The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
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The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
''The Quantity Theory of Insanity'' is a collection of short stories by Will Self. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1993. Publishing details First published in 1991 in paperback it was the first published collection of the author's short work and includes themes and characters (such as Zack Busner) that are common throughout Self's shorter and longer fiction. Self received an advance of £1,700 for the work. Within this collection, as well as Dr Busner appearing in two of the stories, the fictional tribe the "Ur-Bororo" are a touchstone. Specifically in the story "Understanding the Ur-Bororo" and subtly in "Ward 9" and the title story. The book is prefaced by the traditional Ur-Bororo saying "However far you may travel in this world, you will still occupy the same volume of space." Praise for the collection came from fellow authors and critics. "If a manic J. G. Ballard and a depressive David Lodge got together, they might produce something like ''The Quantity ...
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Will Self
William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English author, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine collections of non-fiction writing. Self is currently Professor of Modern Thought at Brunel University London, where he teaches psychogeography. His 2002 novel ''Dorian, an Imitation'' was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and his 2012 novel ''Umbrella'' was shortlisted. His fiction is known for being satirical, grotesque and fantastical, and is predominantly set within his home city of London. His writing often explores mental illness, drug abuse and psychiatry. Self is a regular contributor to publications including ''The Guardian'', '' Harper's Magazine'', ''The New York Times'' and the '' London Review of Books''. He currently writes a column for the ''New Statesman'', and he has been a columnist for the ''Observer'', ''The Times'', and the ''Evening Standard''. His col ...
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Short Story Collection
A short story collection is a book of short stories and/or novellas by a single author. A short story collection is distinguished from an anthology of fiction, which would contain work by several authors (e.g., ''Les Soirées de Médan''). The stories in a collection may or may not share a tone, theme, setting, or characters with one another. Composition of a collection Short story collections are made up of smaller texts—the individual short stories—in order to form a superior whole.Santi, Mara (2014). "Performative Perspectives on Short Story Collections". ''Interférences littéraires/Literaire interferenties'' (12): 143–154. ISSN 2031-2970. In spite of this, each short story does not lose any of its meaning or narrative independence by being included in a collection. This does not mean that short stories do not gain any new meaning from being included in a collection, though. Because each story's context has changed, surrounded by other stories with their own me ...
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Bloomsbury Publishing
Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in New York City, an India publishing office in New Delhi, an Australia sales office in Sydney CBD and other publishing offices in the UK including in Oxford. The company's growth over the past two decades is primarily attributable to the ''Harry Potter'' series by J. K. Rowling and, from 2008, to the development of its academic and professional publishing division. The Bloomsbury Academic & Professional division won the Bookseller Industry Award for Academic, Educational & Professional Publisher of the Year in both 2013 and 2014. Divisions Bloomsbury Publishing group has two separate publishing divisions—the Consumer division and the Non-Consumer division—supported by group functions, namely Sales and Mar ...
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Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman of the publisher Faber & Faber. It recognises a single volume of poetry or fiction by a United Kingdom, Irish or Commonwealth author under 40 years of age on the date of publication, and is in alternating years awarded to poetry and fiction (including short stories). The prize is worth £1500. The prize jury, comprising three reviewers, is selected by literary editors of journals and newspapers that regularly publish reviews of poetry and fiction. In its first year, the prize was awarded to Christopher Middleton and George MacBeth for poetry. The first win by a short-story collection, ''The Quantity Theory of Insanity'' by Will Self William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English author, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine coll ...
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Zack Busner
Zack Busner is a recurring character in the fiction of British author Will Self, appearing in the short story collections '' The Quantity Theory of Insanity'', '' Grey Area'', ''Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe'', the novels '' Great Apes'', '' The Book of Dave'', and the 2010s novel trilogy '' Umbrella'', '' Shark'' and ''Phone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...''. Appearances As one can never tell if Self intends there to be a coherent storyline, piecing together a backstory for Dr. Busner can be exceedingly difficult. In the story "Inclusion", he is seemingly absorbed by the character Simon Dykes. While some might consider this the end of Busner, he reappears in ''Great Apes''. Employment and characteristics He apparently holds an institutional position in the st ...
