'American Smoke: Journeys to the end of the light' by Iain Sinclair

Sinclair is an outstanding psychogeographer, best known for his walks through parts of London whose neglected multivalent histories are under threat from bland internationalist renewal. His work is satisfying for the same reason as W.G. Sebald’s: both writers unshackle historical detail from the narrowing of meaning normally concomitant with the passing of time. In American Smoke Sinclair travels across the United States, ostensibly in search of the psychic spoor of the writers associated with the Black Mountain College and the Beats – Charles Olsen, Malcolm Lowry, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs et al – but really tracking the literary veins of his formative years as a young man in Dublin. For Sinclair, every journey outwards is a means to an inward journey, each observed detail leads to a core sample of history and possibility and unleashes a web of resonance and understanding through the fractal reach of his incredible prose. If you are interested in the Beats, this book will provide a richness and subtlety of understanding unavailable from other sources (and possibly beyond the scope of its subjects (the book is, after all, about the possibilities of being aware of something rather than about the thing itself)); if you are not interested in the Beats this is still a very rewarding book to read: open to any page and a detail will begin to refract and vibrate with unexpected understanding (and who knows, you might inadvertently become a little more interested in the Beats (twisted as they were from flaws and failures) once the clichés of their legacy have been discharged).

(October 2014)