At 10:35 on an early summer's morning, John Lanchester sat down at his study desk, switched on his new Dell computer, opened up the word processing programme that the computer had come with and began

also, i'm wondering whether US documentary journalism has something to do with it:

“On a pancake-flat stretch of land not far from the Mississippi River, Illinois farmer Jerry Gaffner thumbs through weather forecasts and crop reports on his tablet computer, searching for clues about when to market his soybean crop.

A Ghost Story, now available as a podcast - read by Toby Jones: https://www.lrb.co.uk/audio-and-video

Berberian Sound Studio, it ain't.

oh no.

‘Listen...’

Damn, just came here to post that link to ruin Fizzles life, but was beaten to it. https://media.lrb.co.uk/lanc01_4001_01.mp3

New story:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n15/john-lanchester/love-island

John Lanchester’s new novel, The Wall, is coming out early next year.

I predict a coronary for Fizzles in 2019.

a story called "Love Island" is so perfectly Lanchesterian at this point that my involuntary groan of "you fucker" was tempered with a grin

is he aware of the tv show y/n

of course he is he is the Charlie Brooker of polite Brit lit fic only without the wild imagination ability to rehash old SF plots

skimmed it but the story does seem to be a direct satire of some description

much needed to be sure

i like how mary-kay wilmers is handing over larger and larger chunks of her beloved magazine's real estate to more and more awful writing, it's the right way to turn 80 imo

i've now read it

it's basically Lanchester's rejected Black Mirror script

oh man. you know there's a twist coming but aw jeez. i have to sit down.

oh god i’ve just seen this. i need to lie down.

lol hadn’t read ledge’s commmet before i posted that.

Some time I should read through the whole of Fizzles' critique of Lanchester. It was fun.

I wonder if being allowed to publish his awful fiction is a condition of his giving them his otherwise decent journalism.

Everything about the bed, the clean low modern furniture, the white painted walls, the angled light coming in through the edges of the blackout blinds – it was all crisp and distinct. She stretched and yawned and put her feet on the bare but warm floor. She was wearing her second-best sleeping shorts and some long-forgotten ex’s heavily faded Ramones T-shirt. It was a low bed, the kind that older people find it hard to straighten up from. But Iona was not old. Her mouth tasted fresh. She couldn’t smell her own breath, nobody can, but she could tell that if she were able to, it would smell sweet. The bathroom was en suite.

i am not really a fan of his journalism either tbh

"She couldn’t name three of their albums, nobody can, but she could tell that if she were able to, the names would be correct. The bathroom was en suite."

O_0

there are no heavily faded Ramones T-shirts (put the correct T in there just for you mark) in the wild now, surely?

i am not really a fan of his journalism either tbh

Yeah, I found Whoops! a slog, and always assumed it was me being thick about basic economics. But looking back, the writing is dire (and I'm still thick about economics).

The first two sentences of this are classic Lanchester, saying the same thing twice, boringly

When Iona woke up in the house she knew where she was straightaway, and she knew she was alone. There was none of that blurry intermediate state of semi-consciousness that people usually get when they’re in an unfamiliar place.

He truly is the Colley Cibber of our age

That para Matt posted is abominable.

Bringing 'old people' into his description of the low bed. He must mean him, surely. 'But Iona was not old. Her mouth tasted fresh' is car crash of free-indirect speech and authorial presence, and as a consequence comes across as not-even-faintly pervy.

Also... arghgh who says... thinks... *anythings* 'My mouth tastes fresh'. The painful realisation over the next few sentences is dire. Does he never go through one of these thinking out loud processes and realise that the point he's reached at the end of that process informs what goes onto the page? You don't need to keep the painful hobbling of your mind there for posterity's sake, John.

'... it would smell sweet. The bathroom was en-suite.'

i literally got a sensation like a trapped nerve when i read that. is it deliberate? i mean i'll allow the bathos must be, but the *rhyme*? Who would *do* that? Apart from Lanchester. Why are you making me read this.

Wait, Matt, was that just superb parody? I haven't seen the story. I don't know what's real and what isn't any more.

I suppose he might be trying to reflect his perception of banality in the people. I don't want to think about it.

oh god it's real i just checked.

i like how mary-kay wilmers is handing over larger and larger chunks of her beloved magazine's real estate to more and more awful writing, it's the right way to turn 80 imo

― mark s, Wednesday, 25 July 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

counter: 25K by Perry Anderson on Anthony Powell.

