Will Self: PsychoGeography

The temperature's rising

Published: 05 August 2006

"Extreme heat locates the individual within the natal cleft of existence," says Dr Thurm Angstrøm, whom I went to interview this week, in his claustrophobic office at Reading University's Department of Comparative Environmental Science. Dr Angstrøm's weighty tome Sweaty Hearth: Transliterating Domestic Space in the Age of Climate Change has been the surprise, beach-book hit of this summer. Apparently it's being lapped up all the way from Ibiza to Mykonos and back again, although the reflective, gold-foiled cover has a tendency to slide from between well-lubricated fingers.

Dr Angstrøm isn't altogether surprised by his populist success, although a recent appearance on the Richard and Judy Book Club left him reeling: "I couldn't understand why they insisted on larding me with make-up and then sitting me under intense studio lighting. It would've been so much more fitting to have interviewed me in the open air." Indeed, for open air is what Dr Angstrøm's thesis is all about: "In the future we will make love and defecate in the garden, while reserving our social life for airily appointed salons ..." is the arresting opening to his book.

Article Length: 718 words (approx.)