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David Lodge (author)
David John Lodge CBE (born 28 January 1935) is an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – ''Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses'' (1975), '' Small World: An Academic Romance'' (1984) and ''Nice Work'' (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel ''The Picturegoers'' (1960). Lodge has also written television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of ''Twentieth Century Literary Criticism'' (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T. S. Eliot. Biography David Lodge was born in Brockley, south-east London. His family home until 1959 was 81 Millmark Grove, a residential street of 1930s terraced houses between Brockley Cross and Barriedale. His father, a violinist, played in t ...
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Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir ''Experience'' and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice (shortlisted in 1991 for ''Time's Arrow'' and longlisted in 2003 for '' Yellow Dog''). Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. In 2008, ''The Times'' named him one of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945. Amis's work centres on the excesses of " late-capitalist" Western society, whose perceived absurdity he often satirises through grotesque caricature; he has been portrayed as a master of what ''The New York Times'' called "the new unpleasantness".Stout, Mira"Martin Amis: Down London's mean streets" ''The New York Times'', 4 February 1990. Inspired by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov, as we ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ...
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Grief
Grief is the response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or some living thing that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, grief also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, cultural, spiritual and philosophical dimensions. While the terms are often used interchangeably, bereavement refers to the state of loss, while grief is the reaction to that loss. The grief associated with death is familiar to most people, but individuals grieve in connection with a variety of losses throughout their lives, such as unemployment, ill health or the end of a relationship. Loss can be categorized as either physical or abstract; physical loss is related to something that the individual can touch or measure, such as losing a spouse through death, while other types of loss are more abstract, possibly relating to aspects of a person's social interactions. Grieving process Between 1996 and 2006, ther ...
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Art Therapist
Art therapy (not to be confused with ''arts therapy'', which includes other creative therapies such as drama therapy and music therapy) is a distinct discipline that incorporates creative methods of expression through visual art media. Art therapy, as a creative arts therapy profession, originated in the fields of art and psychotherapy and may vary in definition. There are three main ways that art therapy is employed. The first one is called analytic art therapy. Analytic art therapy is based on the theories that come from analytical psychology, and in more cases, psychoanalysis. Analytic art therapy focuses on the client, the therapist, and the ideas that are transferred between the both of them through art. Another way that art therapy is utilized is art psychotherapy. This approach focuses more on the psychotherapist and their analysis of their clients' artwork verbally. The last way art therapy is looked at is through the lens of art as therapy. Some art therapists practi ...
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Reigate
Reigate ( ) is a town status in the United Kingdom, town in Surrey, England, around south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as ''Cherchefelle'' and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The earliest archaeological evidence for human activity is from the Paleolithic and Neolithic, and during the Roman Britain, Roman period, tile making took place to the north east of the modern centre. A motte-and-bailey castle was erected in Reigate in the late 11th or early 12th century. It was originally constructed of lumber, timber, but the curtain walls were rebuilt in stone about a century later. In the first half of the 13th century, an Augustinians, Augustinian priory was founded to the south of the modern town centre. The priory was dissolution of the monasteries, closed during the English Reformation, Reformation and was rebuilt as a private residence for William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham, William Howard, the 1st Baron Howard ...
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Willesden Junction
Willesden Junction is a railway station in Harlesden, north-west London, UK. It is served by both London Overground and London Underground services. History The station developed on three contiguous sites: the West Coast Main Line (WCML) station was opened by the London & North Western Railway on 1 September 1866 to replace the London and Birmingham Railway's Willesden station of 1841 which was to the northwest. Passenger services ended in 1962 when the platforms were removed during the electrification of the WCML to allow the curvature of the tracks to be eased. Later the bridges for the North London Line (NLL) were rebuilt. The High-Level station on the NLL was opened by the North London Railway in 1869 for two Richmond tracks and later for two Shepherds Bush tracks, both crossing the WCML roughly at right angles. In 1894 a new, combined High-Level station was built, with an island platform plus a third shorter platform for Earls Court trains (which was later removed) tog ...
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