a recent run of reading has kept returning to a certain negative energy of england. the two Gordon Burns books on serial killers (Peter Sutcliffe, Fred & Rose West) and the first of Derek Raymond’s factory series of noir novels.
reading these books as i move in and out of the country, between spain and england, it’s been a lot. reading about how grim it was in the 60s and 70s and 80s and the dense webs of evils, only to land back in leeds and just feel it all still there. the recurring pubs and driving of the ripper’s west yorkshire isn’t seen in the city centre of leeds, but a 30 minute walk and you can see something. armley is named multiple times in that book, never without the suffix of ‘prison’.
Happy Like Murderers talks about how they moved to the city for the anonymity of urban living as a cover for the atrocities they would commit. F.O.D.I.W.L. but it's the countryside that produced them. no escape from either side.
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