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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

The London canvas

17:58 / 14.11.06

I'm giving some thought to Post Grad. and trying to put together a research proposal based around the British origins of what has loosely been termed
'psychogeographical fiction' (Yer' Sinclairs and (ugh) Ackroyds, Auster, Ballard etc). Mervin Coverley's rather short tome on the subject mentions Arthur Machen, Blake, Dequincey and Defoe but I was wondering if any of you might be able to mention some oddities?

Anything -with reference, perhaps, to the more gothic English strain of things- which might be tied in and broaden the palette? I've read all the big hitteres and I'm now scrabbling around for some strange candy...Mary Butts, for example..

Any possible 2ndary material would be a great help too...

22:14 / 14.11.06

Mary Butts is fantastic (i'm sure the name gave my feelings away). Not sure what to blab on about her writings really at the moment. What i've read really had a big effect on me. The sense of place and the struggle between yourself and enviroment. Again the inbetween points as a sense of struggle. I'm finding it hard to put into words as i'm pretty pissed.

Other London stuff. If you are in London or within easy reach i recommend heading of to Treadwells as they have a reading by John Constable (otherwise known as John Crow) of his Southwark Mysteries . A really great bit of channeled, psychogeographical, community based bit of writing-play-poem etc etc. It's good stuff. You can get the book. I'm going to try and make it.

22:18 / 14.11.06

That reading is on the 23rd of Nov.

22:29 / 14.11.06

And this is the Southwark Mysteries link i messed up on the last post.

Psychogeography is such a messed up and mixed up idea these days. I assume that you've looked at Stuart Home and the AAA and all that. Other writers that i wouldn't straight away connect to a psych...etc idea are Russell Hoban and M J Harrison but a lot of their writing is steeped in the idea of London the place and the cracks inbetween and the influence of the city of the observer and back again.

22:42 / 14.11.06

Gosh! sorry about the multiple posts!!

Just wanted to mention the book that Iain Sinclair has just edited and brought out, London: City of Disappearances . Some really good stuff what i've read so far. A good 50 odd pages of Alan Moore and other interesting stuff. Half a page of Ballard is a bit of a piss take though!

Anyway, sorry Mick for turning your thread into a bit of an AD fest! Strap a KFC sign on my back and send me into space!!!

Will have a think, though on earlier (gothic?), psychogeography.

12:40 / 15.11.06

Oh, I'm already messing myself about the new Sinclair. It's on my list of "things to get when I find a job", which grows bigger by the day as they keep releasing all my most wanted things at once ("Rawlinson's End" on DVD!? Christmas bliss!).

Wow! That sounds right up my street - I shall book a place ASAP. Perhaps we can meet for a pint and a chat and I can rack your brains?

Butts is fantastic, I agree. "Mappa Mundi" is especially pertinent to the sort of the thing I want to talk about: the idea of the occulted city beneath (in this case, literally) the streets. I'm sort of going along the lines of the politics - ie whilst Blake and Sinclair are fairly anti-authoritarian, Butts and Machen belong more to a sort of reactionary Conservatism - as, indeed, I think, does the golden dawn movement as a whole.

In face I was even thinking of focussing solely on the golden dawn (Yeats, Machen, Butts in particualr) and seeing them as reactionary conservatives fighting modernity.

What do you think?

15:18 / 15.11.06

This might be reaching a bit, but you could possibly drag in John Cowper Powys' 'Wessex' novels (Wolf Solent, A Glastonbury Romance, Weymouth Sands and Malden Castle.) They were written in the Thirties, are somewhat infuenced by Hardy and Tolstoy, but have a very strange, sort of occulted strand of pastoral mysticism running through them which is all Powys' own. In A Glastonbury Romance in particular (and if you haven't much time that's the one to read - the others are arguably dry-runs,) there's a sense of the characters being driven along by the history, geography and so on of their surroundings in a way they're only barely conscious of, which you might tie into your project somewhere.

If memory serves, Iain Sinclair doesn't entirely approve of Powys' work (it's 'too flowery' or some such,) but it's still in there as an influence I think.

(With apologies if you're already familiar with the material in question - good luck with the proposal anyway.)

20:06 / 15.11.06

Well, I'm sure you've already read Bleak House but it is what springs first to my mind...

