Psychogeography is a term coined by a bunch of avant-garde European upstarts known as the Situationists in the 1950's and 60's to refer to the impact that one's surroundings has upon one's emotions and pscyhe. The Situationists were rebelling against the way urban planning had dumbed-down individuals' connection to their surroundings by locking residents into prescribed patterns of movement. Through setting off on derivés, literally walking "drifts" about the urban landscape, the Situationists sought to reconnect individual with environment.
Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place, a collection of 55 essays culled from British author Will Self's eponymous Independent column, is similarly themed around an intimate acquaintance between Self and his environs. Will Self is a walker and has been since kicking a drug habit more than eight years ago. It is with an addict's commitment that he takes to the activity: Hundred mile treks are commonplace for Self, and he thinks nothing of walking to a meeting that will take him 10 hours to reach on foot.
Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place, a collection of 55 essays culled from British author Will Self's eponymous Independent column, is similarly themed around an intimate acquaintance between Self and his environs. Will Self is a walker and has been since kicking a drug habit more than eight years ago. It is with an addict's commitment that he takes to the activity: Hundred mile treks are commonplace for Self, and he thinks nothing of walking to a meeting that will take him 10 hours to reach on foot.
Pscyhogeography's anchor piece describes a 2006 walk from Self's home in suburban London to mid-town Manahattan, briefly interrupted of course by 35,000 air miles. Along the way, Self delves into the historical and social details of his surroundings, paying loving attention to the interzones, places "that (defy) the easy certainties of place," hinterlands between country and city, between urban and industrial. Self is especially loquacious on the London leg of his journey with which he is intimately acquainted.
"The scale of Richmond Park is wrong: people come here to drive about in their SUVs and look at the deer, and, in fairness, this being the time of the annual cull - the deer, that is, not the people - they are in great numbers, the stags photogenically tossing their antlers. But if an SUV in central London is a solecism, here in the park it's an insult. The local council certainly think so - they've become the first in London to levy a special tax on the hypertrophied all-terrain baby-buggies, the Porsche Cayennes and Volkswagen Touaregs. Vehicles, I was told recently, that are known to cognescenti as 'badge cars'. Henry VIII would have approved. I picture him hunting deer armed with a 9mm Glock pistol, from the front seat of his Land Rover Vogue."
"The scale of Richmond Park is wrong: people come here to drive about in their SUVs and look at the deer, and, in fairness, this being the time of the annual cull - the deer, that is, not the people - they are in great numbers, the stags photogenically tossing their antlers. But if an SUV in central London is a solecism, here in the park it's an insult. The local council certainly think so - they've become the first in London to levy a special tax on the hypertrophied all-terrain baby-buggies, the Porsche Cayennes and Volkswagen Touaregs. Vehicles, I was told recently, that are known to cognescenti as 'badge cars'. Henry VIII would have approved. I picture him hunting deer armed with a 9mm Glock pistol, from the front seat of his Land Rover Vogue."
And though Self is less familiar with the New York leg, the inherent intimacy experienced by the pscychogeographer is evidenced by Self's sharp insight:
"We gain Utica Avenue, and this is a proper city junction. There are people on the streets hurrying, with the kind of pecuniary and sumptuary motives that would gratify Adam Smith - or even Milton Friedman. From the entrance to the subway there comes a great meaty, oily, burnt-dust afflatus; down there, New York is moving its bowels, peristaltically pushing its populace through snaking colons and sooty back passages."
"We gain Utica Avenue, and this is a proper city junction. There are people on the streets hurrying, with the kind of pecuniary and sumptuary motives that would gratify Adam Smith - or even Milton Friedman. From the entrance to the subway there comes a great meaty, oily, burnt-dust afflatus; down there, New York is moving its bowels, peristaltically pushing its populace through snaking colons and sooty back passages."
Not all of the essays gathered in Psychogeography feature Self's pursuit of "ambulatory sartori," but they are all wonderfully accompanied by Ralph Steadman's artwork, his "tortured elasticity of vision." How Self and Steadman found each other remains a mystery, but Steadman's art complements Self's ramblings as well as it did Hunter S. Thompson's. Indeed, there is more than a hint of Gonzo in Self's socio-historical and quasi politically-radical commentary. In fact, it wouldn't be innacurate to describe Psychogeography as something that might be written by a young Hunter S. Thompson, were he British and drug-free. Read Will Self's column in the Independent to get a taste for his particular brand of pscyhogeography. I think you'll find yourself coming back for more.
