Will Self’s Parallactic Urban/Land-scapes in Walking to Hollywood

Abstract

This paper addresses the complex relation of identity to site in Walking to Hollywood: Memories Before the Fall. In keeping with the idea of a cityscape rather experienced than observed or depicted from a distance, the analysis of scale, proportions and displacement reveals a complex interplay between the urban environment and the perception that shapes it. The perceiving subject’s identity is in turn equally shaped by the post-industrial setting it initially purported to fashion after its own views, in a Möbius strip-manner, coherent with what Slavoj Zizek defines as a ‘parallax view’, characteristic of the experience of contemporary urbanity.

Keywords

• Will Self
• Walking to Hollywood
• scales
• psychogeography
• parallax
• Slavoj Zizek