Description

From the Bookershortlisted author of Umbrella a worldgirdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literatureFrom one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today Will Selfs Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literatureSelf takes us with him from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl to the Australian outback and to literary forms past and future With his characteristic intellectual brio Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf Kafka Orwell and Conrad He writes movingly on W G Sebalds childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S Burroughss Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers how what and ultimately why we should read in an everchanging world Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online Selfs trademark intoxicating prose and mordant energetic humor infuse every pieceA book that examines how the human stream of consciousness flows into and out of literature Why Read will satisfy both old and new readers of this icon of contemporary literature