Not Tolstoy

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Here’s the text of a wonderful exchange on BBC Radio between Will Self and the right-wing popular journalist turned (alleged) novelist Richard Littlejohn. They were there to discuss each other’s novels. Having read half of Littlejohn’s To Hell in a Handcart, Self agrees with one reviewer that it is, more or less, a recruitment leaflet for the British National Party:

LITTLEJOHN: But you haven’t read the book in its totality and you have to read the book in its totality.

SELF: Why?

LITTLEJOHN: In order to understand it.

SELF: Does it turn into Tolstoy at page 205?

LITTLEJOHN: No it doesn’t turn into Tolstoy. I don’t set out to be Tolstoy. It is a much more complex book than that.

SELF:Than Tolstoy?

Round One to Will!

Posted on January 14th, 2003.

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