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

Even if you have genuinely creepy ideas, writing a good ghost story is a big technical challenge. It requires a level of command over pacing, atmosphere, tension, plus the element of surprise. Nothing I have read of Lanchester's writing suggests he is capable of any of that.

im sorry im really looking forward to this feast i will give a stinky review for clout and become the new james wood

At precisely 00.00 on the 9th of December, John Lanchester witnessed a pale, hooked hand appear out of the Måbli two-door wardrobe which he had bought the previous year in a sale at the Eastgate branch of Ikea. It had been a strange week, full of ouija boards, floating hourglasses, creaking floorboards, eerie knocks, ghoulish voices, figures appearing at windows, blood-curdling screams, flaming death-skulls, vampire bites, zombie pandemics, creepy Victorian dollsand killer clowns. And it was only Tuesday.

I was going to make a point about how Doglatin's list is actually too good to be believably Lanchestrian, remembering that I'd C&Ped one of his terrible, terrible lists upthread, but then I saw a subsequent post and realised I had entirely forgotten there's an entire paragraph in Capital where one of the characters muses in detail about 'My Humps' by the Black Eyed Peas and dear lord. Just this overwhelming sense that Lanchester has no feel for what aspects of mainstream culture are interesting or realistic and just throws in anything he can possibly think of, hoping people will see this gigantic pile-up of the mundane and mistake it for social realism.

A few messages down from here:

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, "the African bar in Stockwell".

you step away from ilx for five minutes.

there’s several things here.
* ghost stories are finally and stylistically quite demanding
* your story has to tacitly be aware of/acknowledge/comprehend the aggregated history of ghost stories
* you need to understand where ghosts live in the contemporary material world - what’s their environmental niche

2 + 3 there transact with each other - the classic environmental niche for the ghosts in English ghost stories is v heavily determined by the Victorian settings - the channels and conduits you set up to manage that are crucial. (and of course it needn’t be UK ghost stories).

i suppose that’s nothing more than saying you need to be able to manage genre without falling into pastiche or hamfisted smushing together of common tropes (lanchester will do both of these things)

he’s also conspicuously bad at depicting the material world, constructing it, understanding it, so how he’ll be able to spot where ghosts live in the contemporary world, and construct an immaterial word to go along with the material is terrifying to consider.

this is going to be straight up garbage.

(that lrb story will be a good example - graft some bad modern world signifiers (the podcast app he had downloaded onto his mobile device) and graft it onto some badly realised old ghost story template, and write it badly)

“These are stories of selfie sticks with demonic powers”

fu lanchester.

gigantic pile-up of the mundane and mistake it for social realism

otmfm

Is that selfie stick quote real?

Is that selfie stick quote real?

God this is gonna be funny

tbf the topping up card device machine in capital was unsettlingly weird.

a haunted selfie stick. oh man I need to read this shit

As he stared languidly out the window of the bendy-bus, John remarked to himself how he had never previously noticed a disembodied voice murmuring 'Get In the Sea' halfway through his lovingly-crafted 'Greatest Dabbing Anthems' playlist...

"as you sit there with your flat white"

sipping your croissant

Right, this should probably result in my being thrown down a well (as he fell, his mind noticed the bricks were different colours and he reached for his phone and the camera app he used to record the things he noticed...) but.

I pretty much re-read this whole thread last night and as I was falling asleep I had a pretty detailed recollection of being on a bus in Perth, reading Beckett's 'Dante and the Lobster' from an Evergreen Review collection I'd found in a hostel. In the grip of hypnagogic fancy, I remembered the mundanity and the odd rhythms and somehow it all made sense: Beckett and Lanchester. I've looked at the opening this morning and, god help me, there is something in there. I leave this here as possibly my last will and testament.

He leaned back in his chair to feel his mind subside and the itch of this mean quodlibet die down. Nothing could be done until his mind got better and was still, which gradually it did and was. Then he ventured to consider what he had to do next. There was always something that one had to do next. Three large obligations presented themselves. First lunch, then the lobster, then the Italian lesson. That would do to be going on with. After the Italian lesson he had no very clear idea. No doubt some niggling curriculum had been drawn up by someone for the late afternoon and evening, but he did not know what. In any case it did not matter. What did matter was: one, lunch; two, the lobster; three, the Italian lesson. That was more than enough to be going on with.

Editors notes: Chinaski is now my patient. He wanders the halls of the institute, belching 'quodlibet!' at anyone who will listen. Nothing can be done with him until his mind gets better.

No doubt some niggling curriculum had been drawn up by someone for the late afternoon and evening

'someone' = Lanchester

given the symbology I'm pretty sure that makes Lanchester literally the devil iirc

I reread this thread as well last night and, having read subsequent Angela Carter novels, I now understand what the Pinefox was getting at about the onset of hackiness in her prose. I'm sure her earliest novels weren't as badly written as 'Heroes and Villains' was.

That's nice to hear!

Right, this should probably result in my being thrown down a well (as he fell, his mind noticed the bricks were different colours and he reached for his phone and the camera app he used to record the things he noticed...) but.

I pretty much re-read this whole thread last night and as I was falling asleep I had a pretty detailed recollection of being on a bus in Perth, reading Beckett's 'Dante and the Lobster' from an Evergreen Review collection I'd found in a hostel. In the grip of hypnagogic fancy, I remembered the mundanity and the odd rhythms and somehow it all made sense: Beckett and Lanchester. I've looked at the opening this morning and, god help me, there is /something in there/. I leave this here as possibly my last will and testament.

