Tag: Iain Sinclair

Weekend links 2

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A picture for embittered lovers.

Among other things this week I’ve been working on the design for another CD featuring photos by Liz Eve, a photographer whose pictures are always a pleasure to use. (Our earlier encounters can be seen here, here and here.) The latest set have this anti-Valentine for an eye-popping cover image. I’ll be posting the finished layouts once everything is approved by the label.

• Crash: JG Ballard’s artistic legacy. Iain Sinclair on Ballard and a new art exhibition inspired by the author’s fiction.

• More art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ Artlog is essential reading. Lots of insights into his beautiful work.

• Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges will be released in an expanded edition on April 27th with outtakes, documentary, book and other extras.

• Sonic Youth dude and fellow Arthurian Thurston Moore has a blog.

• “That’s all it comes down to in the end, though, isn’t it? Put it in and jiggle it about a bit.” Alan Bennett & John Fortune discuss sex. A hoot.

• “I wanna walk through Sodom with a boy on my arm / Who’s so damn pretty I don’t know where I am…” A song from 1984 for Valentine’s Day: I, Bloodbrother Be (£4,000 Love Letter) by Shock Headed Peters.

Wyndham Lewis: Portraits

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James Joyce by Wyndham Lewis (1921).

Wyndham Lewis: Portraits is an exhibition running at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until October 19, 2008. I’m still slowly reading my way through Ulysses so here’s Lewis’s sketch of Joyce, a drawing I’ve always liked for its curving lines. The exhibition notes mention Joyce as one of the subjects on display so visitors may be able to see the original there.

• Library of the lost | Iain Sinclair on Lewis’s portraiture.
• Banned TS Eliot portrait goes on show

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Picasso-esque
• Books for Bloomsday
• Finnegan begin again

City of Spades

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Today’s book purchase is a secondhand copy of the first novel in Colin MacInnes’ London trilogy (Absolute Beginners and Mr Love and Justice were the others). City of Spades was first published in 1957 but this is the 1985 reissue with a cover by Neville Brody which is the main reason for my picking it up. The books were reprinted in the mid-Eighties to coincide with the release of Julien Temple’s dreadful musical adaptation of Absolute Beginners, a film that must have done a lot to drive people away from MacInnes’ books; it certainly had that effect on me. Brody supplied all the faux-pulp covers for the reissued series.

MacInnes is remembered now by contemporary writers like Iain Sinclair for his pungent documenting of London lowlife. He was also something of a pioneer in writing about the Fifties’ gay scene in a matter-of-fact manner. You can read more about his works here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive