Iain Sinclair, Austerlitz and After : Tracking Sebald

A recent publication from Test Centre

Iain Sinclair, Austerlitz and After: Tracking Sebald

From Test Centre:

Test Centre presents Iain Sinclair's new booklet Austerlitz and After: Tracking Sebald. An unused, adapted section from Iain's forthcoming book American Smoke (November 2013), it recounts an East London walk in the late German author's footsteps. In the company of Sebald's friend, the poet Stephen Watts, the narrative moves from Liverpool Street through Spitalfields to the Jewish burial grounds at Brady Street and Alderney Road, considering along the way Sebald in life - his experience of London, his writing methods, and his residence in Norwich - and in death.

Simultaneously it tells of Iain's history in the same terrain, whilst through its use of images (a nod to Sebald) it provides an insight into his approach to composition. His American adventure flanked by the tale of the actress Gemma McCluskie, finally discovered in the Regent's Canal, he attempts to write himself out of his locale.

28pp.; printed card covers; 270x153mm (approx.); printed on Risograph; designed by Traven T. Croves. Illustrated with 6 photographs by Iain Sinclair and pictorial endpapers.

Austerlitz and After is available in an edition of 300 copies, of which 26 have buckram covers, are lettered and contain extra holographic material from Iain. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: W. G. Sebald
• Will Self and Others on W. G. Sebald
• Will Self on Sebald and the Holocaust
• Why You Should Be Reading W. G. Sebald

Will Self and Others on W. G. Sebald

Four writers share their 'reveries of a solitary walker'

W. G. Sebald. Photograph: Ulf Anderson

From The Guardian:

WG Sebald, who died in a car crash in 2001, was an inspired essayist, quite as much as he was a novelist; indeed, I often think of his most achieved fictions – Austerlitz, and The Emigrants – as writing that tests the limits of both forms, blending them together at their margins with a kind of vaporous diffusion of their creator’s lucidity, so entirely are the invented and the real fused together. This essay on the last years of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s life exhibits all of Sebald’s strengths as a writer – and all of his strange, gnomic, secretive foibles. Ostensibly a straightforward account of Rousseau’s exiled wanderings, it begins with his first glimpse, in 1965, of the Ile Saint Pierre in Switzerland, where Rousseau spent the first period of his stateless exile, and where he claimed – in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker – that he was happier than he had been anywhere else. [Read More]

To read James Woods, Iain Sinclair and Robert Macfarlane on Sebald, visit Guardian Review here.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: W. G. Sebald
• Writers: Will Self
• Will Self on Sebald and the Holocaust
• Why You Should Be Reading W. G. Sebald

Teju Cole talks to 3:AM Magazine

An interview by Max Liu

Teju Cole

Max Liu interviews the author of Open City, Teju Cole, for 3:AM Magazine:

Increasingly, novels are praised for how much of the culture they manage to include. Open City is entirely contemporary and worldly and it includes a great deal. What are the possibilities and pitfalls of literary inclusiveness?

In a sense, Open City is a kind of Wunderkammer, one of those little rooms assembled with bric-a-brac by Renaissance scholars. I don’t mean it as a term of praise: these cabinets of curiousities contained specific sorts of objects – maps, skulls (as memento mori), works of art, stuffed animals, natural history samples, and books – and Open City actually contains many of the same sort of objects. So, I don’t think it’s as simple as literary inclusiveness. That phrase, in fact, brings to mind David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Dave Eggers. They are keen to include and, in fact, itemize the present in all its gaudy multiplicity. My own literary interest is more about excavating the past, or sensing the past inside the present. This requires all kinds of exclusions and sleights of hand. There’s an admittedly antiquarian flavor to it, even though there’s enough of the present included to lull the reader. So, for a book set in 2006, Open City evades certain markers, while it embraces certain others. Julius doesn’t use a smartphone, and he doesn’t discuss contemporary US politics in any fine detail. [Read More]

Granta Interview: Nick Papadimitriou

'Deep topographer' talks about his new book

Nick Papadimitriou

Granta talks to Nick Papadimitriou about his new book, Scarp:

This is your first book but it has had a long gestation period, both in terms of the writing time and the vast amount of walking you’ve done along this unusual and captivating landmass. To what extent do you find the two activities, of composing sentences and putting one foot in front of the other, are linked for you?

