I am one of many who started to scramble (a little late) and started searching for Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd when The David Bowie Book Club announced Ackroyd’s novel has been picked by David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, @ManMadeMoon.
According to Duncan in the Rolling Stones article, “…his dad was a beat of a reader.” And “ his true love was author Peter Ackroyd. This is the first of his Dad’s 100 top books list.
Wonderful and all, but this is a very hard book to find.
Here is a blurb about the author Peter Ackroyd
“Novelist, biographer, and poet Peter Ackroyd was born in London on 5 October 1949.
He graduated from Clare College, Cambridge, and studied at Yale University as a Mellon Fellow, where he completed Notes for a New Culture: An Essay on Modernism, published in 1976. On his return from Yale, he worked for The Spectator magazine in London as literary editor (1973-7), then as joint managing editor (1978-82) and film critic….”
~Read the rest of his biography on the British Council, Literature
What I have found out so far, Is that Peter Ackroyd wrote Hawksmoor after being inspired by the poem ‘Lud Heat’ by Iain Sinclair. And Lain Sinclair was inspired by the history of London’s churches, religions, and historical facts, such as Nicholas Hawksmoor worked for Sir Christopher Wren who designed and built St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London. And how the placement of those churches brought a ‘psychogeographical’ tone which was described in1955 by Guy Debord a new awareness,“…the study of the precise laws and specific effects….” In Lain Sinclair’s book, Lud Heat, he shows us a map to explain his ideas Check out Amazon to see this preview.
And all this is set in religious history. Sounding a lot like the Bermuda Triangle set in London. Giving a reason to all the crazy things that happened in a specific area. Such as Jack The Ripper by bringing together the collective consciousness, causing things to happen due to the placement and the architecture of those churches. Or even a person’s perspective change when in contact with a new place.
All this background has me intensely curious. And I want to read the book. But I can’t seem to find a copy – anywhere!
Then I found it on Audible.com
Then….
I did find
it….an online copy,
in pieces. Here:
https://www.e-reading.club/book.php?book=89204
Each part you click on, those links it will bring up a section of the book. Then you can save it as a PDF to read later. The PDF isn’t that perfect. I keep wondering if this is the real book. Hmmmm?
(I will send an email to Peter Ackroyd’s publisher to see if this site is crossing any copyright lines)
Remember to always run a virus scan on anything you copy of the internet.
Anyway…I am hoping to be able to read the entire book. If not I will be searching it out later and buying it when it is a lot less than $899.99. My library can’t even get a copy, its out and requested over and over.
Oh, well. I will be reading and tweeting on February 1st, 2018, right along with Duncan Jones @ManMadeMoon. Who will be talking about the book on his Twitter account- February 1st? Watch for it on Twitter.