Will Self’s “Psychogeography”

“One morning a year ago, author Will Self sucked the life out of a cigarette and – careful not to wake the children – crept down the stairs in his house. Then he plunged out into the gloaming to begin his long walk from London to Manhattan … The author has become one of the leading – and one of the few – practitioners of a science called psychogeography … Self has revived the science and put his own stamp on it. He espouses walks from Point A to a ridiculously distant Point B as a method of reclaiming the in-between landscapes, and of hurtling himself into a pre-industrial sense of time.” From Interview with Will Self by Pagan Kennedy, Boston Globe.

See Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place by Will Self (Author) and Ralph Steadman (Illustrator) – Opening with a … 20,000-word essay on walking from London to New York, Psychogeography is a collection of 50 short pieces written over the last four years, together with 50 four-color illustrations by Ralph Steadman. In Psychogeography Self and Steadman explore the relationship between psyche and place in the contemporary world. Self thinks most people have a “wind-screen-based virtuality” on long- and short-distance travel. We drive, take buses and trains, fly. To combat this compromised reality, Will Self walks, relating intimately to place, as pedestrians do. Ranging in subject from swimming the Ganges to motorcycling across the Australian outback, shopping in an Iowa mall to surfing a tsunami, Psychogeography is at once a map of our world and the psychoanalysis of the way we inhabit it. The pieces are serious, humorous, facetious, and rambunctious. Psychogeography, the study of the effects of geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals, has captivated other writers including W. G. Sebald and Peter Ackroyd, but Self and Steadman have their own unique spin on how place shapes people and vice versa.

Originally from Networked_Performance by jo
reBlogged by michael on Dec 3, 2007, 8:19AM