I got this a full year ago and apparently didn’t note it here. I picked it up from the LRB Bookshop, and it’s sold out now, but I imagine copies are floating around out there.
A unique tribute to a remarkable writer, film-maker and walker, in an edition of only 400 numbered copies – each signed by Iain Sinclair – this 192 page A4 illustrated publication features over 170 contributors, including Peter Ackroyd, Caroline Bergvall, Keggie Carew, William Gibson, Xiaolu Guo, Philip Hoare, Toby Jones, Stewart Lee, Esther Leslie, Rachel Lichtenstein, Robert Macfarlane, Jonathan Meades, Dave McKean, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, J.H. Prynne, Denise Riley and Marina Warner.
Featuring original essays, poems, images, letters and reflection from writers, artists, musicians, publishers, friends, critics, booksellers and readers, it is not only a celebration of a unique body of work but also a de-facto history of the last 60 years in experimental literature and culture.
I’m sure much to his horror, Iain Sinclair has become a British cultural touchstone. I remember discovering WHITE CHAPPELL, SCARLET TRACINGS around the age of 19 and being knocked flat by the thing. You have to remember, I’ve spent most of my life living an hour from London, and half my family came from the East End, and so Sinclair’s London rites and quests spoke very directly to the mists of my history.
Iain is a British writer, documentarist, film maker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist.
The son of a Welsh GP, Iain studied in Dublin before moving to London with his wife. His early work was self-published, and he worked as a teacher and labourer while researching occult aspects of the city’s past.
If you’ve read the entire LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN cycle, you’ve met Sinclair – he is Norton, the prisoner-ghost of London. His influence stretches across all the back streets of the London-adjacent writers’ work and all who look for magic in the urban ancient.
Of his later work, I would also recommend AMERICAN SMOKE, which takes him out of London, much to his benefit.
