The author
A J Salmon (only known image of him visible to the right) largely wrote it.
Although it's also largely compiled from other sources.
But now Dr. Phil Smith (the CrabMan) claims to have written it. This is what he has to say in his defence:
"I wrote this book. It takes the form of a documentary-fictional collection of the internal documents, diary fragments, letters, e-mails, narratives, notebooks and handbooks of a loose coalition of artists, performers, ‘alternative’ walkers and pedestrian geographers. All luxuriously illustrated and designed in full colour by Tony Weaver – who designed the Wrights & Sites’ Mis-Guide books.
Some readers may recognise themselves or others, though that does not mean that they are the models. They may find themselves, their practices or their ideas name-checked by the fictions. But more importantly – many of the philosophies, events, collaborations, communications and controversies that have helped to shape a new walking culture since the collapse of the 1990s Psychogeographical Associations are here given a ghostly run out.
The reach is wide and deep, occasionally idiosyncratic. The fragmentary and slippery format recognises the disparate, loosely interwoven and rapidly evolving uses of walking today: as art, as exploration, as urban resistance, as activism, as an ambulatory practice of geography, as meditation, as performance, as dissident mapping, as subversion of and rejoicing in the everyday.
A J Salmon (only known image of him visible to the right) largely wrote it.
Although it's also largely compiled from other sources.
But now Dr. Phil Smith (the CrabMan) claims to have written it. This is what he has to say in his defence:
"I wrote this book. It takes the form of a documentary-fictional collection of the internal documents, diary fragments, letters, e-mails, narratives, notebooks and handbooks of a loose coalition of artists, performers, ‘alternative’ walkers and pedestrian geographers. All luxuriously illustrated and designed in full colour by Tony Weaver – who designed the Wrights & Sites’ Mis-Guide books.
Some readers may recognise themselves or others, though that does not mean that they are the models. They may find themselves, their practices or their ideas name-checked by the fictions. But more importantly – many of the philosophies, events, collaborations, communications and controversies that have helped to shape a new walking culture since the collapse of the 1990s Psychogeographical Associations are here given a ghostly run out.
The reach is wide and deep, occasionally idiosyncratic. The fragmentary and slippery format recognises the disparate, loosely interwoven and rapidly evolving uses of walking today: as art, as exploration, as urban resistance, as activism, as an ambulatory practice of geography, as meditation, as performance, as dissident mapping, as subversion of and rejoicing in the everyday.
The author
Mythogeography is a celebration of that interweaving, its contradictions and complementarities, and a handbook for those who want to be part of it. Also in the weave is the trace of a whodunit (who is responsible for the dead pirates?) and an account of an/my (sometimes!) exemplary journey in search of oak trees. I hope that you enjoy the gossip, story, technical advice, theory and factoid that make up this wander through the world of contemporary wanderers.” [Enough. He goes on like Malcolm Muggeridge. ed.]
Watch a short film of an unguided, mythogeographical tour of Exeter with Phil Smith
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