Writing London: Materiality, Memory, Spectrality

264 Pages·2004·1.77 MB·English

by  Julian Wolfreys

Writing London
Materiality, memory, spectrality
Volume 2
Julian Wolfreys
Writing London Volume 2
Also by Julian Wolfreys
Books:
Occasional Deconstructions
Critical Keywords in Literary and Cultural Theory*
Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature*
Readings: Acts of Close Reading in Literary Theory
Deconstruction ·Derrida*
Writing London: the Trace of the Urban Text from Blake to Dickens*
The Rhetoric of Affirmative Resistance. Dissonant Identities from Carroll to Derrida*
Being English: Narratives, Idioms, and Performances of National Identity from
Coleridge to Trollope
Co-authored books:
Key Concepts in Literary Theory, with Ruth Robbins and Kenneth Womack
Peter Ackroyd: the Ludic and Labyrinthine Text, with Jeremy Gibson*
Als ob ich tot wäre, with Jacques Derrida and Ruth Robbins*
Edited and co-edited collections:
J. Hillis Miller: a Reader
The Beetle, Richard Marsh
Thinking Difference: Critics in Conversation
Glossalalia
The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia of Modern Criticism and Theory
Introducing Criticism at the 21st Century
Introducing Literary Theories: a Guide and Glossary
The Mayor of Casterbridge: Contemporary Critical Essays*
Victorian Gothic: Literary and Cultural Manifestations in the Nineteenth Century, with
Ruth Robbins*
Literary Theories: a Reader and Guide
The French Connections of Jacques Derrida, with John Brannigan and Ruth Robbins
The Derrida Reader: Writing Performances
Re: Joyce: Text, Culture, Politics, with John Brannigan and Geoff Ward*
Victorian Identities: Social and Cultural Formations in Nineteenth-Century Literature,
with Ruth Robbins*
Applying: To Derrida, with John Brannigan and Ruth Robbins*
Literary Theories: a Case Study in Critical Performance, with William Baker*
*Also published by Palgrave Macmillan / Macmillan Press
writing London
Volume 2: materiality, memory, spectrality
Julian Wolfreys
© Julian Wolfreys,2004
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of abbreviations vii
Introduction: London disfigured 3
I. Stages 23
1. Staging the city: London at the fin de siècle and the
crisis of representation 25
II. Crises 57
2. ‘That particular psychic London’: the uncanny example
of Elizabeth Bowen 59
3. The insatiable crisis of memory: Maureen Duffy’s Capital 84
III. Punctuations 107
IV. Interventions 121
4. Peter Ackroyd and the ‘endless variety’ of the ‘eternal
city’: receiving ‘London’s haunted past’ 123
5. Sites of resistance, sites of memory: Iain Sinclair’s
‘delirious fictions’ of London 161
V. Punctuations 195
VI. Constellations 207
6. A coincidence of disparate incidents: London undone
or, seven artists in search of the city 209
Notes 239
Index of names 251
v
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following:
Charmian Hearne for having commissioned this project in the first
place; Emily Rosser at Palgrave Macmillan for having faith in my ability
to complete it and infinite patience during countless delays; John
Leavey, the Department of English, and the College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences at the University of Florida for support and funding at crucial
stages in the research for this book; Rebecca Brown, whose indefatig-
able skills in copy-editing and proof reading (‘I have a feel for the semi-
colon which is exquisite’), and critical observations on the minutiae of
arguments have been invaluable; all of the students in my graduate sem-
inars on the twentieth-century British novel in 2001 and 2003, who
engaged in the contours of reading, which became in some strange
fashion the present volume; the organizers of the MRG and EGO con-
ferences at the University of Florida, who invited me to give papers at
those conferences, which were to become the chapters on Iain Sinclair
and Maureen Duffy; I also wish to thank the following, all of whom
have offered something, in some measure, great or small: Peter Ackroyd,
Hélène Cixous, Pamela Gilbert, Afshin Hafizi, Jim Kincaid, Nicole
LaRose, J. Hillis Miller, Nick Royle, Fred Young.
Parts of Chapter 4, on Peter Ackroyd, appeared in a very different form
in Jeremy Gibson and Julian Wolfreys, Peter Ackroyd: the Ludic and
Labyrinthine Text (Macmillan, 2000). A shorter version of Chapter 6, ‘A
coincidence of disparate incidents: London undone or, seven artists
in search of the city’, appeared as ‘Undoing London or, Urban Haunts:
the Fracturing of Representation in the 1990s’ in Pamela K. Gilbert, ed.,
