Iain Sinclair

labrat

hot on the heels of love
an enquiry as to Iain Sinclair's influence in literature...
seems most of his fans are in the visual arts (janet cardiff, Inventory etc.)
the only literary work i know of that belies his influence is http://heronbore.blogspot.com/ (archives seem to have gone-shame)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
@Corpsey what did you decide to read based on all the recommendations?
I'm reading that HHnH

It's interesting learning about the period, although I'm a bit sick of the whole "actually that wasn't true" thing at this point

But the assassination itself is rendered pretty brilliantly. I guess it's an intrinsically gripping event – heroic assassins fleeing and hiding in a city crawling with nazis
 

catalog

Well-known member
ok well when you've finished that, you need to read an iain sinclair. either lights out for the territory which luke recommends or orbital which i recommend.
 

catalog

Well-known member
From this book of interviews with sinclair, petit, jotting etc, by Neil jackson

POST-NEARLY PRESS  CONVERSATION SERIES EDITIONS 1-5/2014-2019 https://amzn.eu/d/0YlyKxp

Neil Jackson: There's this notion of "burning a hole through the mem-
brane of the ordinary". It seems to be a great approach: staying open to the possibility of magic in everyday circumstances.

Is this essentially what is meant by psychogeography?

Iain Sinclair: It could be, it sounds like a useful description, because nobody knows what psychogeography is. It's become such a plastic term, having started somewhere very specific: a theoretical, countercultural, Paris-based, Situationist term that was applied to a particular set of circumstances.

Then the terminology vanishes, until it returns to London, via people like Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. Now it spreads out to be anything to do with
walking, cities - but the description that you just brought up, burning a hole through the membrane of the ordinary, seems to be what it was about in the first place. This idea of doings omething that jolts you into a higher level of reality. You have to re-wire reality.

As we walk and navigate, we have our
standard neural pathways, and we need to subvert them. We have to develop techniques for countering conditioned re-
flexes. I think psychogeography could be exactly that.

Somehow we've arrived at one of the best descriptions of it I've heard.

Being open to the marvellous in the ordinary.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
Being open to the marvellous in the ordinary

One way of looking at it, but disappointingly that definition negates my opinion that the best psychogeographical novel I've read recently is ATTA by Jarett Kobek, based on a historical event, in which an architecture student with identity issues and a hatred of tall buildings who ( spoiler alert ) hi-jacks a plane and aims it at one of the two tallest buildings on earth. Kobek subtly focuses on the influence of town planning as control angle, but I'm not sure this aligns with the "marvellous" definition.
 
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