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AGENTES DEL OLVIDO
“How long have things been coming apart in this way?” – The Lure of Silence
“Generally speaking the dead do not return,” pronounced Antonin Artaud. But the dead are permitted to visit those who welcome them. Their spectral, machine-made voices echo in deep tunnels under London. Voices without hosts. Without agency. They make their oracular pronouncements even when nobody is listening on the vast empty platforms of the Elizabeth Line. They have their codes and their secret meanings.
Four stories starting everywhere and finishing in madness. Four acknowledged guides. Four tricksters. Four inspirations. Algernon Blackwood. Arthur Machen. J. G. Ballard. H. P. Lovecraft. They are known as “Agents of Oblivion”. And sometimes, in brighter light, as oblivious angels . . .
As host, as oracle, Iain Sinclair moves through this quartet of tales, through a spectral London that once was, or might never have been.
Contents
“Code 4: Agents of Oblivion”
“The Lure of Silence”
“House of Flies”
“London Spirit”
“At the Mountains of Madness”
“Acknowledgements”
“About the Author”
“About the Illustrator”
Limited to 550 copies of which 100 were embossed and hand numbered; signed by Iain Sinclair and Dave McKean; 191 pages; lithographically printed on 90 gsm paper; dust jacketed; illustrated Wibalin boards; sewn binding; head- and tail-bands
“Generally speaking the dead do not return,” pronounced Antonin Artaud. But the dead are permitted to visit those who welcome them. Their spectral, machine-made voices echo in deep tunnels under London. Voices without hosts. Without agency. They make their oracular pronouncements even when nobody is listening on the vast empty platforms of the Elizabeth Line. They have their codes and their secret meanings.
Four stories starting everywhere and finishing in madness. Four acknowledged guides. Four tricksters. Four inspirations. Algernon Blackwood. Arthur Machen. J. G. Ballard. H. P. Lovecraft. They are known as “Agents of Oblivion”. And sometimes, in brighter light, as oblivious angels . . .
As host, as oracle, Iain Sinclair moves through this quartet of tales, through a spectral London that once was, or might never have been.
Contents
“Code 4: Agents of Oblivion”
“The Lure of Silence”
“House of Flies”
“London Spirit”
“At the Mountains of Madness”
“Acknowledgements”
“About the Author”
“About the Illustrator”
Limited to 550 copies of which 100 were embossed and hand numbered; signed by Iain Sinclair and Dave McKean; 191 pages; lithographically printed on 90 gsm paper; dust jacketed; illustrated Wibalin boards; sewn binding; head- and tail-bands
262 pages, Paperback
First published May 3, 2023
3 people are currently reading
141 people want to read
About the author
Iain Sinclair
121 books342 followersIain Sinclair is a British writer and film maker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.
Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).
His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.
His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).
Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.
One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.
Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.
In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.
Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in Hastings, East Sussex.
Sinclair's education includes studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus, the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School).
His early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) closely connected with the British avantgarde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as J.H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters; later on, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, in 1996, the Picador anthology Conductors of Chaos.
His early books Lud Heat (1975) and Suicide Bridge (1979) were a mixture of essay, fiction and poetry; they were followed by White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), a novel juxtaposing the tale of a disreputable band of bookdealers on the hunt for a priceless copy of Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet and the Jack the Ripper murders (here attributed to the physician William Gull).
Sinclair was for some time perhaps best known for the novel Downriver (1991), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1992 Encore Award. It envisages the UK under the rule of the Widow, a grotesque version of Margaret Thatcher as viewed by her harshest critics, who supposedly establishes a one party state in a fifth term. The volume of essays Lights Out for the Territory gained Sinclair a wider readership by treating the material of his novels in non-fiction form. His essay 'Sorry Meniscus' (1999) ridicules the Millennium Dome. In 1997, he collaborated with Chris Petit, sculptor Steve Dilworth, and others to make The Falconer, a 56 minute semi-fictional 'documentary' film set in London and the Outer Hebrides about the British underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead. It also features Stewart Home, Kathy Acker and Howard Marks.
One of his most recent works and part of a series focused around London is the non-fiction London Orbital; the hard cover edition was published in 2002, along with a documentary film of the same name and subject. It describes a series of trips he took tracing the M25, London's outer-ring motorway, on foot. Sinclair followed this with Edge of the Orison, a psychogeographical reconstruction of the poet John Clare's walk from Dr Matthew Allen's private lunatic asylum, at Fairmead House, High Beach, in the centre of Epping Forest in Essex, to his home in Helpston, near Peterborough. Sinclair also writes about Claybury Asylum, another psychiatric hospital in Essex, in Rodinsky's Room, a collaboration with the artist Rachel Lichtenstein.
