American Smoke
Journeys to the End of the Light
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
In American Smoke, Iain Sinclair hits the road to America in the tracks of the Beats.
On the trail of the American Beats, Iain Sinclair makes a delirious and perhaps ill-fated expedition in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Charles Olson and Gary Snyder. It is a journey in search of literary ghosts behind mirages of volcanoes and the Old West. In which rumours vie with false memories and unreliable reports to steer our guide from one strange adventure into another. It is an odyssey in which the beginning offers no clues as to where it may end.
'A transatlantic odyssey . . . grippingly haunted' Observer
'A challenging, maddening, fascinating journey . . . enjoy Sinclair's poetic language and subtly warped sense of humour. Rich and engrossing' Metro
'Sit back and feel the invigorating pulse of beautifully crafted prose . . . wonderful' Daily Telegraph
'Iain Sinclair has gone from cult author to national treasure' Robert Macfarlane
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This rewarding literary travelogue through the turf of Beat poets and novelists is a layered, shape-shifting homage to their edgy rhythms. English poet, novelist, and actor Sinclair (Downriver) combines history, memory, and travel in a dizzying mix that will leave the novice reader pawing through primary sources in order to sort out the map of their influence, culturally and geographically. Readers steeped in the works of Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Lowry, Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder (among the many writers referenced in his kaleidoscopic recollections) will enjoy the jam-packed depictions of these "psychogeographic energy lines," as Sinclair (b. 1943) leaps from Black Mountain College to Lowry's damp beach shack in Vancouver to Ed Dorn's L.A. living room where he rhapsodizes about the prowess of the soccer star Wayne Rooney on television. Unbound by narrative constraint, stuffed with personal recollections of interactions with his heroes, shifting between time frames without warning or clear intent, the book's main flaw might be its overabundance of material. But there's plenty of humor and a respect for his idols; his account of his second pilgrimage to William Burroughs's home is particularly good. Of his quest, Sinclair concedes: "I'm not sure what I was searching for, but I think I may have found it." Any reader with a fraction of Sinclair's robust, relentless knowledge and enthusiasm will feel the same.
