Walking to Hollywood, By Will Self

In recent years we have become accustomed to travel writers playing at being fictional versions of themselves: Geoff Dyer as Jeff in Venice, or Bruce Chatwin distancing himself from the fictional "Bruce" in Songlines. Now Will Self adopts a bewildering array of avatars to walk to Hollywood. He is a times himself – or what in his usual baroque style he describes as "that deceptively transparent carapace, the ego" – but also morphs, among others, into David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwait...