In the Traces of John Clare's 'Journey Out Of Essex'
From the labyrinthine centre of Lights Out for the Territory, through the gravitational rim of London Orbital, to the unknown territory where it all begins...
Flying, drowning, dreaming, walking - the obsessive themes of a book inspired by John Clare's Journey Out of Essex - are slow to declare themselves to Iain Sinclair when he sets off in the poet's footsteps. But this is only the beginning. The easy part. A landscape of huge skies, dancing bears and thirteenth-century stones rises from the peat of a drained inland sea, while history, dead relatives, family connections and the unexpected subvert a well-planned narrative. And the Clare fugue turns out to be the same distance as the circuit of the M25, Clare's insanity foreshadowing the utter madness of London stretched into a straight line...
From the labyrinthine centre of Lights Out for the Territory, through the gravitational rim of London Orbital, to the unknown territory where it all begins...
Flying, drowning, dreaming, walking - the obsessive themes of a book inspired by John Clare's Journey Out of Essex - are slow to declare themselves to Iain Sinclair when he sets off in the poet's footsteps. But this is only the beginning. The easy part. A landscape of huge skies, dancing bears and thirteenth-century stones rises from the peat of a drained inland sea, while history, dead relatives, family connections and the unexpected subvert a well-planned narrative. And the Clare fugue turns out to be the same distance as the circuit of the M25, Clare's insanity foreshadowing the utter madness of London stretched into a straight line...
Praise for this book
"The reach, integrity and beauty of Iain Sinclair's writing is simply without parallel." - Will Self
Used availability for Iain Sinclair's Edge of the Orison