The expulsion of a triumphantly grim place

"Jack the Ripper is psychogeographic in love." - Guy Debord

David Seabrook, after the publication of his novel 'All the devils are here' (2002), was called a 'seaside situationist' by one reviewer. But calling him a 'seaside Sinclair' makes much more sense because the spirit of Iain Sinclair is all over Seabrook's obsessive account of the dark history of Kent's seaside towns. There must be a relation between the two because Seabrook thanks Sinclair in the book and Sinclair reviewed the book for the LRB. Most of Sinclair's piece is behind the paywall but in the bit that is available he gives a few clues about Seabrook that are not in the book, for instance that Seabrook was inspired by the bioregionalism of Carl Sauer. I find this a fascinating nudge towards interpreting the book. Seabrook is not a clone of Sinclair though, his writing is less lyrical,  less autobiographical, more experimental and more obsessive in the way it creates meaning through association. This book is a collage and the way the fragments are glued together show a jawdropping technical skill. This is dark nostalgia at its best and I look forward to rereading it on the long winter evenings to come. What is intriguing is that Seabrook was a 'true crime writer' and I am unable to say if this true crime writing at its most creative or if this is creative writing that points towards the inability of that genre to come near the real truth behind lust, murder and perversion. 

Also: Stewart Home announcing the death of Seabrook wrote that nobody liked him.   

Iain Sinclair says "Psychogeography is not that interesting anymore"

The writer sitting in the back, shady and iguana like, mentally preparing for his lecture.   

Iain Sinclair was giving a lecture in The Hague the other day.


I AM a complete coward and I would never have the temerity to walk up to Iain Sinclair, the don of wiseguy psychogeography, and embarrass myself by boring him with my presence and rambling madman conversation. 


Afterwards I was waiting for Petr Kazil in the hallway, when it took longer than expected for him to show up I returned to the lecture hall to see what was delaying him. There I found him at the pedestal waiting for a chance to thank Sinclair for his books and so I half-heartedly joined him and, when the three of us walked to the hallway, I managed to present myself as the true socially uncomfortable halfwit that I am and asked him if he was following current work in psychogeography to which he responded that 'psychogeography was not that interesting any more' it is not an exact quote but what a complete tosser! So of course I could not resist the chance to reveal myself as the crazy self-obsessed freak in the room by showing him the error of his ways, telling him of the psychogeophyics summit in his own Hackney last summer (he did hear of it but was abroad) and (shudder) my own MK_Weeds festival to which he replied with an anecdote of walking with Richard Mabey and being told about grasses as food.


So Petr and I chatted a bit with him, exchanging book titles (I recommended John McPhee, especially 'Basin and Range' because it was similar in intent, oh shame, to his own books) but Sinclair was gracefully indulgent, talking back and telling us that his next book dealt with the US. He is a smart dresser and does not have a cute English accent. Petr recorded his lecture and Sinclair (can I call you Iain now?) said he did't mind if it was published online. (link to be inserted). 


In his books Sinclair presents himself as a kind of all seeing and all knowing genius loci, a presence larger than space and I was interested to see how he would be in his own human form. His talk was a pleasant intersection of thought and places, stories and walks. He was more outspokenly political than in his books, in clear terms condemning gentrification and the architectural legacy engineering behind, for instance, the London Olympics.