I have to disagree with Will about the importance of "thinking in words". When I write fiction I think mainly in images, scenes and scenarios, and then attempt to describe them in words on the page. It's called 'imagination'. Who the hell imagines things in words? Although, I agree with will generally on his pint about the coming obsolescence of the novel form and the 'codex', and the Gutenberg mindset.

[@quagapp]

I understand the critique and the support below. He is rather too much at times. But interesting. Not sure. A tendency to ramble and to use a lot of long words....

[@laserprawn]

This is why Socrates thought writing was destructive to thought. Oh wait, that was the other baseless, presumptive view of the recording of knowledge. Specious. P.S. Thanks to the first law of thermodynamics, the data that corresponds to your written word on a computer and resides on a hard drive necessarily occupies both space and time (since not only is time a dimension of space, but since data is serialized). The only way for a document on a computer not to occupy space or time would be for it to not have been written or stored on a computer.

[@alexanderthelame8462]

I love Will Self and want his brain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Or do i?!

[@avantgardenovelist]

On a purely rhetorical level, I'm getting Hitchens vibes. This guy is that good an extemporaneous speaker.

[@frogsnsnails9046]

Think Satanic V. wasn't allowed to be a great book. Bty never read it but forever great full to S. Rushdie for the reaction it provoked.

[@josephmarknatuzzi6356]

The Promethean Thunder Boy...

[@Johnconno]

The lectern is there at the request of Mr Self, as he imagines himself to be the priest in Kafka's The Trial. Beckett is watching in silence.

[@markwalker4297]

Brilliant speaker. Just a pity he cant find happiness.

[@9000ck]

I'm pretty sure genuinely brilliant people are doomed to long stretches of unhappiness punctuated with short periods of epiphany.

[@happinesstan]

Happy people don't seek happiness.

[@vernonhiggins5923]

..

[@adrianfeeger]

I think I have fallen in love with this man.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

I imagine Will Self is a big reader. I don't know how anyone can read and enjoy 300 page or more novels. I think these people are geniuses!

[@wenter1543]

A

[@zetetick395]

I cannot help but wonder if the skin under Trumps "Hair" is that same _bizarro orange_ colour as the rest of his (so called) "Face" ?

[@Auriflamme]

One doesn't need to caricature Trump, and furthermore a straw-man of him would be most likely less interesting than the man himself.

[@kathydasilva1]

I guess the 'aliens' have landed..after all.. it is kind of amazing about the fast development of technology in just one century that being 20th century.. it feels like everything before is almost........primitive..in comparison.. :) ..farinaceous ..had they all trotted round from Starbucks..? They had eaten their muffins for sure...the audience sounds really quiet..

[@aklcraigc]

His breadth of knowledge seems to exist at the determent of any depth or insight. At many junctures he seems to be leading up to an insight or point and then smoothly digresses into slagging something, or if desperate, baiting the audience. Smoke and mirrors. He gets into a real tangle over JK Rowling, realizing he's about to denigrate a fellow traveler.

[@andrewmartin6445]

And that dreadful, forced braying laugh....

[@hgfdshtrew8541]

what the hell do he and JK rowling have in common? nothing, yes he definitely wimped out on that.

[@thierryf2789]

What a Pygmy compared with Roth, sorry, what a pygmy without a capital p.

[@sprobablycancr4457]

Wii "..an unholy miscegenation, a deathly stridulation of the corpses of scholarship and literature copulating at the end of time." Self.

[@teddyvision7563]

ΨψΨψΨ apparently miscegenation means race mixing ? Pretty strange

[@sprobablycancr4457]

Well, that's what he said. Unless I misheard?

[@Spectrescup]

@@teddyvision7563 seems entirely appropriate then. I have to say though, Will does have his favourite sesquidedalian words, and will squeeze them in no matter how procrustean the result. (Did you see what I did there?)

[@laserprawn]

Also, my god, imagine how vulgar Perrec's "An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris" is, since he had the gall to write about what was happening around him as he sat. Or - jesus christ - what must he think of landscape painters? Just fucking idiots working wrong; only Picasso was doing it right, since we can't detect his reference to the world.

[@mortalityreigns9995]

The most cutting-edge political fiction is now coming from the self-published independent authors online, not from establishment publishing houses. Both the worst fiction and the best fiction is found among the independents. It produces the worst because there’s no quality control, but is also produces the best because self-published authors aren’t constrained by establishment rules. These days it’s the independent authors who produce the ground-breaking fiction. Try reading JP Tate’s dystopian novel *The Identity Wars: Utopia is Dystopia* jptate.jimdo.com/modern-fiction or his *The Macabre Dance: a Contemporary Woman Meets a Contemporary Man".* These are *red pill* novels. You’ll either love them or hate them, and that’s how people react to cutting-edge political fiction.

[@Austria88586]

Self absorbed

[@bernardliu8526]

100 times more cultured. Typo.

[@ai-man212]

Pompous fun.

[@mbcahill6707]

Sorry. Switched off when Will began defending the fatwa and implying that Salman had brought the wrath of rabidly unhinged Islamism on himself. smh

[@quagapp]

But J K Rolling was short of a few bob, I mean she was out of work etc.

[@AudioPervert1]

Alas he is wrong. The worse is yet to come. Retching Donald Duck is just the beginning, of the end.

[@rupertdreyfus6018]

I'll jump on the self-promo bandwagon. I have been putting out transgressive black comedies with a socio-political slant since 2014 and have had some decent success. And I'm independent. "Dreyfus writes with the darkly absurd humour of a thirsty and somewhat paranoid Jonathan Swift." --PopMatters www.rupertdreyfus.co.uk/news.html Go!

[@ahartify]

All a bit low intellect stuff - a journalist raving.

[@hectormcgee2241]

Just as a point of information given how much he credits himself with being a Desert Island Discs aficionado: JK Rowling did not select the Jam's "Eton Rifles"! Notably, given Self's other comments, that hypocritical honour goes to the swine swiving David Cameron. Self is an intellectual halfwit and an establishment figure who pretends to be an outsider. Perhaps he confuses being anti-bourgeois in aesthetic (i.e. avant garde) and political terms. Of course the ranks of journalism swell with pseuds and Self is not bad in that context, but he is far too cocksure (nominative determinism!), pretentious and, like everyone these days, prone to thinking his halo effect legitimates him to hold court on any topic. His books are not very good, and one suspects that his elevation of the modernist functions as a kind of fetishist disavowal for his own vapid exercises in fiction. We get the intellectuals we deserve, it seems... In this regard, there is another video of Self in dialogue with Zizek that is well worth checking out, insofar as Self manages to reveal the utter intellectual bankruptcy of Zizek to anyone who hadn't already cottoned on to that...

[@petertschann-grimm1468]

Is he stoned?

[@adrianfeeger]

I don't think it's pot... pretty sure he would be a functioning drug addict.

[@vallikalli]

he's a former heroin junkie

[@carlkamuti]

I think he's riding the crest of a speedball wave...

[@juliusseesaw5450]

Exposed as an intellectual weakling on question time ( and childish with it ) - bye

[@bebeezra]

8 min in and nothing of substance said. Yes, yes we get it. Trump is, "ghastly orange...". Recycling overused memes for low hanging laughs are we? Zzzzzz...

[@fashklash]

Hopelessly middlebrow

You really are a clueless fuckwit.

[@bernardliu8526]

This man is as narcissistic as Trump, albeit 100 hundred more cultured.

[@jackthelad-ou6zu]

one miserable twat