{"id":645,"date":"2008-03-14T17:28:42","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T22:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=645"},"modified":"2011-04-14T06:32:06","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T11:32:06","slug":"london-calling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2008\/03\/14\/london-calling\/","title":{"rendered":"London calling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nCurt Purcell, of the excellent pulp\/weird fiction\/horror\/sci-fi\/etc blog <cite>Beyond the Groovy Age of Horror<\/cite> has been inspired <a href=\"http:\/\/groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com\/2008\/03\/london-series.html\">to explore<\/a> &#8220;the ultimate urban setting, the original Big Bad City, the <cite>real Metropolis<\/cite>: London&#8221;. The list of books he plans to read is interesting in its diversity:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"cite\">\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s a listing of what I&#8217;ve set aside in my to-read stacks. I don&#8217;t plan to read these in any particular order, and I may not get to all of them this time around. In any case:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite>Soft City<\/cite>  by Jonathan Raban<\/li>\n<li><cite>Our Mutual Friend<\/cite>  by Charles Dickens<\/li>\n<li><cite>London: A Pilgrimage<\/cite> by Gustave Dore and Blanchard Jerrold<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Secret Agent<\/cite>  by Joseph Conrad<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Man Who Was Thursday<\/cite>  by G. K. Chesterton<\/li>\n<li><cite>At the Back of the North Wind<\/cite>  by George MacDonald<\/li>\n<li><cite>Limehouse Nights<\/cite>  by Thomas Burke<\/li>\n<li><cite>London Under London<\/cite>  by Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman<\/li>\n<li><cite>London Dossier<\/cite>  by Len Deighton<\/li>\n<li><cite>Burden of Proof<\/cite>  (retitled <cite>Villain<\/cite>) by James Barlow<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Long Firm<\/cite>  by Jake Arnott (also with something about the BBC television adaptation)<\/li>\n<li><cite>Tainted Love<\/cite>  by Stewart Home<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Man from the Diogenes Club<\/cite>  by Kim Newman<\/li>\n<li><cite>SAM 7<\/cite>  by Richard Cox<\/li>\n<li><cite>The Medusa Frequency<\/cite>  by Russell Hoban<\/li>\n<li><cite>Mother London<\/cite>  by Michael Moorcock<\/li>\n<li><cite>London Fields<\/cite>  by Martin Amis<\/li>\n<li><cite>Something from the Nightside<\/cite>  by Simon R. Green<\/li>\n<li><cite>London Revenant<\/cite>  by Conrad Williams<\/li>\n<li><cite>Caballistics, Inc.<\/cite> from 2000 AD<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nIt&#8217;s a list that can be almost infinitely extended, because there are few cities that have had such a hold on the public imagination as London. Sure, every big city has literature associated with it &#8211;even Amsterdam has writers associated with it, like Simon Carmiggelt&#8211; but London is different in that its attraction is worldwide, perhaps matched only by New York. Even Rome is only a village compared to London, as Nancy Mitford teased. Unfortunately, that does result into a certain amount of arrogance and navelgazing on the part of the London based media and literati circles, the illusion that because London is so important, <cite>they<\/cite> and everything they do is important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Curt Purcell, of the excellent pulp\/weird fiction\/horror\/sci-fi\/etc blog Beyond the Groovy Age of Horror has been inspired to explore &#8220;the ultimate urban setting, the original Big Bad City, the real Metropolis: London&#8221;. The list of books he plans to read is interesting in its diversity: Here&#8217;s a listing of what I&#8217;ve set aside in my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,230],"tags":[388],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-art","tag-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2891,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/2891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}