Peter Ackroyd and books about cities?

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Thu, 2002-08-01 20:41

Been reading Peter Ackroyd lately, and think he's great. 'Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem' is supurb, as is 'Hawksmoor'. 'The Great Fire of London' isn't as great but serves as a template for his later stuff.

What I love about him, and Iain Sinclair, is their use of cities, London in their cases. The idea that cities are storehouses both of history and associations which can have effects on their residents is one of my own pet interests. The fact that a person can effect a kind of time travel simply by walking the streets of a city, limited only by their historical knowledge and receptivity is amazing. Cities are like a palimpset, written on again and again with thousands of conflicting stories, each story still visable and interacting with the stories that are written on top of it.

Aside from psycho -geographical and Situationist writers, can anyone think of anyone else who writes in a similar vein?

Thu, 2002-08-01 21:21

andrew pack

Oh Mark, this will hardly be news to you, but try Alan Moore's "From Hell", which is what got me into Ackroyd. Iain Sinclair would have been my other recommendation. Margaret Atwood is very good at evoking a sense of place, Cats Eye in particular is so rich in place, time and character. The only thing I don't like about Ackroyd is the historical dialect. This wasn't too bad in Dan Leno, because it was more modern, but the house of Dr Dee was bloody hard going in places.

Thu, 2002-08-01 23:16

martin_t

also edward rutherford...london (which I found fascinating) Sarum (about salisbury but I haven't read) fictionalised histories but absorbing as he does weave the history/fiction thing really well (in the one that I read anyway)

Fri, 2002-08-02 15:05

Tony Dickens

Mark, I thought 'Chatterton' was a great book (I've just been over to the shelf and can't believe that it was written 15 years ago). Ackroyd has always been an inventive writer, a great parodist and quite controversial as well; I'm half-way through the Dickens biography at the moment, but I'm running out of steam. I'm struggling to come up with others. Could you make a case for Martin Amis with the London trilogy? Thomas Hardy? No, he's a country boy. You've got me thinking. 'Lud Heat' by Sinclair is amazing.

Fri, 2002-08-02 15:22

markbrown

Tony, Thomas Hardy is along the right lines in terms of landscape in novels, as is Wuthering Heights . But cities, cities.... There's a difference between simply being set there and the kind of thing that Sinclair and Ackroyd do. I always assumed it was a fairly common technique but it doesn't seem to be. Has any one seen Robinson in Space or London by Chris Petite (sp?)? They are the same kind of thing in film. I went to see Wire at the ICA and they showed a great short Film by Chris Petite and Iain Sinclair about the M25, with Sinclair walking the length of it to try and make out what it meant. One quote that sticks out was "If the M25 is a bypass, then the patient died during surgery."

Fri, 2002-08-02 16:51

martin_t

what about the book about the a40, someone help me with the title, I read it and was absorbed by it...the author just walked up the a40 and stopped at houses and chatted to the residents.....

Sun, 2002-08-04 00:03

justyn_thyme

Ackroyd is one of my favorites. As for "city authors" I can only think of some of the crime novelists, like Ellroy, Cain, et al in the U.S. and say Simenon in France.

Thu, 2002-08-08 02:54

Ralph Dartford

Dear all Robert Elms wrote a fantastic book on Spain called 'After the General'. Ralph

Mon, 2002-08-12 23:46

~hitch~

Try Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. ~H~

Tue, 2002-08-13 00:00

#10

Trollee Scrumptious

*faints*

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