Much of Sinclair's recent work consists of an ambitious and elaborate literary recuperation of the so-called occultist psychogeography of London. Other psychogeographers who have worked on similar material include Will Self, Stewart Home and the London Psychogeographical Association. In 2008 he wrote the introduction to Wide Boys Never Work, the London Books reissue of Robert Westerby's classic London low-life novel. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report followed in 2009.
In an interview with This Week in Science, William Gibson said that Sinclair was his favourite author.
Iain Sinclair lives in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney, and has a flat in Hastings, East Sussex.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 12, 2024
Crows at the window would be substituted by the witness of angels.
Presently I am not sure about this one, unsure whether an idol's twilight dimmed my awe? Perhaps it is time to acknowledge some flaws and drift to the tent city of Indifference? I'll always have Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report, right?
Perhaps it was the necessary audacity of his project: Sinclair finds points of departure from four authors Algernon Blackwood Arthur Machen J.G. Ballard and H.P. Lovecraft, alas these could have been meshed in his normal quest for Soho celluloid or a lost poem from John Clare. There are the usual jabs at Tories, hypermarkets, the Olympics and mobile phones. A painful admission is also necessary: I hated parts of this, I felt it embarrassingly clunky, images recycled beyond legibility. It is the astonishing illustrations from Dave McKean which warrants all three of the stars.
Presently I am not sure about this one, unsure whether an idol's twilight dimmed my awe? Perhaps it is time to acknowledge some flaws and drift to the tent city of Indifference? I'll always have Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report, right?
Perhaps it was the necessary audacity of his project: Sinclair finds points of departure from four authors Algernon Blackwood Arthur Machen J.G. Ballard and H.P. Lovecraft, alas these could have been meshed in his normal quest for Soho celluloid or a lost poem from John Clare. There are the usual jabs at Tories, hypermarkets, the Olympics and mobile phones. A painful admission is also necessary: I hated parts of this, I felt it embarrassingly clunky, images recycled beyond legibility. It is the astonishing illustrations from Dave McKean which warrants all three of the stars.
August 5, 2023
Sinclair, Iain - Agents Of Oblivion
Four section “travelogue” (using this definition very loosely), referencing four emissaries:
Blackwood, Machen, Ballard, Lovecraft.
I freely confess that the first section, with its nod to Algernon Blackwood, flummoxed me completely. I simply could not get into the rhythm of this. Mind you, I struggle a fair amount with Blackwood’s own stories.
Entering the Machen section, I was on surer footing, or at least I was beginning to grasp Sinclair’s cadence. Dense writing here, every sentence a compact prose poem. Not to be rushed, even if I could, but a heady flood of images, observations and thoughts to savor.
The journey with/to/acknowledging J G Ballard I enjoyed most, perhaps because this veers closest to our own period. The signposts were more familiar. Foolishly, I hoped I understood Sinclair.
Not so. With the HPL adventure toward the mountains, I felt unmoored again. In many ways, this section is also a dream quest.
To be blunt, this is not a book that yields easily. I imagine a second reading might prove rewarding. Finding the time, though, oh for the time.
Four section “travelogue” (using this definition very loosely), referencing four emissaries:
Blackwood, Machen, Ballard, Lovecraft.
I freely confess that the first section, with its nod to Algernon Blackwood, flummoxed me completely. I simply could not get into the rhythm of this. Mind you, I struggle a fair amount with Blackwood’s own stories.
Entering the Machen section, I was on surer footing, or at least I was beginning to grasp Sinclair’s cadence. Dense writing here, every sentence a compact prose poem. Not to be rushed, even if I could, but a heady flood of images, observations and thoughts to savor.
The journey with/to/acknowledging J G Ballard I enjoyed most, perhaps because this veers closest to our own period. The signposts were more familiar. Foolishly, I hoped I understood Sinclair.
Not so. With the HPL adventure toward the mountains, I felt unmoored again. In many ways, this section is also a dream quest.
To be blunt, this is not a book that yields easily. I imagine a second reading might prove rewarding. Finding the time, though, oh for the time.
July 8, 2023
Another fantastic collection of stories from Iain Sinclair.
October 30, 2025
Oficialmente no es para mi. Me lo he terminado por curiosidad, la escritura es correcta, y la forma de seguir con las historias utilizando partes de Londres me parece bien estructurado.
Pero las continuas referencias se me han hecho tediosas.
Y no me ha aportado nada.
Pero las continuas referencias se me han hecho tediosas.
Y no me ha aportado nada.
June 1, 2023
Just superb no other words !
November 7, 2025
Great lyrical prose, but unfortunately I definitely lack the background knowledge to appreciate how the author draws inspiration from great horror writers.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews