A friendly word...
It’s a big month for books from Esquire’s talented contributors
1 / SELFIE BY WILL STORR
— Contributing editor Will Storr has written stories for us about murderous Guatemala City, a not-so-utopian commune in Scotland, and a football team on a tiny Pacific Island, so it’s no surprise to us that in his new book he takes a painstaking approach to research. He grills a reformed East End gangster, stays in a Benedictine monastery, bares his soul (and teeth) at a California New Age-y institute and explores figures from Plato to Ayn Rand to a young woman called CJ who takes “probably thousands” of phone photos of herself every day, all to understand “selfie culture”. His book’s a fascinating, timely exploration of our drive for status, perfection and self-esteem, and a consideration of where such obsessions lead. Narcissus died by a pool, as ripples obscured his beloved reflection: a lesson Storr finds we’re proving reluctant to learn.
— Out on 15 June (Picador)
3 / THE SECRET LIFE: THREE TRUE STORIES BY ANDREW O’HAGAN
— O’Hagan is being a little wry subtitling his book “three true stories”, for whether or not a “story” can ever be inherently “true” once it has been subjected to the consciousness — or perhaps conscience — of the teller is one theme that unites this trio, and leads Esquire’s editor-at-large to describe them as “non-fiction novellas”. Another theme is identity in the digital age, and his three subjects are exquisitely fit for purpose: characters whose “real” selves are porous and intangible within and beyond their own control. There’s Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (whose memoir O’Hagan was hired to ghostwrite); Craig Steven Wright, the Australian computer scientist who claimed to have invented bitcoin. But perhaps most curious is Ronald Pinn, a name plucked from a Camberwell gravestone to explore the outlines of online existence, only to lead to some very dark places indeed. Thrilling.
— Out on 8 June (Faber)
2 / PHONE BY WILL SELF
— As you walk around with your mobile throbbing in your pocket, plugging you into the social matrix, creating invisible umbilical cords of anxiety to your loved ones, updating you on the football scores and perhaps giving you cancer of the buttock, it’s impossible to overestimate the impact it is having on your life. For the four characters in editor-at-large Will Self’s new novel, the impact is particularly acute: the elderly doctor whose circumspection about mobile technology is tempered by the fact it provides vital connections to and for his autistic grandson; or the notorious MI6 agent who uses it to liaise with his secret lover (a married tank commander), though thanks to the private-not-private nature of modern communication, their relationship might turn out to have significant consequences for us all. Masterful stuff.
— Out now (Viking)
4 / UNCLE DYSFUNCTIONAL BY AA GILL
— To call Uncle Dysfunctional the alter-ego of late, great journalist AA Gill would be a gross disservice to his regular ego, which was just as canny, cutting and clever. His Esquire columns, in which he dished out and ameliorated angst in equal measure, showed Gill at his most outrageous and gloriously unhinged. Collected for the first time, and introduced by our editor-in-chief Alex Bilmes, are highlights of six years as our special contributing editor (agony), tackling such subjects as buying a lady lingerie
(“Your job is getting it off, not adding to it”), making peace with your liberal identity
(“You don’t have to tell everyone straight away, you can have a proportional coming out”), and why men’s fashion matters (“Personal adornment is the only cultural form that everybody in the world takes part in”). Abrasive, funny and stealthily thoughtful, this volume is a fitting tribute.
— Out on 1 June (Canongate)