Iain Sinclair

[version]

A lot of it seems to be more or less contextless description. You're presented with something, it's described in this very clipped, visceral style and that's about it. Someone appears somewhere with no explanation, he says a bunch of vague, cool-sounding things about it then you're onto the next thing.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it's just irritating.

 

[catalog]

Were Sinclair and Alan Moore in contact at this time? Seems too much of a coincidence they'd both be publishing occulted takes on The Ripper in the late 80s.

I've read interviews with both of them where they explain the connection. Can't quite remember for certain, but I think it was a bit back and forth, in that sinclair was interested in the Hawksmoor churches cos he was tending the cemeteries and Moore was doing years and years of research on the ripper stuff.

I feel like there was someone who perhaps brought them together, but can't think who at the moment. Maybe Chris petit, but I don't think so.

Have to say, I don't have a clue what's going on at times and get a bit fed up with what feels like pages and pages of formless description, but the ideas are good and there are some nice lines.

Difficult to get a handle on who's who and the overall structure of the thing; think there are three stories going on at once? The weird book dealers, the flashback stuff with the bloke writing the letters and "Sinclair" and Joblard? Can't work out whether "the narrator" is also supposed to be Sinclair, is just some nameless narrator or if that's just what he's called and he isn't narrating at all.

Yeah I find sinclairs early stuff a bit irritating for same reason. Takes a while to get into the rhythm of things and then you're often not sure what's going on. Clearly what he's aiming for and it does work at times, but I prefer the more coherent stuff.

 

[version]

I don't think Sinclair can write at all. He's not capable of constructing a sentence beyond one or two clauses composed mostly of adjectives: when he does it his prose loses any power and distinction it might have. The same goes for the overall architecture of his books - there isn't one - there's just the rubble of his own ranting nerdy obsessions (eg Jack the Ripper. Need I say more?). And I see he has once again wheeled out the tiredest of postmodernist tropes - a book about someone writing a book - in his latest novel, How many times has he done that now? He thinks he is a satirist but his books have no ethical weight. Its all sub-sub-sub Burroughs laced with some incredibly dubious politics (check Downriver's description of Banglatown for example).

I agree with this from earlier in the thread, although I don't hate the book either. Something keeps me reading and I'm enjoying bits and pieces, but yeah, seems bang on to me.

k-punk's comments are on point too,

I want to like Sinclair, but I can't, except in patches. His description of Bluewater in London Orbital, for instance, is wonderful.

But, in general, his writing is not only obscure, it is obscurantist - deliberately making an equivalence between 'poetic' and 'difficult'. For me, the most poetic writing is always the most lucid, and if I have to try hard to read something - whether it be theory or literature - I want some reward. With Sinclair, I just feel frustrated and bored - out of the know. You can rarely settle into the writing; you're always being ushered off to the next unexplained allusion, always left with the impression that there must be something more here than you are ever seeing. I like the connections he makes (but the people he links together - Moorcock, Ballard, Ackroyd, even Alan fucking Moore - are infinitely better writers than him, precisely because they retain a pulp narrative engine), I like the walking methodology, I like the idea of it: but the writing itself always disappoints.

Heronbone is much better, I really mean that.

 

[catalog]

I would give orbital a go if you can be arsed. I can't, myself, but I would like to know if it is still any good. Seminal book for me that one.

 

[version]

I think I'll give Lights Out for the Territory a go after this one and if I don't get along with that then I'll knock him on the head.

 

[version]

Thought White Chappell . . . was decent by the end, although I still agree with the criticisms above and only have a vague impression of what actually happened.

 

[luka]

it seems it is my job to be the first to respond to yr lit qs.
i started reading sinclair when i lived in grays - all that downriver stuff just seemed to fit perfectly - the opening chapter set in the world's end pub in tilbury, conrad obsessions etc. i have read pretty much his complete oevre and think he is one of our great prose stylists. at his best he nails the nowness of now - london orbital and parts of dining on stones for example. however there are times when the reader is led into a dense thicket of words where meaning seems to have been lost - radon daughters for example. i still think his best book is lights out for the territory as he somehow manages to maintain hardcore psychgeography with reader friendly prose - his account of the krays funeral really lays that old 'they were goood to their mums' myth once and for all.
also his poetry is very good - lud heat and white chappel are electric and his collection flesh eggs and scapl metal is worth a look. finally he edited a very good anthology of modern poetry - prynne etal - conductors of chaos.
i have seen a few readings he has done and is very engaging and entertaining - very self-deprecating

an old friend of mine did an attempted murder in the worlds end pub. hes doing 22 years now. tilbury is a cursed place.

 

[jenks]

an old friend of mine did an attempted murder in the worlds end pub. hes doing 22 years now. tilbury is a cursed place.

I think you’re right about Tilbury.

 

[catalog]

Let's go! Triangle of dissensus along with the village spencer lived in and thd place in Kent where Blake went for a bit.

 

[catalog]

All the devil's are here part two

 

[luka]

Let's go! Triangle of dissensus along with the village spencer lived in and thd place in Kent where Blake went for a bit.

i went this winter. took about 40 minutes to walk through the docks to get to the actual town. worth a look but definitely cursed. feels moody as fuck.

 

[mind_philip]

All I can remember about London Orbital is that he keeps wanging on about Bugsby's Marshes, as though the name is evocative rather than mundane.

 

[luka]

it is quite interesting whats happened there. well, sort of interesting anyway. massive brownfield site converted to a neighbourhood with fuck all in it apart from massive apartment complexes.

 

[catalog]

What is a brownfield site. Shit tip?

 

[luka]

ex industrial sort of thing. all the major development is on brownfield sites now cos its the only places you can find significant tracts of land. but it tends to mean the soil is massively toxic. the olympic stuff was similar.

 

[luka]

when i was a child/teen the areas around the blackwall tunnel was all factories, big chimneys, huge plumes of smoke. i used to stink. fuck knows what they were up to. i remember my dad saying they were boiling horse bones to make glue, but what would he know.

 

[mind_philip]

Got the same thing in the US - they call them "superfund" sites. One around here is so bad that the buildings they built on it have to maintain positive air pressure to stop the gas leaking from the soil getting inside and poisoning everyone who works there.

 

[catalog]

Worked at a cinema near Leeds and we had special fire drill, manager said "we're built on a shit tip".

Dover, Folkestone, Dungeness, Rye, Hastings is my only experience of those areas. Get in get out. Black hole edges.

Is why I find Sinclair attractive. Excavating foreign country of London.

 

[luka]

Rye is posh.

 

[catalog]

My wife bought an ercol table in rye and I remember the woman in the antique shop saying oi kev get down here they're from london