Imaginary Cities - Softcover

Anderson, Darran

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0992765595 ISBN 13: 9780992765590

Verlag: Influx Press, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Inspired by the surreal accounts of the explorer and 'man of a million lies' Marco Polo, Imaginary Cities charts the metropolis and the imagination, and the symbiosis therein. A work of creative nonfiction, the book roams through space, time and possibility, mapping cities of sound, melancholia and the afterlife, where time runs backwards or which float among the clouds. In doing so, Imaginary Cities seeks to move beyond the cliches of psychogeography and hauntology, to not simply revisit the urban past, or our relationship with it, but to invade and reinvent it., Following in the lineage of Borges, Calvino, Chris Marker and Kenneth White, the book examines the city from global macrocosm to the microcosm of its inhabitants' perspectives. It proceeds through opium dreams, sea voyages, the hallucinations of prisoners, nocturnal decadence, impossible Soviet skyscrapers, marauding golems, subterranean civilisations, apocalyptic prophecies and the work of architectural visionaries such as Antonio Sant'Elia, Archigram and Buckminster Fuller. It rethinks the ideas of utopias and dystopias, urban exploration, alienation and resistance.It claims that the Situationists lacked ambition when they suggested, "Beneath the paving stones, the beach., " Instead, beneath the paving stones, we may just be able to discern the entire universe. Imaginary Cities demonstrates that each city dreamt up by artists, writers, architects and lunatics has a real-life equivalent and that the great Marco Polo was no liar. Imaginary Cities need not simply exist in fiction or the mind., We already inhabit them.

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Críticas:

"It defies handy summation. Imaginary Cities roams freely, and with easy authority, from the first scratchings on a cave wall to last month's architecture magazines... this is a hugely ambitious book for a small publisher, and Anderson is delightful company as an author." -- Icon Magazine

"Poetic, aphoristic and comprising a seeming infinity of quotable lines... a wonder cabinet." -- The Chicago Tribune

"A compendium of fantasy cities that takes its cue from Marco Polo via Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, this remarkable survey reveals the influence that the metropolis of the mind has had on the real thing." -- Financial Times Best Books of 2015

"A fantastic journey through a constellation of ideas about that most familiar and yet alien of spaces, the city. If I believed in miracles I would call Imaginary Cities a miracle." --Fernando Sdrigotti's Top Reads of 2015 in 3:AM Magazine

"In non-fiction, let there be garlands and kisses, please, for Darren Anderson whose Imaginary Cities is a definitive survey." --Kevin Barry in the Irish Independent

"One of those books you have to pause your reading every so often because it is sparking so many ideas in your head, and one of those wonderful reads which makes you want to read many of the books it references." --Forbidden Planet Blog

"In non-fiction, let there be garlands and kisses, please, for Darren Anderson whose Imaginary Cities is a definitive survey." --Kevin Barry in the Irish Independent

"One of those books you have to pause your reading every so often because it is sparking so many ideas in your head, and one of those wonderful reads which makes you want to read many of the books it references." --Forbidden Planet Blog

Biografía del autor:

Darran Anderson is a writer from Derry. He is co-editor of the literary journal The Honest Ulsterman and former contributing editor to 3:AM Magazine and Dogmatika. He has written the 33 1/3 study of Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson (Bloomsbury, 2013) as well as the forthcoming Jack Kerouac - Critical Lives (Reaktion Books, 2014) and A Hubristic Flea (3:AM Press, 2014). He has also written several collections of poetry including Tesla's Ghost (Blackheath Books, 2009). He regularly writes on art, literature and music for the likes of Studio International, 3:AM and The Quietus.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Influx Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0992765595
• ISBN 13: 9780992765590
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 576