i think it might be that i find him easier to read as a fiction writer, what do other people think, non-fiction vs fiction?
julio, i havent forgotten about lending you the book, i will bring it next time
― charltonlido (gareth), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 14:39 (nineteen years ago) link
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 14:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 2 June 2004 11:23 (nineteen years ago) link
interesting, to think abuot the struggling aspect. sometimes i agree with you, that theres a sense of struggling, but other times i get more of a sense of assuredness, of 'this is what i do', someone on top of game. i just didnt get that with london orbital. of course, it was an enjoyable read, but in the context of his other books?
― charltonlido (gareth), Wednesday, 2 June 2004 11:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― david acid (gareth), Tuesday, 17 August 2004 09:14 (nineteen years ago) link
― Felix Leiter (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 13 July 2005 18:23 (eighteen years ago) link
― david acid (gareth), Friday, 6 January 2006 18:22 (eighteen years ago) link
Simclair writes a nice mini-essay for the insert of PATRICK KEILLER'S LONDON/ROBINSON IN SPACE DVD SET
― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 18:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― terry lennox. (gareth), Friday, 6 January 2006 18:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 18:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― terry lennox. (gareth), Friday, 6 January 2006 18:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 18:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 18:29 (eighteen years ago) link
Is there an American Iain Sinclair? I haven't read enough Pynchon to know, but is there a NY or LA or Chicago equivalent of "Lights Out..."?
Also does this stuff seem passe' to you now or not? That's not meant as a leading question, it's just that the cities of the Western world appear to have more than their fair share of (amateur) archivists now. I'm still very much interested in all this, but how much more is there to be done in this area?
― admrl, Thursday, 8 November 2007 19:09 (sixteen years ago) link
Also does this stuff seem passe' to you now or not?
i don't want to play into your hands here BUT
he always did! SIKE
he comes nowhere near pynchon.
but i mean this mainly as a stylist -- i think his stuff is clotted and not much fun to wade through, and he repeats himself a lot.
i don't have a problem with the "genre" so much -- i'm working on something about whitechapel myself that is, i guess, within it, and that i really don't think has been done ('rodinsky's room' by sinclair probably comes close in some ways + his stuff on the ripper maybe -- but i'm not into the occult stuff).
for all that the ch. on cinema in 'lights out' is a 'key text' in brit film studies.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 8 November 2007 20:45 (sixteen years ago) link
American Iain Sinclair = Mike Davis (esp City of Quartz)?
Sinclair's BFI Modern Classic on Cronenberg's CRASH is really gd - a somewhat predictable pairing of author/subject that actually pays off
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 8 November 2007 20:52 (sixteen years ago) link
yeah that is one of his better things. and probably less predictable at the time than now.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 8 November 2007 21:00 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm still glad he exists and keeps doing his thing, but he has thousands of pages of Flickr images of London grafitti and headstones and obscure landmarks to answer for. Has anyone seen the film he made of "London Orbital"?
― admrl, Thursday, 8 November 2007 21:04 (sixteen years ago) link
Nope. Actually found the book relatively disappointing. I must catch up with his latest, 'Dining on Stones' which I've heard is good.
Great, great writer, though, absolutely compelling on a rant. I was surprised when I heard him reading his stuff - he seems mild and confiding. I was imagining something like Burroughs in full flight. (Or, yes, definitely, Malcolm Maclaren, as someone suggests upthread - that had never occurred to me!)
I have to say I don't see the Pynchon comparison at all. Pynchon seems much more structured and literary. And, frankly, I was sweating blood struggling through 'V' and 'Gravity's Rainbow' on Alan Moore's recommentation.
― Soukesian, Friday, 9 November 2007 16:43 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n12/sinc01_.html
^^ ok, definitely cashed his cheque with this one. nice knowing you, well, not really, but...
iow: mention of 'long good friday' in this context: instant redundancy.
― banriquit, Saturday, 14 June 2008 11:30 (fifteen years ago) link
oh i've never been keen on his film refs, usually just too obscurist and in-crowd for me. so he's gone a bit more populist - doesn't bother me either way.
i've been shying away from olympic cynicism, marking it down as the usual lazy (and depressing) option; but that was (depressingly) convincing. prose is less sparky. more defeatist.
― ledge, Saturday, 14 June 2008 12:02 (fifteen years ago) link
I wrote about "White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings" for one of my papers and I briefly read "Lights Out...". Both, especially the former, were utterly compelling. Will read that piece NRQ just posted with interest.
