Sinclair, Iain
Entry updated 29 October 2021. Tagged: Author.
(1943- ) UK bookseller (retired), poet and author whose fiction is better described as Fantastika than as sf proper, just as the work of his main American mentor, William S Burroughs can be so designated. Studies and mythopoetic explorations of London, comprising a large body of fiction and nonfiction, have provided Sinclair with a central focus from the beginning of his career. Lud Heat: A Book of the Dead Hamlets (1975), a narrative prose-poem which fabricates a numerological myth of the geography of the city, provided a direct inspiration for Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor (1985). Though not strictly fantastic, Sinclair's first novel, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), is permeated with esoteric figurings of the mythology surrounding Jack the Ripper. Downriver (Or, the Vessels of Wrath): A Narrative in Twelve Tales (1991), develops similar material in a Fabulation which Equipoisally combines detective modes and Near-Future sf visions of the complex destiny of London. Radon Daughters: A Voyage, Between Art and Terror, from the Mound of Whitechapel to the Limestone Pavements of the Burren (1994) covers similar territory in an ornately constructed fantasia based on a perhaps non-existent sequel to William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland (1908), and also includes an elaborately ironic description of an sf Convention. In Landor's Tower; Or, the Imaginary Conversations (2001) a London writer's mind is disrupted by coercive visions of Utopia in Wales.
Most of Sinclair's later work has been published as nonfiction, but his elaborate soundings of the inner story of London permit no easy distinction between verifiable topological narrative and psychogeographic wordmaps of the myth within. Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project (coll: 2011), whose subtitle refers to his career-long involvement in London understood as a nesting of microcosms, contains a devastating assault on the London Olympics of 2012. The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City (coll 2017) is particularly rich in prolepses of the London to come. [JC]
Iain MacGregor Sinclair
born Cardiff, Glamorgan, Wales: 11 June 1943
works
- Lud Heat: A Book of the Dead Hamlets (London: Albion Village Press, 1975) [poem: pb/]
- Suicide Bridge: A Book of the Furies: A Mythology of the South and East (London: Albion Village Press, 1977) [poetry: coll of linked poems: pb/]
- Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge (London: Vintage, 1995) [omni of the above two: pb/]
- White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (Uppingham, Rutland: Goldmark, 1987) [illus/Rigby Graham: trade edition illus/Rigby Graham: hb/John Bellany]
- Downriver (Or, the Vessels of Wrath): A Narrative in Twelve Tales (London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1991) [hb/Ludwig Meidner]
- Radon's Daughters: A Voyage, Between Art and Terror, from the Mound of Whitechapel to the Limestone Pavements of the Burren (London: Granta Books, 1994) [hb/Marc Atkins]
- Landor's Tower; Or, the Imaginary Conversations (Uppingham, Rutland: Goldmark/London: Granta, 2001) [illus/hb/Dave McKean]
nonfiction (selected)
Note caveat in the text above concerning Sinclair's blending of nonfiction and fiction.
- Slow Chocolate Autopsy: Incident from the Notorious Career of Norton, Prisoner of London (London: Phoenix House, 1997) [nonfiction: illus/hb/Dave McKean]
- Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London (Uppingham, Rutland: Goldmark/London: Granta Books, 1997) [nonfiction: coll: illus/hb/Marc Adkins]
- Crash: David Cronenberg's Post-Mortem on J G Ballard's "Trajectory of Fate" (London: BFI Publishing, 1999) [nonfiction: J G Ballard: David Cronenberg: illus/pb/]
- Dark Lanthorns: David Rodinsky as Psychogeographer (Uppingham, Rutland: Goldmark, 1999) [nonfiction: chap: hb/]
- Rodinsky's Room (London: Granta Books, 1999) with Rachel Lichtenstein [nonfiction: hb/]
- Sorry Meniscus: Excursions to the Millennium Dome (London: Profile Books, 1999) [hb/]
- London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25 (Uppingham, Rutland: Goldmark/London: Granta, 2002) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Dining on Stones: (Or, the Middle Ground) (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2004) [nonfiction: hb/Simon Phipps]
- Archaeology in Reverse (London: Nobody/Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007) [nonfiction: graph: photographic studies of London by Stephen Gill with commentary: illus/hb/Stephen Gill]
- Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2011) [nonfiction: coll: hb/]
- The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City (London: Oneworld, 2017) [nonfiction: coll: illus/Iain Sinclair and others: hb/James Jones]
works as editor
- London: City of Disappearances (London: Penguin Books/Hamish Hamilton, 2006) [anth: hb/Timorous Beasties]
about the author
- Robert Bond. Iain Sinclair (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Salt Books, 2005) [nonfiction: pb/]
- Robert Bond and Jenny Bavidge. The Work of Iain Sinclair (Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007) [nonfiction: pb/]
- Alex Murray. Recalling London: Literature and History in the Work of Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair (London: Continuum, 2007) [nonfiction: Peter Ackroyd: hb/nonpictorial]
links
- Iain Sinclair "Official Unofficial Website (Sanctioned by Author)"
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Picture Gallery
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