Iain Sinclair / Dave McKean - Agents of Oblivion double-signed/remarqued ltd edn
Signed and numbered by Iain Sinclair
Signed and remarqued by Dave McKean - note : remarques vary from the one shown
“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.
Hardback edition limited to 550 copies.
Signed by Sinclair and McKean.
Cover art and illustrations by Dave McKean
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”
“Code 4: Agents of Oblivion”
“Generally speaking the dead do not return,” Artaud pronounced in a prose poem called “Electroshock”, composed after his involuntary transit from Dublin to the tender care of French asylums. Lunatic. Straitjacket. No return to any of his earlier selves. Artaud was a seeker but there was nothing economic about his migration. 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.
Code 4 alerts transport operatives to an unspecified violation: “spillage”. It is not blood or shit or vomit, this time. Narrative spillage. Ghost stories leaking through a permeable membrane between remembered experience and high fiction, between the living dead and the unquiet residents of other dimensions. Sleepwalking voyagers are on the drift, tapped by angels, prodded by demons. They are known as “Agents of Oblivion”. They do not possess badges or guns. And they did not take their inspiration from a defunct swamp rock combo of the last millennium. But there are no coincidences in the city of shadows. Four stories starting everywhere and finishing in madness. Four acknowledged guides. Four tricksters. Four inspirations. Blackwood. Machen. Ballard. Lovecraft. Spillage on the line. God’s face is pressing against a suburban window. We are becalmed in crisis. Phones twitter like starlings. Books are burning.