― Just got offed, Saturday, 14 June 2008 12:23 (fifteen years ago) link
i must confess i gave up on 'london orbital' after sinclair observes that dagenham is the new barcelona, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
― DG, Saturday, 14 June 2008 12:28 (fifteen years ago) link
also i find it v difficult to get worked up about stratford becoming an enormous shopping centre when that's all it is at the moment anyway
― DG, Saturday, 14 June 2008 12:32 (fifteen years ago) link
ledge -- my point was, he always brings up 'the long good friday'!
im definitely an olympic cynicist, but not on the grounds that it will ruin anything worth preserving.
― banriquit, Saturday, 14 June 2008 12:49 (fifteen years ago) link
oops. well that just proves i don't pay attention whenever he goes off about films.
― ledge, Saturday, 14 June 2008 12:54 (fifteen years ago) link
""It's catastrophic. Apocalyptically catastrophic. It's brutalising"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/08/iain-sinclair-interview
guess what sinclair is talking about here.
― special guest stars mark bronson, Sunday, 8 February 2009 11:18 (fifteen years ago) link
Thing is he's probably right.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 11:40 (fifteen years ago) link
Spoiler:
He whips it out when we arrive at the apartments that are being built above the new Dalston station.
Guardian journalists with a turn of phrase...
― Bob Six, Sunday, 8 February 2009 11:43 (fifteen years ago) link
Thanks for this. Missed a couple of books, and I've got some catching up to do.
― Soukesian, Sunday, 8 February 2009 12:57 (fifteen years ago) link
London Orbital was pretty boring and haven't tried anything since but will look out for this one, sounds like a laff riot.
― cat anatomy expert (ledge), Sunday, 8 February 2009 13:00 (fifteen years ago) link
I think he's right about the Olympics - it seems like even more of a white elephant now than it did seven months ago.
― Soukesian, Sunday, 8 February 2009 13:01 (fifteen years ago) link
a waste of money yes, apocalyptically catastrophic, no.
― special guest stars mark bronson, Sunday, 8 February 2009 13:46 (fifteen years ago) link
A catastrophe for the Hackney he goes on about, though.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 14:37 (fifteen years ago) link
"like basra"
hmmmm.
― special guest stars mark bronson, Sunday, 8 February 2009 14:37 (fifteen years ago) link
Whether that is apocalyptic in the grander scheme of things is obviously a moot point, yes. And Sinclair has something of the polemcist about him IMO.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 14:38 (fifteen years ago) link
Absolutely, he's a ranter - you either find that funny and accept it, or . . not.
― Soukesian, Sunday, 8 February 2009 14:54 (fifteen years ago) link
"Mrs Thatcher, whom Sinclair sincerely believes to have been a witch"
erm, what?
― joe, Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:22 (fifteen years ago) link
Perfectly reasonable POV.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:23 (fifteen years ago) link
thought it might have been a typo.
― joe, Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:24 (fifteen years ago) link
bitch? ditch?
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:25 (fifteen years ago) link
just find this pseudo-occult stuff irritating. don't think it is sincere as much as it is attention-seeking, and it's bound to tend towards the fatalistic and apolitical.
― joe, Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:36 (fifteen years ago) link
I like it, in the way I like Alan Moore blathering on about his personal gods. I think Sinclair would argue that the occult and the political are linked, or perhaps two sides of the same coin.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:40 (fifteen years ago) link
uh. ive got several sinclair books waiting to be read. how much does he indulge in occult nonsense in his books?
― Henry Frog (Frogman Henry), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:43 (fifteen years ago) link
Not much, really, but I suppose it depends on how you feel about psychogeography, which can lapse into (in Sinclair's own phrase) "Will Self walking around Hampstead Heath whilst smoking a pipe".
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:45 (fifteen years ago) link
haha that's good. though he forgot to include 'furtively masturbating'.
― Henry Frog (Frogman Henry), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:46 (fifteen years ago) link
WCST is all about a sort of grimy, grotesque polis-brain occult, and the desperate extremes to which it drives its perceivers, and it's fucking *brilliant*, like, really not nonsense at all, just fantastic, allegorical writing which traces three maps on top of each other and lets 'em rip
― Robin van Injury (country matters), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:47 (fifteen years ago) link
x-post Yeah that would have iced that cake nicely!
Peter Ackroyd is a good point of comaprison- you wouldn't accuse him of being an occultist, but you wouldn't deny that he or Sinclair talk about places having very specific feels of place about them, for reasons that can be very hard to explain.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:48 (fifteen years ago) link
"polis-brain occult"
i'll pretend i understand what the fuck you're on about.
