Psychogeography - Merlin Coverley

Psychogeography. Increasingly this term is used to illustrate a bewildering array of ideas from ley lines and the occult, to urban walking and political radicalism. But where does it come from and what exactly does it mean?

Merlin Coverley's pocket guide to psychogeography was a disappointment from start to finish, failing even at the basic task of answering the above question. Weighing in at a mere 160 pages, a significant amount of which are footnotes, index, and extended reading lists, the topic is hardly given the ample coverage it requires for a comprehensive understanding. Coverley brushes so fleetingly over his material that one is subjected to a bewildering mess of name drops, repetitions and seemingly disconnected ideas. The writing itself is extremely poor, reading more like an adapted undergraduate dissertation than the scholarly exploration of the genre I was expecting. A perusal of psychogeography's Wikipedia page would probably be more informative than this tedious book.

'Book' may be too generous to describe this flimsy guide, but despite being desperately thin, Coverley's awkward and convoluted style made it a far longer read than it warranted. Indeed, with so little content to criticise, it seems almost futile to write a review. There were some interesting ideas introduced, but the main focus hovered around the figure of the flâneur and the historical origins of Situationism, both of which I found rather dull. Merlin repeatedly draws attention to his bookending the guide with the character of Robinson, a trite and irrelevant structural device which only reinforces its amateurish quality. Best used as a secondary literature review, for this is essentially an annotated reading list with no outstanding merits of its own. It was also far too expensively priced.

Rating: 1/5