"Eating Gull since Friday"—Estuary Grotesque, Seaside Noir. Issue 1 (1st January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Platt, Len
• Is Part Of: Critique. Volume 58:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 11
• Publication Date: 2017-01-01
• Subjects: Thames estuary literature -- cultural geographics -- contemporary literary aesthetics -- metropolitanism -- cosmopolitanism; Fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Letterkunde; Engels; Electronic journals; 809.304
• DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2016.1141389
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0011-1619

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay identifies a contemporary form, "estuary grotesque, " which is placed in the larger context of the postmodern, the cosmopolitan, and the post-cosmopolitan. Examining the writing of representative figures such as Nicola Barker, Ian Sinclair, Jonathan Meades, David Seabrook, and Cathi Unsworth, it constructs contemporary writing about the Thames estuary in terms of a relational metropolitanism. This "London" perspective is connected to literary forms of the past —pastoral, gothic, modernist, and so on—but represents a new turn, an Othering geographic that reconvenes the "condition of England" in terms of the marshlands, industrial detritus, and social deprivation of the Thames Estuary.