I like hearing Will Self speak and I like to read his writings, though I have to admit that, to date, it would appear that, perhaps tellingly, I don't like them enough to want to buy one of his novels. And it was while reading an article of his in the Guardian online today that I was able to pin-point why I'll probably continue to politely decline his longer written offerings; simply, they would take me too long to read.
Listening to Will speak or reading his written works is like - for me - learning English all over again. I always emerge from our encounters feeling like I've had a damn good workout; a bit knackered, though, despite the discomfort, suffused with a sense that I'll be better off for it in the long run. He routinely uses words I've literally never encountered before and he throws around an immensely wide-ranging and, on occasions, a selectively arcance vocabulary with consumate ease. He's brilliant at it and I really enjoy engaging with his use of language, but I'm never in any doubt with Will that there will come a point somewhere - and it usually happens pretty early on - that the inadequacies of my literary education will reveal themselves only too clearly and I will have no other discernable option other than to reach for the dictionary to discover the meaning a yet another new word that he's mined from his vast lexicon.
The article I referred to, "Will Self: The trouble with my blood" is neatly summarised in a sub-heading, "Diagnosed with a rare blood disease, Will Self has to endure weekly 'venesections' in hospital. He reflects on illness, addiction and mortality".
And so he does. In the scheme of things an article of this length would normally consume no more than a minute or two of my time and would rarely trouble me in terms of getting to grips with mere wordage. But with Will, well things are different. It took nearly half-an hour and much looking up of words. Here's just a few words and phrases that I'll admit to having had need to check out in a process of on-going diligent self-education:
Iatrogenic, apoptosis, acuminate, 'veridical Guignol', 'fictive inscape'.
It's heady and intoxicating stuff. How about this for a gem of a sentence:
"I had trafficked in disease as a metaphor for 20 years now, grafting the defining criteria of pathologies – their aetiology, their symptoms, their prognoses and their outcomes – on to phenomena as diverse as the human psyche and the urban fabric, yet now I had a disease that seemed to me to be a metaphor – although of what exactly I couldn't yet divine – I found myself in a viscid substrate, cultured with rapidly multiplying literalisms. "
Er, quite.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not taking the mickey here. In a world in which txtng m8 is the norm and which there seems to be so much slack, casual and plain lumpen use of language about that to come across writing of this complexity - and let's be honest - challenging complexity for many (most certainly for me at any rate) is to savour very nutrient-rich fare indeed.
That said, just as with so much richly flavoured cuisine, it's fine as an occasional treat for which one is happy to put the time aside and make a special occasion of it, but, as likely as not, at a daily level you can have too much of a good thing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/21/will-self-blood-disease?CMP=twt_gu
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Will's words. Note to self
Friday, 21 Oct 2011, 12:13
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One has to wonder, at times, just who is the audience, or constituency, some things are written for. Of course, unlike myself, there may well be those who's everyday ,or professional vocabulary, might include such words, along with the specific or general meanings they might carry.
Having only learnt to write an 'essay' in my last (first) module, I clearly am not one of those, who such writers are intending to communicate with.
I don't know whether to be annoyed or pleased about that.
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It's a very sound point you raise, Tony, and one that's not lost on me. I frequently find myself torn between two positions; on the one hand part of me feels that Self is prone to indulging in the use of obscure and arcane language for it's own end - in essence, showing off; on the other, there is a thrill and delight in uncovering a new word that goes beyond simply saying something simple in a more complex way, but which actually expresses a concept that one didn't previously know even had a name.
It's the ambivalence that somehow keeps me interested.
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I'm with you on this one; I always enjoy reading his articles, but it's one thing to have to consult the dictionary for an articles-worth of such words, but it's something else again if you have to do it throughout the length of a book. spoils the flow somewhat.
yes, it is a form of showing off, but then sometimes one needs a particular word to express precisely what is intended (not that they're words I'm ever likely to use in my own life beyond reading the article). it's much the same as writers dropping French or Latin expressions into their work, as if we all should know what they mean. that always feels a little snobbish to me. speaking as an oik, that is.
Antony Burgess use to be the ultimate show-off though, but for all his knowledge of languages across the ages, I'll always remember him on a late-night discussion programme when they were talking about sex. I don't know if he was trying to be shocking or what, but he said something like "but what you're all talking about is f***ing". which was entirely wrong, because there's obviously many words to describe the sex act, and he'd totally missed the point that there are so many ways because one single expression can't represent its many different aspects.