Literature review: Dublin International Literature Festival - Various venues

“The novel, as a form, has moved into the slow lane.” Novelist and journalist Will Self, discussing his new novel, Phone, at Dublin’s International Literature festival, had some home truths for booklovers at Smock Alley Theatre.

Phone is the final part of Self’s recent trilogy, each of which juxtaposes human pathology, technological innovation and the bodily horrors of warfare. Phone plaits three strands of autism, smartphones and the Iraq war in a stream-of-consciousness Joycean style, a deliberate deconstruction by Self of the traditional codex of the novel.

Typically acerbic, Self gave short shrift to the “snowflake generation’s” digitally influenced intolerance for offence, challenging political censoriousness at his own appearance and at a later contribution to talks hosted by the website Headstuff, where his rather hackneyed hypothesis that women are attracted to latent male violence went down like a blast furnace with snowflakes in attendance; there were, one organiser said, “lots of complaints and some walk-outs”.