The Opposite of a Dog

Jenny Turner

Radon Daughters by Iain Sinclair
Cape, 458 pp, £15.99, August 1994, ISBN 0 224 03887 7

‘I’m so glad to hear that your son is having some success at last, Mrs Sinclair,’ said the Queen Mother. ‘We all follow his career with the greatest interest.’

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Vol. 16 No. 19 · 6 October 1994 » Jenny Turner » The Opposite of a Dog (print version)
Pages 16-17 | 3699 words

Letters

From Audrey Allan

Jenny Turner’s felicitous description of your typical ‘literary evening’ in Camden’s Com pendium bookshop didn’t – you know – make one want to rupture the old breathing equipment trying to hold out for their next Caliguan bash (LRB, 6 October). Though headily tiptoeing between ‘refugees and survivors from the many literary-artistic “scenes” of London’s recent subterranean past’ must be some sort of joy, I wonder if Turner is right in saying that ‘this is the environment out of which Iain Sinclair’s writing comes.’ Is it? Sinclairworld had always seemed like a place of oval-eyed, necrophiliac bootboys, razor-thin Skins, savage dogs, the occasional dark sky, moneyless tart or scuzzy old trickster ripe from the East. Delicate types, who tend to find the typical bookshop environment a little choking. Much as I’d thrill to see a row of coughing Rottweilers tied to the railings around Compendium each time the shop is aglow after dark, I’ve not noticed one yet.

Audrey Allan
London NW5

From Stuart Silverman

In her intriguing review of Radon Daughters (LRB, 6 October) Jenny Turner mentions the title 11 times, by my count, and even writes, ‘You can feel this weirdness seep out of the novel’s title,’ which led me to expect an explanation and discussion. Neither was forthcoming, alas. Radon is a naturally-occurring radioactive gas. Its breakdown particles, called ‘daughters’, are a serious cause of lung cancer and, possibly, other tumours, a matter of some relevance to the novel, I think. I await further discussion.

Stuart Silverman
Chicago

From Peter Brown

In response to Stuart Silverman’s request (Letters, 8 December) for further discussion of Iain Sinclair’s title Radon Daughters, I spy a nod to American poet Stephen Rodefer, whose anarcho-baroque style of the early Eighties anticipates Sinclair’s ornamental lexis. The final section of Rodefer’s Four Lectures (1982), ‘Plastic Sutures’, contains the lines:

If it’s not your house, it’s your subway. Ghoul
candies by Rodney Ripps.
Radon daughter. The woman checking out her
hickey in the reflection of Cartier’s window.

Jenny Turner in her review (LRB, 6 October) suggests that ‘Sinclair’s Undark is based at some level on the aura … of Cambridge real-life J.H. Prynne.’ J.H. Prynne is quoted on the cover of Rodefer’s Four Lectures: ‘terrific, in the top Heliogabalus class. Sweat ran out of my ears and still does, a sheer delirium.’ The Cambridge connection also suits for Sinclair and Rodefer – both having read at recent CCCPs (Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry). Any more bites?

Peter Brown
London N21