The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker
9780241962619 Fiction Short fiction Nonfiction Related
The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker is a collection of Will Self's Real Meals column for the New Statesman. Covering such things as London Cheesecake, Pizza Express, ready meals and fast food cuisine. The title is a play on Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Content
The collection of columns covers a variety of non-traditional culinary experiences to provide a counterpoint to the more idealistic style of food reviewing. Self's stated aim for the column was as follows:
- Most food writing and restaurant criticism is concerned with the ideal, with how by cooking this, or dining there, you can somehow ingurgitate a new - or at any rate improved - social, aesthetic and even spiritual persona. I aimed to turn this proposition on its head, and instead of commenting on where and what people would ideally like to eat I would consider where and what they actually did: the ready meals, buffet snacks and - most importantly - fast food that millions of Britons chomp upon in the go-round of their often hurried and dyspeptic lives.[1]
Reviews
Benedicte Page writing for The Guardian observed...
"...it sees Self take an entertaining trip around the less celebrated of our eateries while dissecting his own fast-food addictions."[2]
References
External links
- Official Will Self site
- Will Self at IMDb
- v
- t
- e
Will Self
- Cock and Bull (1992)
- My Idea of Fun (1993)
- Great Apes (1997)
- How the Dead Live (2000)
- Dorian, an Imitation (2002)
- The Book of Dave (2006)
- The Butt (2008)
- Walking to Hollywood (2010)
- Umbrella (2012)
- Shark (2014)
- Phone (2017)
- The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1991)
- Grey Area (1994)
- License to Hug (1995)
- The Sweet Smell of Psychosis (1996)
- Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (1998)
- Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe (2004)
- Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes (2008)
- Junk Mail (1996)
- Perfidious Man (2000)
- Sore Sites (2000)
- Feeding Frenzy (2001)
- Psychogeography (2007, with illustrations by Ralph Steadman)
- Psycho Too (2009, with illustrations by Ralph Steadman)
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker (2012)
- Will (2019)