Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London

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Summary: Outstanding investigator of modern London mythology
Review: Angela Carter, M.John Harrison, Peter Ackroyd, Michael Moorcock -- and Iain Sinclair. All of them have made it their business to investigate the myths and apocrypha which they believe are the psychic structure of London. Whether it's Carter's Wise Children,Harrison's Travel Arrangements, Moorcock's King of the City or Ackroyd's Dan Leno, they all display the same obsessions. What's remarkable is that all are very different. Sinclair's is the only book which is factual, but it fits so smoothly into fiction like Downriver and Radon Daughters that sometimes you can hardly tell. There is an intellectual rigour, an original eye, a beautiful poet's precision -- and the low-down on some high life characters. I can't recommend this wonderful, rich book enough. Great value, too!

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Summary: The Londoner's Londoner
Review: If you enjoyed Peter Ackroyd's 'biography' of London, then you will want to read this account of modern London. Sinclair is a great walker and he describes a series of journeys across the contemporary city which few others have ever taken. This gives him the chance to comment on the way. This book is essentially a modern meditation and it's wonderful. Extended poetry. This is the best of modern English literature. Don't miss it!

Rating:
Summary: The Londoner's Londoner
Review: If you enjoyed Peter Ackroyd's 'biography' of London, then you will want to read this account of modern London. Sinclair is a great walker and he describes a series of journeys across the contemporary city which few others have ever taken. This gives him the chance to comment on the way. This book is essentially a modern meditation and it's wonderful. Extended poetry. This is the best of modern English literature. Don't miss it!

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Summary: Take your A-Z, else lose yourself in London.
Review: Lights Out for the Territory is a dense reading of 90's London. More informative than a dozen tourguides, it follows the author's wanderings as he inscribes his path on the urban landscape, while reading the signs and people and stories encountered on the way. It captures that simultaneous feeling of madness, magic and decay, of history and secrets just beyond your reach, that comprise a goodly percentage my antipodean memories of London living. It traverses the mysterious and the banal, art and death, Howard Marks and Frankie Fraser. Lets hope there will be a sequel. Read and enjoy.

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Summary: Hits and misses
Review: Melissa Rossi's review is exceptionally clear and focused, and defines LIGHTS OUT FOR THE TERRITORIES well.
In those qualities, her review is everything that LIGHTS OUT is not. What is so maddening about this book of Sinclair's is that it tantalizes with its brilliant language while darting off in all directions at once and confusing the reader. Sinclair is a fine, poetic writer with a remarkable grasp of the language and an incandescent fire in the way he pours on the imagery, but the principal difficulty is that there is no center. The book wanders about, much as the author did with his research, and alternates its focus from closeups of obscure trivia and minutiae to grand and glorious vistas. And the editor (we are assured that one was at work, though that editor's hand remains well hidden) permitted Sinclair to act out his every last professional, social and experiential tic, pleasure and annoyance to the last bleeding degree. He rants spectacularly.
The truly saddening part about such negative comments, reflected in the other Amazon reviews as with Rossi's, is that Sinclair is one of the most interesting voices around these days. Of course he has the right to express himself on his own terms, and Granta permits him, but readers have the equal right to say 'Enough.'
For a better and more disciplined read that nevertheless shows Sinclair's skills, LONDON ORBITAL is a far superior effort, a book that Sinclair admits was rehearsed in part through earlier works like LIGHTS OUT. Read my LONDON ORBITAL review and you will see why.

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Summary: Learn to see London through new eyes
Review: This book is of interest to anyone who has ever lived in London. Using mainly intuition, Sinclair takes us on a psychogeographical open-top bus journey down the city's darker alleys, parks and thoroughfares. (In)famous Londoners are deconstructed. My only gripe would be the lack of referencing to Dickens, who has been there before, and knew all about it.

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Summary: Less a travelogue, more a personal diatribe
Review: What can you say about someone who pokes every eye including his own? In its relentless pursuit of that English national pastime, sneering, this dense thicket of a book encapsulates Wilde's definition of a cynic. Targets range from the Krays to Lord Archer through Thatcher (of course) and anyone else with the temerity to pass before Sinclair's broadcast gaze, including himself. A combination of unremitting carping and abstruse referencing can be tedious, and Lights Out lays out deserts of tedium. But they're nearly worth negotiating for the jewels that come out of them, because Sinclair's obviously no idiot and his hot-and-cold mind can produce gems. He has the uncanny ability to conjure up a scene without describing it in detail, whether it be London's back alleys or the view from Archer's window, pocket-parks or tidewater filth. By the end of the book you feel as if you've spent the longest evening of your life in a pub with an intelligent, but increasingly drunk, companion. As the evening wears on the conversation becomes one-sided, disconnected and relevant only to the speaker. You're glad when he finally runs out of steam and goes home, but the next day you warmly recall the brighter parts of the evening. Melissa Rossi's review has it almost right except for one important thing: I have to believe Sinclair got a huge laugh out of the slavishly positive reviews his book received from British critics. If not, if he takes himself as unreservedly seriously as they do, he's setting himself up for a pole-axing from the next Sinclair to come along.