{BOOKS} Will Self SELF-INVOLVEMENT
R E U A B Y R R E J :
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Will Self takes part in three events this August, including the world premiere public reading of Alasdair Gray’s take on the Faust myth. Here, Self discusses the Glasgow legend
L A V I T S E F
I ’ve known Alasdair Gray for a long time now, nearly 20 years. We had the same publisher in England and he came to one of my events in Glasgow, probably in about 1982 or ‘83. We did some other events together around that time and struck up a friendship. I see him most times when I go to Glasgow, and I spend a fair bit of time in Scotland because my wife is a Scot.
Alasdair just asked me to join him in the performance of Fleck. The piece is a retelling of the Faust story and Alasdair seems keen that the Faust figure should be a middle-class Englishman rather than a working-class Scot. That’s OK. I’m honoured. I think I have the lead. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve done a lot of public events and readings over the years and when I started out I used to do stand-up and still do a bit every now and then. I’ve done two or three of my own books as talking books, so it’s not anything that particularly intimidates me. I think it’ll be a laugh. It’s an odd piece, but then everything Alasdair does is pretty odd. It’s got all those elements you’d expect from him, including quite a bit of erotic interest, girls in various states of undress, a series of cheerfully embraced stereotypings and high-flown metaphysics. It’s simultaneously deeply heartfelt and quite sophisticated and kind
22 THE LIST 25 Aug–22 Sep 2011
of blindingly naive. To say that that’s his charm would be slightly damning with faint praise, but I mean charm on a stratospheric level. Alasdair is somebody who sees the fabulist quality in everyday life. You only have to go to Lanark to discover that he’s someone who sees the magical within the ordinary. He’s a passionate and unaffected Scots nationalist, a passionate and unaffected socialist. And he’s not a utopian – he’s believes everything is on earth right now. It just needs to be accessed in the right way. All of those things are wholly admirable.
He’s a naïve rather sentimental artist – it comes straight from the heart. He was formed in a crucible-like way, like Lanark itself which was a construction of Scots self-esteem under Thatcher in the early 1980s. That was the defining political era of his life, not that he wasn’t an artist and writer before that. Alasdair’s one of the handful of really important Scots writers in English of the post-war period. (As told to Miles Fielder)
Will Self, 28 Aug, 3.30pm (on WG Sebald), 8pm (the Folio Society Event), £10 (£8); Alasdair Gray’s Fleck, 29 Aug, 8pm, £15 (£12).
Moon talking
Ben Mezrich tells Doug Johnstone why young people can’t stop telling him about their daring schemes
Ben Mezrich is not finding it hard to find subject matter for future books. The American author started as a novelist but is better known for writing a string of bestselling non-fiction books including The Accidental Billionaires about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a tome that became the Oscar-winning film The Social Network. That success has changed his life.
‘I’ve become the go-to guy for these kinds of stories,’ he laughs. ‘Every college kid who pulls off a scheme comes to me; ever since The Social Network, there’s been a steady stream of people emailing me their stories.’ Mezrich’s most recent book is Sex on the Moon, about NASA trainee Thad Roberts and his extraordinary (and successful) plan to steal moon rocks from his employer’s headquarters to impress his girlfriend. Roberts was only caught when he tried to sell the rocks and subsequently spent seven years in prison.
‘I was terrified to meet him initially, I
mean he’d been in prison for a long time,’ says Mezrich. ‘But he was extremely charismatic. He was really sweet and nice but he was also a little off, you know, a bit scary. I spent hundreds of hours with him in the end.’ As well as the interviews, Mezrich scoured thousands of pages of FBI files and court reports, giving the book a real authenticity. But the author is also not afraid to use his fiction experience to spice up the story. ‘I kind of stumbled into non-fiction, but since I did it’s always been the goal to write non-fiction like a thriller or a movie.’
Maybe that’s why his non-fiction books have been optioned by major Hollywood producers, including Sex on the Moon, which has the same production team as The Social Network. Seems those stories about scheming college kids won’t be stopping anytime soon. ■ Ben Mezrich, 26 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8).