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

It's such a great phrase. Too good to die.

And I think go high, aim for the heart of the republic and pitch to the FT.

Or The Spectator!

ts: publishing an amusing demolition of the very liberal JL in fash weekly vs losing the respect of my friends on ilx :D

prepping for the sooncome release of the ghost collection by rereading coffin liquor and then the one that ran to (says here) "great acclaim" in the new yorker

started out with yellow highlighter for "things to pay attention to" and pink highlighter for "lol very extremely egregious lanch klaxon" -- and by page 9 of 11 it is just a blazing wall of pink

(nothing we failed to spot before -- if anything i'm reading a lot less closely than fizzles does)

i'm on page 4 (my print-out) of the new yorker piece, signal: "there was next to no 3G or mobile data"

\o/

there's a kind of joy in reading this three-year old story for the first time and hitting all the familiar marks lol

i've also now started rereading Whoops! -- will report back when i get a bit further in

(i'm still in his throat-clearing phase first chapter, which i think is pretty bad -- he's attempting a lightning sketch of the entire geopolitical context for the 2008 market collapse -- but maybe it gets better as he gets onto his main topic, the collapse itself, and how high finance works and doesn't work)

i hadn't read signal before; it doesn't seem as facepalmingly badly written as the lrb ones, i only spotted a few bad sentences/lanchisms but i'm sure a fizzles close reading would find many more. entirely pointless though, hard to know what effect he's aiming for since any plausible candidate (horror? atmosphere? moral instruction?) he misses by a mile.

i'm imagining all the legendary tiny new yorker mummies swarming over it nitpicking the worst sentences into slightly better shape

the section where the narrator gets into a fight with his host over the definition of the meaning of "tall" is honestly astonishing, as an attempted means to explain a misunderstanding

Honestly I found Whoops a pretty good summation of the financial crisis for people who don't really understand the financial crisis but there comes a point when you realise that it's like having the international banking system explained to you by Douglas Adams.

the section where the narrator gets into a fight with his host over the definition of the meaning of "tall" is honestly astonishing, as an attempted means to explain a misunderstanding

lol yes, i presumed it was an attempt at humour. i also raised an eyebrow at considering the serving of pheasant sandwiches to be somewhat macabre after you've spent hours actually shooting them.

LRB doing a live event for all you fans:
https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/events/2020/10/john-lanchester-and-sam-kinchin-smith-reality-and-other-stories

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n14/john-lanchester/good-new-idea

Time to reread Lanchester on UBI as Lib Dems support the policy.

https://amp-ft-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.ft.com/content/c602f33b-cd44-49d8-9f86-274f3dcacfd4?

"In the incrementally horrifying “Charity”, a selfie stick of obscure origin, left at a charity shop by a widow clearing out her late husband’s collection of oddities, possesses obscene powers of revelation for whoever uses it.

The ensuing allegory is as much a comment on the whited sepulchre of colonialist atrocities and attendant lack of remorse, as it is on social media’s influence and fixation on the “perfect” self-image."

tbf the reviewer does say a couple of the stories don't work, but reviews of short story collections often take that shape.

publication is still very embargoed, i want to get hold of a copy of this collection NOW

maybe i shd tell the publicists i am planning to review it for the lanch-stan thread on ilx

(or as part of the MRJames series on freaky trigger)

I can’t remember much about whoops except a tediously whimsical chapter on balance sheets and a sense that it might have been better at 0.25 the length. It’s like one of those bbc4 documentaries that starts “I’m on a journey to find...”

ebook of REALITY, AND OTHER STORIES downloading r/n, stoked for the hate

also still ploughing thru WHOOPS! (which i am very much not enjoying)

Surely you mean you're downloading an electronic book document to your personal laptop computer?

rău! rău! rău!

maybe others already knew this but the story called "reality" (of "reality, and other stories") is in fact the story published in LRB as "love island"

somehow i didn't twig instantly and then i read "her second-best sleepng shorts" and thought i was having some kind of coffin liquor-style episode, like ALL his variously named stories (as featured in the electronic book document now downloaded onto your personal laptop computer) now contained this deathless phrase

Can't wait until you get to the haunted selfie stick

lol well i completed my lightning first read -- mrj's crown is entirely safe (and so is clive barker's) 👑👑👻🎃👹💀😈👑👑

the "what am i missing here?" is strong with this one

so i uh thought it would be amusing to buy a ticket to this lrb zoom 'an evening with john lanchester' event. i hadn't realised that my partner, who I don't really see enough, would be round. so i've just explained to her that I need to sit on zoom for a while with a really bad writer because reasons, live-blogging it here? you have to make sacrifices for your art not you john.

also i've just had not much sleep over the last couple of nights, waking irrevocably at one, so i'm feeling a bit spaced. not sure what overall impact that will have on this, but i'm sure it will be POSITIVE.

oddly, there were two tiers of tickets. £5 and £10. there wasn't any clear differentiation. but if i don't get to ask QUESTIONS because i'm not in the £10 seats, I will be vexed. because i have questions.

obligatory quotation of peter reading's At the Reading

The sham-coy simper,
the complacency,
the frisson titters,
the sycophancy.

wait, i need to find my headphones

and my wine.

and download zoom.

oh it's not zoom. ok. we're good.

there was some uptempo waiting room music. that's now stopped. i'm just looking at a screen saying welcome to this event with John Lanchester lol and Sam Kinchin-Smith: Reality and Other Stories.

Wot do u know about reality, John? I am interested in this question.

i wonder if john is opening his laptop and navigating to his video conference application.

not sure if something has gone wrong. refreshed. i've got the up-tempo music again.ooooooh, i've got the chat open. here we go.

hello from seattle! hi!
hello from Decorah, Iowa.

hi!

Granada
Mexico City

wtf.

New Mexico!

have you started? no no one has started helen.

'just about to!' LRB

I

AM

STOKED

ankara!

john's capital speaks for all capitals.

Cardiff, that's better.

Norfolk

Have we started? No Helen, still no, we've all still got the up tempo music and opening slide.

Oxford, Sheffield.

Apparently we all miss the IRL shop events so much but we get to share with our friends all over.

really interested to see what international fans think of our john.

Nigel, no one cares you're from London.

it's frozen. this might be me.

some technical problems here and he's talking about david foster wallace lol

tory party donations struck him as an interesting way of thinking about ghosts.

wait am i going crazy

there is something genuinely uncanny about how in 2018 the tory party is being paid for by dead people and if that isn't an image of ghostliness what is?

loooool. what.

he's been wanting to write about zoom - contact that isn't contact. conversing with people who aren't there.

this guy is a moron.