You might try doing some searches on academic sites. E.g., I ran a quick search on a London historical bibliography site : some of which might be of use to you for ideas, etc.

The depictions of London life in some of the Addison & Steele Spectator essays might be of interest to you also. London history is a big field at the moment, you should be able to find a lot of interesting old pamphlets etc. which depict the city in various ways - not psychogeographical per se, but might be of interest.

I wonder a bit about female voices - maybe Evelina by Fanny Burney? which ISTR deals with fashionable C18/Regency London life (tho' I haven't read it for about ten years, or more). Also Mrs Dalloway, obvious call really.

20:07 / 15.11.06

sorry, this is Kit-Cat - didn't see I was logged out...

Whisky Priestess

22:00 / 15.11.06

Mr. Thomas Hardy's Wessex?

Mr. Julian Barnes's Metroland?

Mr. Martin Amis's North and East London?

Mr. Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (actually maybe not that one ...)

However, if you fancy doing something about the psychogeography of the London Underground (and underground London), there's willions of books, fiction and non, on that one. It exerts a weird fascination. There's Neverwhere, London Revenant and a book called Underground London (forget the author) just for starters ...

23:14 / 15.11.06

Mr. Thomas Hardy's Wessex?

I fancy your tone there was somewhat ironic, eh, you sporty doxy?

I spilled a glass of port wine on my trouser, in any case.

However, for those of us who know about such things, who routinely go about the Heath late at night in search of a kinder and more beautiful age, in search of the past, JOHN COWPER POWYS IS AN IMPORTANT AUTHOR, damn yer eyes.

Mr Mick, it seemed to me, was inquiring as to the origin of the movement in question, which I personally feel does not begin and end with the thoughts of a series of long-haired, sweaty-eyed men making notes on London Underground under the influence four or five tablets of LSD.

Although that sort of thing does have it's place in the cannon, obviously.

13:11 / 16.11.06

Kudos for the Cowper-Powys. I trundled my way through "Glastonbury Romance" last summer and found it most enjoyable. So much so that I, umm, accidentally forgot to return A.N. Wilson's Lit. crit. on him. Ah well, I shall atone for these things later in life. He is indeed a valuable writer.

Thanks to all for your help.

Am now confirmed a place for the John Constable reading. All very exciting. Treadwell's looks like my sort of place. I'm getting visions of Diagon Alley just reading the stock list.

Let me clarify: the proposal idea is subject to change only because some places do not offer modern papers. For those, I am looking more at the Gothic, Dequincey side of things. Others are more contemporary and it is here that I would really like to come up with something odd and overlooked...

Am tracing all these suggested finds and having a heck of a lot of fun doing so.

Thanks all.

A fall of geckos

14:17 / 16.11.06

I'd recommend Alan Garner's writing, especially his recent novel Thursbitch (Guardian review by M John Harrison here and his young adult novel Red Shift.

I've read in a biography that he had a incident/breakdown after writing his first two books, which temporarily destroyed his sense of linear time. Certainly his later books show an interest in the links between what he calls deep time, and the landscape around him.

These books aren't set in London, but like Cowper-Powys' work I think they are important and massivly underrated novels in exploring psychogeography.

If you don't have them already, you may want to get hold of Alan Moore's Highbury Working, and Snakes and Ladders. Both are performance works that concentrate on a specified area of London. Snakes and Ladders was performed in Conway Hall, Red Lion Square as part of a symposium on Real Magic. He also produced a piece called The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, which has some nifty stuff about the history of St Paul's and Diana funeral. It's currently unavailable - let me know if you want any more info on it.

15:16 / 16.11.06

Gecko, I've heard of the Moore ritual pieces but never come across any. Am a huge fan of his work, especially the more historical/mystical stuff.

I would be v. interested - sounds right up my street.

I think there are a couple floating around on ABEbooks at very high prices. And there's me with the no-budget dole pockets. Hmph.

A fall of geckos

16:39 / 16.11.06

Mick - have just pm'd you with some more Moore stuff.

It also occurred to me that you might be interested in Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoore, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Gollum etc... Ackroyd often compresses historical characters and incidents through time to create the backbone of his narratives. There's an feeling of timelessness or odd causuality to his novels that I would say fits into the psycogeographical area, and they're very much London novels.