Imagined Londons (State University of New York Press, 2002: 193–218),
and has been substantially revised and altered in the present version.
The author would like to thank the editors and publishers of this work
for permission to republish in the present form.
JULIAN WOLFREYS
vi
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited works, which
are given parenthetically throughout. Bibliographical details of all other
works appear in the notes following first use, and subsequently as
parenthetical citation.
D Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens (1990) London: Minerva, 1991.
HDD Ackroyd, Peter. The House of Doctor Dee. London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1993.
DLLG Ackroyd, Peter. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. London:
Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994.
B Ackroyd, Peter. Blake. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995.
LTM Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. London: Chatto &
Windus, 1998.
L:B Ackroyd, Peter. London: The Biography. London: Chatto &
Windus, 2000.
TC Ackroyd, Peter. The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short
Stories, Lectures. Ed. and introd. Thomas Wright. London:
Chatto & Windus, 2001.
LC Atkins, Marc, and Iain Sinclair. Liquid City. London: Reaktion
Books, 1999.
AP Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project (1982). Trans. Howard
Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press,
2002.
ASCM Besant, Walter. All Sorts and Conditions of Men(1882). Introd.
Helen Small. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
DH Bowen, Elizabeth. The Death of the Heart (1938). London:
Penguin, 1962.
HD Bowen, Elizabeth. The Heat of the Day (1948). Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1962.
CS Bowen, Elizabeth. The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
(1980). Introd. Angus Wilson. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1983.
SF Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Sign of Four (1890). Introd. Peter
Ackroyd. London: Penguin, 2001.
W Duffy, Maureen. Wounds. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
vii
viii Abbreviations
C Duffy, Maureen. Capital (1975). Introd. Paul Bailey. London:
Harvill Panther, 2001.
L Duffy, Maureen. Londoners: an Elegy(1983). London: Methuen,
1985.
FE Fisher, Allen. ‘The Mathematics of Rimbaud’; ‘Six Poems from
Brixton Fractals’. In Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths and Brian
Catling, Future Exiles: 3 London Poets. London: Paladin, 1992.
SL Ford, Ford Madox. The Soul of London(1905). Ed. Alan G. Hill.
London: Everyman, 1995.
L James, Henry. ‘London’ (1888). In London Stories and Other
Writings, ed. and introd. David Kynaston. Padstow: Tabb
House, 1989.
RR Lichtenstein, Rachel, and Iain Sinclair. Rodinsky’s Room.
London: Granta, 1999.
JSP Litvinoff, Emanuel. Journey through a Small Planet (1972).
London: Robin Clark, 1993.
TI Machen, Arthur. The Three Impostors (1895). Ed. and introd.
David Trotter. London: Everyman, 1995.
ML Moorcock, Michael. Mother London (1998). London: Scribner,
2000.
R Petit, Chris. Robinson (1993). London: Granta, 2001.
RD Sinclair, Iain. Radon Daughters. London: Random House, 1994.
LHSB Sinclair, Iain. Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge. Introd. Michael
Moorcock. Maps Dave McKean. London: Vintage, 1995.
LOT Sinclair, Iain. Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the
Secret History of London. London: Granta, 1997.
SCA Sinclair, Iain, and Dave McKean. Slow Chocolate Autopsy.
London: Phoenix House, 1997.
SM Sinclair, Iain. Sorry Meniscus: Excursions to the Millennium
Dome. London: Profile Books, 1999.
D Sinclair, Iain. Downriver (Or, the Vessels of Wrath): a Narrative
in Twelve Tales (1991). London: Granta, 2001.
LO Sinclair, Iain. London Orbital. London: Granta, 2002.
JH Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde (1886). In The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde
and Other Tales of Terror, ed. Robert Mighall. London: Penguin,
2002.
PDG Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891). Ed. and introd.
Peter Ackroyd. London: Penguin, 1988.
The London cycle goes forward.
Constructions loom in astral fogs. Clearly,
eras return.
Aidan Andrew Dun, Vale Royal
This exaggerated London oppresses the imagination and tears
the heart.
Heinrich Heine, Englischen Fragmenten
You can only be happy in London if you begin to consider your-
self a Londoner.
Peter Ackroyd, London