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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

NEW IAIN SINCLAIR BOOK! That's me happy...

Stoatie. Stoatie? STOATIE.
(prev. Stoatie's power level is >9000)

19:09 / 24.07.02

Just went back to see my old boss in the books department at Forbidden Planet. He said "hey, haven't seen you in a while... I've been saving a book for you. The proof of the new Iain Sinclair!"

And I was gobsmacked, not even knowing there was one.

Apparently (according to the cover) it's released in September, it's called "London Orbital", and is along similar lines to "Lights Out For The Territory", only, as the blurb would have it, "in London Orbital, he sets out to map a much less fashionable and previously uncharted area: the vast stretch of urban settlement outside the centre of London that is bounded by the 'collar' of the M25. In doing so, he finds places to which Londoners escaped, places where vast projects such as Heathrow Airport could be realised and places where the poor and the mad of the city were simply hidden away."

I've read the first chapter- it's fucking excellent ("A journey, a provocation. An escape. Keep moving, I told myself, until you hit tarmac, the outer circle. The point where London loses it, gives up its ghosts.")

Sinclair rocks.

yawn - thing's buddy

21:08 / 24.07.02

Sinclair rocks so hard, he's an earthquake, mindquake and paradigm quake all rolled into one big quake-quake!

14:09 / 25.07.02

Indeed, he is truly kewl.

23:58 / 29.07.02

Oh dear, I feel bad about this, but I don't really get on with Sinclair... that's not the Barbelith spirit really, is it? Perhaps I should try Landor's Tower (because I like Walter Savage Landor and I assume that he's the Landor of the title)...

I tried Slow Chocolate Autopsy and couldn't finish it. I forced myself to get through Lud Heat and thought it much better, and even almost enjoyed it (and 'Suicide Bridge' to boot). Didn't gel with Lights out for the Territory, even if it does feature Charlton House (the NLP venue from last year).

*cough*Ithinkheover-writessometimes*cough*

04:27 / 24.08.02

*cough*Ithinkheover-writessometimes*cough*

fair point. I have to be in the right mood to read Sinclair.

Read liquid city on holiday this year, and thought sometimes that the prose was overwrought. I haven't read any of his fiction yet, maybe it works better in a novel.

when he reads his writing himself (bookreadings and the downriver CD) it can be pretty powerful IMHO.

Its great that he's doing another 'psychogeography' book. i lloved 'lights out', 'liquid city', 'sorry meniscus' and some of the stuff for london review of books.

23:51 / 08.05.06

Oh, I do love Iain.

Saw him talk a couple of months back- he was taking part in a discussion called "walking the city, writing the city" and revealed, among other things, why he hates Cambridge so much- and he does have a fantastic stage presence...possibly because he's so bloody tall.

I kinda prefer his travelogues. His fiction is quite dense and he does tend to get rather carried away with all those oblique descriptions. Something about the reality of the journey seems to ground it for me. Plus, I'm a sucker for the whole "all time is synchronous" stuff that comes out of his and Alan Moore's writing.

Having said that, I do like the way his 'novels' are often just fictionalised re-iterations of his own experiences. I've talked to a couple of people who've worked with or been covered by him and the general feeling is that he alters things with little concern for those depicted. The layers of fiction and mercurial nature of his observations are deeply appealing to me and have stoked a deep interest in the origins of our culture.

16:38 / 12.05.06

Hi

I love Sinclair's work, although not Landor's Tower, too much of {a novel about the novelist trying to write it}.

I saw him speak at Warwick Uni a couple of years ago - he was talking about running along an old sewage pipe across the marshes & diving into an old concrete gun emplacement by the river to incubate his visions. I also saw him read at The Tigers of Wrath a Blake celebration on the South Bank a while back. Much more naturally present on stage than Moore who seemed quite self conscious.

I have really enjoyed Sinclair's last two: Dining on Stones & Edge of the Orison.

The first is back on familiar ground, like Mick says - reiterations of his own experiences. It's a weird doppelganger novel. It was so good I started it again when I'd finished & I don't do that much.

Edge is a fascinating combination of travel writing, genealogical & historical research.

The threads are:

The "mad poet" John Clare - Sinclair & his accomplices retrace the steps of his escape home from the asylum, he walked to Northamptonshire in three days.

The writer's wife comes from that part of the world & they investigate possible connections between her family & that of Clare.

Clare was on the scene while the big romatic poet thing was going on with Shelley & Byron & all that lot. There's great scene when Iain goes to the Bodleian library to see Shelley's watch.

My favorite Sinclair was always the early stuff: Lud Heat, etc. I like Downriver & Lights Out but I must say that Edge of Orison might be his best work yet.

BTW wtf is Liquid City? American title for something? Radon Daughters?

Cheers!
Rig

17:14 / 12.05.06

Liquid City is, as far as I can tell, a collection of Marc Atkins' photographs accompanied by occasional bits of Sinclair's prose which focus on the city and regular topics of his such as Ackroyd, Moorcock etc

Totally with you on Lud Heat Rigettle, it's absolutely fantastic. Have you read Suicide Brige too? It's some fanstastic neo-modernist poetry, and if you can track down the 1979 Albion Press edition (?) it has some of Sinclair's photos in there too.

14:44 / 15.05.06

Hi Mick,

I have the Vintage p/b of Lud Heat & Suicide Bridge It's got the line drawings & maps by Dave McKean, but no photos.

Interestingly, in Edge of the Orison he refers to that period of his work:

"I enjoyed my lost years as a book scout, doubling through the East Midlands, Lincolnshire and East Anglia, air bases, dormitory villages, barns stacked with plunder. Being out on the road, red-eyed, buzzing with caffeine, hammered by monologues, the nervous occultism of fellow dealers, was an excellent preparation: for what? For defacing notebooks, formulating skewed theories, misreading signs. Pre-fictional chaos. I abandoned my attempts to construct pseudo-epics that mingled (without distinction) poetry and prose." (p93)

Cheers!

Rig

16:38 / 22.05.06

Sinclair update:

I turned on Radio 4's Today (21-5-06) program just in time to hear Iain being interviewed about the development of the Lea Valley for the Olympic Village of 2012.

They've obviously made some effort to get him on board & he wasn't overly negative, but he was interviewed alongside some dead enthusiastic [young apparatchik] who talked about his "vision" of what it might be like.

Iain said somethimng to the effect that he didn't mind hearing poets talk about their vsions but politicians & quangos doing so made him feel uneasy.

Stoatie. Stoatie? STOATIE.
(prev. Stoatie's power level is >9000)

16:54 / 22.05.06

Ooh! Have to see if I can find it on their site.