Finally, Something I can Work With!

This image is of Leviathan - a mythical drangon associated with the sea. John Birmingham's novel constructs Sydney as a huge, breathing, teeming living creature, sprawling out along the coast, with a life all of its own:

Quote:
Beneath the shining harbour, amid the towers of global greed and deep inside the bad-drugs madness of the suburban wastelands, lies Sydney's shadow histrory. Terrifying tsunamis, corpse-robbing morgue staff, killer cops, new-Nazis, power junkies and bumbling SWOS teams electrify this epic tale of a city with a cold vacuum for a moral core.
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Was having the chapter four blues. Till Liz hooked me up with John Birmingham's "Leviathan", and Melissa pointed me towards the situationists and the idea of "psychogeography" (see below):

...The situationists' desire to become psychogeographers, with an understanding of the 'precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals', was intended to cultivate an awareness of the ways in which everyday life is presently conditioned and controlled, the ways in which this manipulation can be exposed and subverted, and the possibilities for chosen forms of constructed situations in the post-spectacular world. Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life, and yet it is precisely this concern with the environment which we live which is ignored.

"The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical contour of the ground); the appealing or repelling character of certain places - all this seems to be neglected."

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So now I am armed and dangerous, with Ruth Park, John Birmingham and Michel de Certeau, and only about two weeks to get draft done! Eeek.