When I first began walking concertedly back in the late 1980s, I found that the torrent of inner voices I habitually heard began to organise itself in relation to the landscapes I passed through, the things I saw, the sensory experience of weather and light that buffeted me and the responses triggered by these. It was as if the land was trying to transmit a message through me, or as if I wanted to communicate to some as yet undiscovered loved one what it was I saw. This statement may seem to be unduly poetic or high-flown but it is the need to convey magnitude that concerns me here. It was inevitable that some sort of art would rise out of the encounter and Scarp is my first, faltering communiqué. However, this is only part of the story. Frequently I refuse to keep notes or other records of walks undertaken and as a result the memories of these fade and ultimately pass down into the land, and are forgotten. At some level I think this is as it should be. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• BBC Newsnight meets Nick Papadimitriou
• Nick Papadimitriou, Scarp
• Documentary: London Perambulator (2009)
• Will Self: Walking out of London
• Richard Long: Walking Artist

BBC Newsnight meets Nick Papadimitriou

Television interview first broadcast in February 2011

Nick Papadimitriou. Image: BBC Newsnight

From BBC Newsnight: 'The writer Nick Papadimitriou has spent decades taking walks to explore the urban environment, and documenting these journeys and the items he finds on them in minute detail. / The BBC's Arts editor Will Gompertz has been to meet him.' [Watch the interview]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Nick Papadimitriou, Scarp
• Documentary: London Perambulator (2009)
• Will Self: Walking out of London
• Richard Long: Walking Artist
• Robert Walser, The Walk

Grant Gee on Sebald and Joy Division

An interview with The White Review

A still from Grant Gee's documentary, Patience (After Sebald) (2012)

Evan Harris (The White Review) interviews Grant Gee about his documentaries, Patience (After Sebald) and Joy Division: 'Grant has previously made two feature length documentaries: Joy Division, which chronicles the band’s life; and the ambient Meeting People is Easy, for which Grant was nominated for a Grammy, which follows Radiohead as they tour OK Computer. He has made numerous short films and had a productive period in the 90s making music videos for famous bands, most of which he admits are mediocre, apart from the iconic No Surprises by Radiohead, of which he is justly proud. I meet him in the BFI cafe. The large glass windows are showing a sneak peek of spring: an oceanic sky and the Southbank’s brutalist concrete solar-cast copper. Grant is affable and earnest, thinking carefully about his responses, giving them length and depth. He is modest about his career and apologises several times for rambling, which he does not.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Grant Gee on Patience (After Sebald)
• W. G. Sebald on History, Memory and Austerlitz
• Patience (After Sebald): Official Trailer
• Grant Gee, Patience (After Sebald)
• Patience (After Sebald): A Documentary
• Remembering W. G. Sebald
• The Making of W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn
• Walking in the Footsteps of W. G. Sebald
• Chris Petit, Content and Radio On

Nick Papadimitriou, Scarp

The Guardian reviews debut work of a London walker

Nick Papadimitriou

Tim Dee (The Guardian) reviews 'deep topographer' Nick Papadimitriou's new book, Scarp:

A mostly crap scrap of the neither-here-nor-there London exurbia is the subject of Nick Papadimitriou's wonder Scarp. Through decades of walks from his council flat just inside the hellish ring of the north circular, he has fallen deeply for the low bumps of the 17-mile north Middlesex/south Hertfordshire escarpment. Here he is almost on common ground and up against the capital's modern saints of dystopic psychogeography: the master of the meaningful roundabout JG Ballard (Concrete Island), and the leggy pair of Will Self (Walking to Hollywood) and Iain Sinclair (whose M25 – in London Orbital – is the unspoken tarmac hedge to Papadimitriou's ambition and stride to the north of his scarp). There are a host of others too – a proper ministry of silly walks – but Papadimitriou is his own man.

His methodology might be bonkers but it is very engaging. Years of study and dreaming in the spare bedroom of his flat have given birth to a series of fantastic journeys – trips, more like – through the ages of the scarp and into and out of its living and its dead, its creatures and plants, its buildings and routeways, its residents and its passers-by. The whole shebang is channelled into what Papadimitriou calls "deep topography". But the loopy incredibility of all this is redeemed by his indomitable playfulness. That he is relaxed about taking his own character along with him on his walks also helps a lot. He is good fun. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Documentary: London Perambulator (2009)
• Will Self: Walking out of London
• Richard Long: Walking Artist
• Robert Walser, The Walk

Writers' Rooms: Iain Sinclair

Photograph by Philip Grey

Iain Sinclair's writing desk. Photograph: Philip Grey (Source)

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Remembering W. G. Sebald
• Documentary: London Perambulator (2009)
• Writers' Rooms: Virginia Woolf
• Writers' Bedrooms
• Writers' Rooms: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The South Bank Show: J. G. Ballard

Documentary first broadcast in 2006

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: J. G. Ballard

Remembering W.G. Sebald

Max: a Celebration · 14 December 2011

Photograph: David Gibbeson

Ready Steady Book has drawn attention to a forthcoming event, celebrating the work of writer W. G. Sebald: 'On the 10th anniversary of his death, a unique event celebrating the late, great writer W.G. Max Sebald; with Anthea Bell, Ian Bostridge, A.S. Byatt, Julius Drake (tbc), Ian Galbraith, Dan Gretton, Grant Gee, Rachel Lichtenstein, Christopher MacLehose, Katie Mitchell, Andrew Motion, Iain Sinclair, Will Stone, Bill Swainson, Marina Warner and Stephen Watts.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Sebald as Academic
• W. G. Sebald: Writing Pictures
• W. G. Sebald Interviewed on Bookworm
• Coetzee on Sebald and the Uncanny
• James Wood on Sebald's Austerlitz

Will Self: Walking out of London

Self embarks on a series of 'radial walks' around London

Will Self. Photograph: Casey Kelbaugh.

