THE DOME THAT FELL ON EARTH

For Iain Sinclair, London is a life project. It tends to take the same ideal shape of the city he tries to tell us about: a provisional landscape (Sinclair 2002: 44), multilevel and dynamically unstable, invaded by memories, projects, plans and virtual imaginations, walked through and re-moulded by the walker, finally fading away at its endlessly redrawn margins. One gets lost, and in doing so, he learns something more about the place he inhabits1: I’m in mid-stride, mid-monologue, when a deranged man (French) grabs me by the sleeve […] There’s something wrong with the landscape. Nothing fits. His compass has gone haywire. ‘Is this London? ’ he demands, very politely. Up close, he’s excited rather than mad. Not a runaway. It’s just that he’s been working a route through undifferentiated suburbs for hours, without reward. None of the landmarks – Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, Harrod’s, the Virgin Megastore – that would confirm, or justify, his sense of the metropolis. But his question is a brute. ‘Is this London? ’ Not in my book. London is whatever can be reached in a one-hour walk. The rest is fictional. […] ‘Four miles ’ I reply. At a venture. ‘London.’ A reckless improvisation. ‘Straight on. Keep going. Find a bridge and cross it. ’ I talk as if translating myself into a language primer (Sinclair & Atkins 1999: 38-43). Here, though conjured up by specific landmarks (Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, Harrod’s, the Virgin Megastore) and a few permanent inscriptions (the river and its bridges), the space of London stands out as a fiction made true by the steps of the walker. It is made true, but not real: despite his hard work, Sinclair reveals that London will always elude him as well as any other city-teller2