― Henry Frog (Frogman Henry), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:49 (fifteen years ago) link
The city as sentient being
― Robin van Injury (country matters), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:50 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah...ackroyd's bios of blake and dickens had some very irritating occulty shite in them, not to mention some of his others like'english music'. good writer on the whole though obv.
― Henry Frog (Frogman Henry), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:51 (fifteen years ago) link
Ackroyd is better as a novelist than biographer I think, apart from the amazing London: the Biography.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 15:53 (fifteen years ago) link
London Orbital was pretty boring
I like it for this reason. It's just like the M25 in that way. I really enjoy reading him but he's plain wrong about a lot of things. But I don't think it matters and I don't think even he believes half the stuff he says - it's just put out there. His increasingly apocalyptic tone (something he shares with Jeremy Clarkson's latest rantings) I find irritating though.
― The Unbelievably Insensitive Baroness Vadera (Ned Trifle II), Sunday, 8 February 2009 19:02 (fifteen years ago) link
Also Ackroyd's one on the Thames looks pretty good (from what I've read in Borders). Lots of "magical" stuff though.
― The Unbelievably Insensitive Baroness Vadera (Ned Trifle II), Sunday, 8 February 2009 19:03 (fifteen years ago) link
The companion film to London Orbital is good too, also hypnotically boring and repetitive.
― zero learnt from nero (Neil S), Sunday, 8 February 2009 19:40 (fifteen years ago) link
Isn't it possible to see the occult elements in Sinclair as a less outrageous but no less self-aware attempt to satirise and attack the establishment? Magico Marxism, as Alistair Bonnett has dubbed it. Stewart Home/LPA pamphlets about Royal Family blood rites and what not? This kind of stuff turns up in The Invisibles and From Hell. Sinclair's more sober, but no less mischievous take is well represented in the MI6/Archer chapter of Lights Out. Reading Rodinsky's Room at the moment, which is absolutely fascinating. I'm not actually a Londoner, but I know Brick Lane and Whitechapel a little, so perhaps it has more resonance for me for that reason? Or is it just that the story is so absorbing in its own right?
― Stew, Friday, 12 June 2009 21:41 (fourteen years ago) link
lol Stewart Home
― the unfished business of display names only (country matters), Friday, 12 June 2009 21:47 (fourteen years ago) link
I found Rodinsky's Room fascinating too, and I've only passed through the area once. It's quite different in feel to his other books. I think working with Rachel Lichtenstein pulled Sinclair out of his usual routines, always bringing him back to face the sad facts of the story. (Don't get me wrong, I love Sinclair's schtick, and was delighted with his cameo as Norton, Prisoner of London, in the latest LoEG.)
And, yes, Stewart Home has often made me laugh out loud.
― Soukesian, Saturday, 13 June 2009 09:31 (fourteen years ago) link
just read that guardian thing which was fair enough
The department store of Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames is a "baroque reef": a nice image, until you encounter, 100 pages further on, "reef-buildings . . . in a sea of concrete" and then, 100 pages after that, "a reef of fabulous stadiums".
then i was re-reading a bit of LoFTT, and strike me down: 'This cruciform reef of shops...' is right there on p. 15
― so brycey (history mayne), Sunday, 17 July 2011 11:56 (twelve years ago) link
it's your letters
― you've got male (jim in glasgow), Sunday, 17 July 2011 12:09 (twelve years ago) link
^^ one for the 90s heads
― so brycey (history mayne), Sunday, 17 July 2011 18:36 (twelve years ago) link
Just started on "White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings". It seems good so far
― Jung Danjah (admrl), Friday, 19 August 2011 20:44 (twelve years ago) link
Picked up American Smoke which is Iain doing the Beats and Black Mountain. I was really curious to see how he brought his apocalyptic geographic history lesson thing to us in the godless west. Digging it so far, I kind of think of it as Lovecraft writes for Travel & Leisure mag.
― Brakhage, Monday, 8 September 2014 01:53 (nine years ago) link
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n21/iain-sinclair/diary
A piece on the 70x70 film screenings. Have to say if I was more in London during weekdays I would've fancied my chances at being the only attendee at some of those screenings. I really like going across London to catch a screening of something I want to see, as well as the trip too.
I think he writes so well about that kind of decay except a smugness has been set for a long-time so maybe I should re-visit -- its been a long-time since I read Downriver, maybe I should revisit to see whether it was ever any good. I suppose the work begins for me at examining the nostalgia for um technicolor garbage.
I also wonder if old London cinema going ever inspired connection making that he describes taking place through screenings of the The Clock?
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 31 October 2014 10:46 (nine years ago) link