Iain Sinclair

[luka]

they wont sexually harass me in the street? wolf whistle etc?

 

[luka]

italy has a reputation for sexual harassment, stalking, cat-calling etc

 

[droid]

 

[catalog]

They are pretty good at telling you off for going on the wrong bit of sand at the beach and the public transport bureaucracy is worse than ours, but apart from that, they are cool. We got told off a lot, but in a nice way. They seem to enjoy giving you good natured grief for no particular reason.

 

[catalog]

I've got a video somewhere that I keep meaning to edit, of the trip I took to Pakistan in 2003 with my mum. We went to her ancestral village and found a bloke who knew her cousin before partition so they were both in tears. It's very affecting and suspenseful, cos we had to keep asking loads of different people but they were all really helpful.

The food is also a bit better in Pakistan I would say.

The only odd thing is that there are no women on the streets, or very few. And if you go out to a restaurant, and there are women in the group, yoj have to sit in a curtained off area.

 

[luka]

yeah sufi said muslim countries are great unless youre a woman or with a woman, then they're a bit of a nightmare. they're very much lad idylls. you can see it even when you go to paris and all the men spend all day loafing about smoking fags and drinking tea or coffee on the outdoor cafe tables. bone idle.

bit too much meat in pakistan for my liking.

 

[luka]

i had a temper tantrum in delhi when my sister tried to make me go to some sufi shrine or something and the streets kept getting narrower and narrower and more and ore crowded and the beggars got more and more medieval, proper lepers and that, missing limbs, acid attack faces, and everyone was shouting at us, and trying to make us give them our shoes etc and i just had to go get fucked im not going any further this is fucking disgusting, i hate this place lol

 

[catalog]

I think probably old Delhi which is quite an on top place.

I went with my cousin and we went up to the top minaret of the jamia masjid where you can get a good view of Delhi. Very low level city generally so kinda interesting skyline, in that's its non traditional. And there's these massive hawks flying really close to you with murderous eyes.

Delhi is one of the worst places to go but the hanuman temple at connaught place is pretty special. Original old school hanuman statue, that looks like a monster rather than a cuddly monkey.

 

[luka]

naturally i had the shits while my little sister and my ancient mum and her husband were totally fine. the old ones skipped delhi though. my sister made me go there

 

[Corpsey]

I started but never got far with VS Naipaul's book about India "A Place of Darkness", which was banned in India for being too negative about it. Anyway, your description of being surrounded by lepers reminded me of his descriptions of the poverty he saw.

 

[jenks]

Back to Sinclair - i don't think i am alone in finding that his style and manner have begun to grate - there was a recent piece in the lrb about sewers of London that was stuffed full of impenetrable prose and a high self regard as if he was in possession of some great and universal truth. When this thread was first launched Sinclair was probably just cresting past his height - his John Clare book felt like a mis step and each book after felt like a diminishing return for too much investment - Radon Daughters just turgid in parts. However, Orbital, Lights Out, DownRiver, Whitechapel, Rodinsky and those early ones are still where the good stuff lies - when he was still staking out his territory and creating his own literary heritage. i might get WC/ST off the shelves again and give it a re-read, it's been a while.

 

[luka]

it's really good. way better than i remembered it. but of course hes been a hack for a very long time now.

 

[shakahislop]

i read that jg ballard book about the suburbs and shopping centers in the bath in a manky apartment under a bypass in delhi, seemed very appropriate. big south asian cities including delhi have a particular flavour of bleak i think. karachi, delhi, calcutta, dhaka are all different but share a certain dystopian thing. dhaka and karachi in particular really feel like a disaster has already happened and people are living in the aftermath. they feel like they're in judge dredd.

hard to find the right words for this so forgive me if this is clumsy but there's a weird way as well that poverty in india is different to poverty in other poor countries. i've never got my head around it. the aesthetics of it are different somehow. it feels like the suffering takes place in public rather than in private. even in bangladesh and pakistan there is a certain reserve to it, people hide it more, things like disfigurement and death. in india it's all out in the open.

 

[catalog]

I've never bothered with white chappell, but then I didn't get on with downriver, thought it had that turgid feel jenks mentions for the later stuff. And maybe what version is picking up on with WC/SC.

Got Downriver at home though, might take it on holiday. My entry was Orbital. Corpsey still hasn't read it the fucking philistine.

WC/SC does sound interesting but I've read and re-read from hell and don't really wanna go there again just yet.

Part of sinclairs problem is that he popularised a whole approach that loads of other people are now in on. Can't fucking move for Psychogeography.

 

[luka]

downriver has the disadvantage of being really long whereas white chapel is only about 200 pages. its more focussed.

 

[luka]

i read that jg ballard book about the suburbs and shopping centers in the bath in a manky apartment under a bypass in delhi, seemed very appropriate. big south asian cities including delhi have a particular flavour of bleak i think. karachi, delhi, calcutta, dhaka are all different but share a certain dystopian thing. dhaka and karachi in particular really feel like a disaster has already happened and people are living in the aftermath. they feel like they're in judge dredd.

hard to find the right words for this so forgive me if this is clumsy but there's a weird way as well that poverty in india is different to poverty in other poor countries. i've never got my head around it. the aesthetics of it are different somehow. it feels like the suffering takes place in public rather than in private. even in bangladesh and pakistan there is a certain reserve to it, people hide it more, things like disfigurement and death. in india it's all out in the open.

they say india is filthy in a way no other 3rd world country really is. ive never been to any other poor country tho so cant really say.

 

[luka]

people say, se asia, for instance, just as poor, but people dont wallow in shit in the same way. could be a religion thing?

 

[shakahislop]

people say, se asia, for instance, just as poor, but people dont wallow in shit in the same way. could be a religion thing?

i've never really been able to articulate it, or seen a good description elsewhere. i don't know if it's a relgious thing exactly. it's a cultural thing. but everything is a cultural thing. one of the problems with making these comparisons between places is that you don't know what you're talking about. the lack of understanding is a quintessential travel feeling i think. you're numb to the symbolic language. you're on a visual plain

 

[luka]

well you can easily compare them. i dont think thats an issue. one place is either dirtier than another or its not.

 

[shakahislop]

you can make comparisons obviously. i guess you need to have a certain humility about it though. at least in discursive terms. about the weakness of your subjective impression and the likelihood of it being wrong.