Mona:

* Not old
* Unable to smell own breath
* Near an ensuite bathroom
* Fresh-tasting sweet mouth

I assumed Matt's paragraph was a parody too. Fucking hell. 'Put her feet on the bare but warm floor' is the bit that sticks out - it's like the vague mentalese that precedes the thinking before a first draft. It *has* to be premeditated.

What do people think of Anderson on Powell?

I think:
* It is oddly slightly worse written than Anderson's usual prose; more like a slack first draft at times
* I have not read Powell so had better not try to judge the judgement on that
* I find it very appealing to see someone authoritative being critical of Proust in public
* the column or so concluding 'the case for sexism doesn't stand up' is somewhat embarrassing from a man of about 80 - he should probably be more circumspect about such judgements
* It is hard to think what part II will be about, except Powell's politics (but perhaps others have already read part II)

I did not like O'Hagan on Grenfell btw as it was massively self-indulgent and repetitive and thus clearly did not need to be anything like as long. I think it was quite a bad piece of writing.

part two is described as "sums up" which is funny as it is by itself 1523452345 times as long as anything else that isn't by o'hagan -- i need to reread both parts in one (long) go i think

my instant hot take is that there were no long words i had not previously encountered and this is bad not good

perry shd have his own thread tho, it is not fair to fizzles

Powell does have a thread: Anyone read Anthony Powell?

I was thinking about Lanchester writing in the LRB the other day, and remembered this article he did a few years ago about Elon Musk, which now looks spectacularly wrong-headed:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n17/john-lanchester/lets-all-go-to-mars
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it should probably have been possible to discern that Musk was the kind of charlatan Lanchester has condemned in his financial journalism.

Enjoyed the Anderson piece because it is always enjoyable reading long critiques of Powell and Proust. The main problem I have is that the two novel sequences, superficial similarities aside (eg very long, about 'high society', clearly autobiographical, dry comic moments etc), aren't very much alike in terms of the actual reading experience.

If the second part is about Powell's politics, there's definitely an interesting piece to be written about why so many lefties (Christopher Hitchens, Tariq Ali, Anderson himself) adore Dance to the Music of Time.

Lanchester:

As for human spaceflight, I think it’s an inherently progressive activity, not so much in its practical consequences but in the way it changes our species’s frame of reference. The modern ecology movement was in effect created by the image of the whole earth, vulnerable and isolated and full of life, sent back by Apollo 8. The progressive atmosphere of the 1960s was profoundly influenced by the space project, by the idea that we as a species can Do Better. The prospect of humans on Mars would have a similar effect.

Having not read Powell (from the quotes yes the experience in reading Powell is very different to MP) my problem was Anderson over-cooking some of the criticisms of Proust which have been talked about, (eg Proust is not as panoramic as ppl say, needs an editor esp in some of the later vols) to then prop up Powell's so-called achievement. The later section where he narrows in on Powell himself was quite good. xp

grist to that politics piece: balzac was marx's favourite writer

adding naughtily: the thing that links all three of those particular lefties = quite posh background :D

Powell is my favourite author and I've read Dance a number of times, I'm a sucker for long, sustained narrative fiction. I think Anderson's summation of the extent of Powell's achievement is a good one. He also manages to refute some of the incorrect accusations made against Powell (e.g. "he only writes about the upper classes") while being clear-eyed about some of his limitations (e.g. he writes about women less well than men).

Ian Samson also wrote about Powell in the LRB and is much more ambivalent: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n20/ian-sansom/every-rusty-hint

xpost
Yep! Powell's friendship w/ Orwell also quite important there, I think.

xps
yes - there's a bit of chat on the Proust thread, and I mention there Anderson being specifically Eton + Oxford might be a factor in his passion. I don't know the detail for all of them, but it feels like there's that dual thing of posh, but not pure-posh in in the backgrounds of Powell and his New Left fans - families are military, naval, Pakistani, Anglo-Irish.

the column or so concluding 'the case for sexism doesn't stand up' is somewhat embarrassing from a man of about 80 - he should probably be more circumspect about such judgements

The statement itself may have been a bit too categoric but overall I thought he did a good job of explaining that Powell is bad on women not due to misogynist portrayals but due to a dearth of interest in female characters - which isn't letting him off the hook, I don't think.