Will Self writes: 'In the first few years of the last decade I undertook a series of what I called – with a nod to Iain Sinclair’s circumambulation of London – ‘radial walks’. These were tramps of between three and five days from my home near the city’s centre out into its hinterland, following either a cardinal or an ordinal point of the compass, depending on which direction most appealed to me at the time. The first of these walks took me northeast up the Lea Valley, through Epping Forest, then followed a long path called the Essex Way that traversed the surprisingly deep country well to the north of the Thames corridor, before I debouched through Dedham Vale and the Stour Estuary to arrive at Harwich.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Will Self
• Will Self on Literature and Visual Arts
• Daily Routines of Writers and Philosophers
• Will Self Interviews David Lynch
• Will Self, Walking to Hollywood

Documentary: London Perambulator (2009)

Watch John Rogers' documentary online

Strange, fascinating, and at times quite moving. Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Russell Brand introduce us to Nick Papadimitriou in this 2009 documentary from John Rogers (thank you to Charlie Fox for the link):

John Rogers’ film looks at the city we deny and the future city that awaits us. Leading London writers and cultural commentators Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Russell Brand explore the importance of the liminal spaces at the city’s fringe, it’s Edgelands, through the work of enigmatic and downright eccentric writer and researcher Nick Papadimitriou - a man whose life is dedicated to exploring and archiving areas beyond the permitted territories of the high street, the retail park, the suburban walkways.

The London Perambulator

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Will Self
• Will Self: Walking out of London
• Richard Long: Walking Artist

Disjecta: This week's links

Penguin Classic (RED) edition of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground

This week, Vintage claim the rights to a fourth novel in the Gormenghast series, Titus Awakes. 3:AM Magazine reports that Iain Sinclair will be talking at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (the city of disappearances). Lee Rourke announces publication of his debut novel, The Canal. And Mark Lawson reviews the status of the Great American Novelist for The Guardian. As if that wasn't enough, Bob Dylan is set to release a children's book; comedian Stewart Lee to publish a memoir; and Beckett's Waiting for Godot breaks box office records at the Haymarket Theatre in London.

Literature:

J. D. Salinger: Widow thanks neighbours for maintaining privacy
Iain Sinclair: Upcoming talk at the ICA
Shane Jones: Lee Rourke shares his thoughts on Jones' work
Mervyn Peake: Vintage buys rights to Gormenghast sequel, Titus Awakes
Lee Rourke: Lee Rourke's new novel, The Canal
Franz Kafka: This month's featured artist on A Piece of Monologue
Bob Dylan: New children's book, Man Gave Names to All the Animals
Irish Writers' Centre: IWC has been refused arts funding
Masters of American Literature: Lawson on Salinger, Roth, Morrison, and others.
Paul Celan: On Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan
European Literature in Translation: Discussion with Aleksandar Hemon and Anthea Bell
On Defacing Books
Penguin Classics (RED): New editions published for AIDS relief charity

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Conference,' Rational Agency as Ethical Life'

David Shields: Stephen Mitchelmore reviews Reality Hunger

Gender and Difference: Academic Conference, May 2010

Music:

Jazz: Ask Sonny Rollins
Jazz: New interview with Dave Brubeck

Film:

Academy Awards Nominations 2010

Theatre:

Samuel Beckett: The success of London Haymarket's Waiting for Godot

Art:

Kieron Williamson: The boy who paints like an old master
Banksy: Anindya Raychaudhuri on Banksy and graffiti-art

Etc.:

Stewart Lee: New book, How I Escaped My Certain Death: The Lives and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian
Cookie Crumbs: This month's links from Critical Cookie

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Chris Petit on J. G. Ballard

Filmmaker and novelist on one of his key influences, writer J. G. Ballard

'For Ballard, the key image of the last century was that of a man driving alone down a superhighway.'

Chris Petit, 'The Last Modernist'

Granta, 22 April 2009

The tributes just keep coming. Writer and critic Chris Petit has reflected on the passing of J. G. Ballard, who died earlier this week after a long illness. Petit is best known to me for his late-70s existential road movie Radio On, a downbeat black-and-white masterpiece about 'a man driving alone down a superhighway.' Petit's film is an excellent example of the Ballardian mood that pervades certain elements of British culture.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time the influence of Ballard has been felt in Petit's work. Iain Sinclair's Crash (BFI) draws a number of aesthetic parallels between Ballard and Petit. Chris Petit's debut novel, Robinson, even begins with a quotation from Ballard, taken from his autobiographical sequel to Empire of the Sun: The Kindness of Women. The quote reads: 'Deep assignments run through all our lives; there are no coincidences.'

You can read Petit's article, published in Granta, by clicking here.