"Quiet" Writers

[Viva June]

Quote Originally Posted by Sand

I also concur about Denton Welch, who is a writer who can interest you in the contents of his picnic basket (literally - he frequently lists them) and in the curios he has picked up in junk and antique shops. Jacques Reda, in The Ruins Of Paris, has that same skill: he just writes about wandering around the city, often its obscurer quarters, and you become interested in, eg, the pens, cheese and jazz records he's found.

This reminds me of a somewhat recent trend in non-fiction, of writers exploring a subject, usually natural or urban history, by way of its periphery: walking along dreary arterial roads, say, to observe the changes imposed on the countryside by post-war suburban development. The situationist ideas of psychogeography and the dérive figure into this, as does Benjamin's romantic flaneur, while the spectre of Sebald is looming somewhere in the background. My impressions of this "style" are mostly second-hand, but it seems very of its time, the hauntological aesthetic and all that. Here are some of the names and titles I have noted as interesting:

Katharine Harmon: You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination
Philip Hoare: Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital
Richard Holmes: Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer
Richard Mabey: The Unofficial Countryside
Robert Macfarlane: The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
Edward Platt: Leadville: A Biography of the A40
Rebecca Solnit: A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Jean Sprackland: Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach

Most of these are UK- or US-centric, though. I would love to read something about local matters in this style, so if anyone (Mads?) has any suggestions regarding books about obscure corners of Copenhagen, or even Denmark/Scandinavia more broadly, it would be much appreciated.

Edit: Misquoted titles.