Walking to Hollywood
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- USD 13.99
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- USD 13.99
Descripción editorial
Walking to Hollywood is a dazzling triptych - obsessive, satirical, elegiac - in which Will Self burrows down through the intersections of time, place and psyche to explore some of our deepest fears and anxieties with characteristic fearlessness and jagged humour.
'Very Little' is ostensibly the account of a curative journey to Canada and the USA, but in fact the record of a nematode's progress, as the worm of obsession - with scale and packing and the 'stuff' of our lives - bores through a mind in extremesis.
'Walking to Hollywood' is an extreme satire on celebrity, in which the narrator believes that everyone he meets is played by a famous actor, and that only he can solve the mystery of who murdered the movies.
'Spurn Head' leads Self to a tormented sojourn with a madman whose house is sliding over the edge of a cliff, to a game of checkers with Death, and finally to an encounter with one of Swift's immortal Struldbruggs and a march through a tear in time itself.
In Walking to Hollywood Will Self pushes memoir to the limits of invention.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in England and Hollywood, Self's latest (after The Butt) is a rollicking and clever ramble through contemporary culture filtered through a twisted imagination. The protagonist, much like the author, is a neurotic British writer named Will Self who has a penchant for walking everywhere. These outings give him an idea for a project: a walking tour from LAX to Hollywood, during which he will investigate the forces that have diminished film as a relevant art form. Drawing on cinematic tropes and cultural riffs with frequent nods toward the bizarre and the perverse, Self's reveries and encounters include an Incredible Hulk style street rampage, a rap group laying down Aurelian beats in Latin, and an abduction by Scientologists. Through his mind's camera, Self is alternately played by two lesser-known British actors, and his circumambulation of the L.A. area features an all-star Hollywood cast, with Ellen DeGeneres, Orson Welles, and Robert De Niro all having screen/page time. This gonzo dash through the obstacle course of the mind encountering paranoia, obsession, and amnesia paired with a whacky high/low cultural treasure hunt won't be to every reader's taste, but it is assuredly a wild ride punctuated by razor wit and brazen erudition.