_He leaned back in his chair to feel his mind subside and the itch of this mean quodlibet die down. Nothing could be done until his mind got better and was still, which gradually it did and was. Then he ventured to consider what he had to do next. There was always something that one had to do next. Three large obligations presented themselves. First lunch, then the lobster, then the Italian lesson. That would do to be going on with. After the Italian lesson he had no very clear idea. No doubt some niggling curriculum had been drawn up by someone for the late afternoon and evening, but he did not know what. In any case it did not matter. What did matter was: one, lunch; two, the lobster; three, the Italian lesson. That was more than enough to be going on with._


Editors notes: Chinaski is now my patient. He wanders the halls of the institute, belching 'quodlibet!' at anyone who will listen. Nothing can be done with him until his mind gets better.

was good you posted that chinaski, because i do think the important thing to bear in mind when reading or about to read lanchester is “hey this might be good” or “maybe i’m just not seeing what makes him good”. it makes it all the better when you gradually have to admit to yourself that despite your tolerance and forced withholding of judgment you are finally forced to admit to yourself no really this is very bad.

"as you sit there with your flat white"

it heartens me that we're all routinely reading this entire thread

it's Lanchester's most important contribution to literature tbf

I would like to state that I meant no harm to Beckett in that comparison! It was more looking for a lineage - something that Lanchester might have read and seized on as a 'style'. A style that he eviscerated, left dead for years and then bunged in the microwave when the time came. We are left to marvel at his excreta; indeed we are his avid, attentive grooms of the stool.

Without rereading his long-ago first novel, The Debt to Pleasure (which I remember really liking!), memory tells me it was deeply in debt to Nabokov, especially his erudite psychopath narrators like Humbert Humbert.

Yes, likewise read and enjoyed it years ago, and Nabokov was the obvious model.

tho as you say, Nabokov as mendacious, self-obsessed narrator rather than, say, his aesthetic games or specific approaches to language.

I also enjoyed The Debt To Pleasure (the recipes are good too), but as Nabokov pastiches go, Updike's A Month of Sundays is better and was done 25 years earlier.

I am now reading Lanchester on Maigret. It's not devoid of any insight or knowledge, but it comes out with the daft things quoted upthread, and it's blokeish tone is quite obnoxious.

it's quite a lot better than his christie piece and is also not consistent with it in terms of stated assumptions

So this guerilla advert for Lanchester's new novel is making the rounds...

omg they are gagging for us to return back to the office. “second family”? pic.twitter.com/udntfSVXSh

— mi🌿 (@helloalegria) September 2, 2020

fvck, this has reminded me of his forthcmoing "horror" collection -- is it out yet?

'Rău!' she said, shouting, pointing at my phone and then at the grave. 'Rău, rău, rău!'

That never fails to crack me up. Should be serified by the beeb just for that scene.

I'm halfway through Lanchester on ESPORTS.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n16/john-lanchester/diary

well that's just averagely banal. no choice lanchester in there at all.

oh gosh i hadn't been keeping up on this thread and the cover for his ghost story collection is just too good

The thing I didn't understand about ESPORTS was that the 'esports' seemed to be games, not sports.

I thought an esport would be more like when you swing a tennis racket and something happens to the tennis ball on screen, so you get fitter.

But it seems to be more like WARHAMMER ONLINE or something. Which might be fun but is definitely not sport. Unless all those afternoons playing JUDGE DREDD: THE ROLE PLAYING GAME and eating Monster Munch were sport for me.

Yet Lanchester keeps comparing esports to sports - his whole framing is about cricket and so on - so he does seem to think of them that way.

Well he's writing as a spectator not a competitor, it seems a legitimate comparison. Snooker and darts are infamously less physically demanding than outdoor sports, how do you categorise them?

The difference between esports and yer Judge Dread sessions is there's ppl making quite a lot of money from playing these games within a competitive setting and huge audiences following their moves. Including, like, ppl booking seats at arenas to watch (not so much right now ofc). So I think the analogy is fine.

yes ESPORTS is the commercial name --

hazel one of this parish (she says just a single post lol) just became editor of an esports magazine -- which is admittedly confusing bcz her main recent stream of income has been writing abt formula e, which is a e-based sport that isn't an esport (you met her at the royal oak pinefox)

one = once

Mark, yes, I believe that she has told me about her racing car activities.

My confusion re 'esports' was purely re the presence of the word 'sports' in the name, if they mostly don't resemble sports.

It did not otherwise indicate any scepticism about the quality, profitability, importance, interest, etc, of esports.

Chess would be another point of comparison. Chess has audiences (eg online), competition, etc, but we don't call it a sport.

Lanchester turned out not to like esports anyway.

I was thinking I had heard John lanchester's name before theis weekend.
He did a First Thoughts talk with Fintan O'Toole in teh Arts Festival here on Saturday.

lanchester ghost stories not due out till oct 1 -- where shd i pitch my review at, thread-readers? where will a takedown sit well?

(i mean lol the lrb obv but that's not going to happen and anyway i have them under seige for less entirely fvck-you stuff currently)

lol the Graun
lol Fortean Times

LITERARY REVIEW but they'll already have it lined up. I find that these things need to be done well in advance (ie: I have always failed).

true yes -- and i had the notion an age ago but was just too super-busy and otherwise under heavy manners to follow it up till this recent thread revive >:(

maybe i shd return to my other current project: "forty years of being terrible at freelancing: musings and persiflage"