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

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'in the future we'll all be in the middle'

OMFG john on your gravestone

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:28 (four years ago) link

he's now talking about VCRs.

this is all reassuringly john.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:29 (four years ago) link

john's talking about how he has to reset timers if there's a power cut. the man is superannuated.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:29 (four years ago) link

the interview says the stories can be mischievous and prompted by a roald dahlian comeuppance.

'i think instagram is bad for people on the whole'

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:30 (four years ago) link

Fizzles, thank you for your service.

Notes on Scampo (tokyo rosemary), Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:31 (four years ago) link

'the ghost story is something somebody tells you. the first one i wrote i read to friends' lol

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:31 (four years ago) link

'ghost stories take you somewhere you aren't quite expecting'

utter banalities delivered as insight.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:32 (four years ago) link

not exactly ironic or unfelt, but you can take them that way.

"he says he thinks what he's saying is the opposite of hilary mantel who both believe and is sincere about ghosts, but for him he sees them as a set of tools and metaphors, and you can believe or put inverted commas round them."

so yes, that is a problem, john.

they're going to read from coffin liquor for a bit, so i'm going to eat mussels. i hope they do the rau rau bit

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:33 (four years ago) link

O
M
G

he's doing the old woman bit!

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:34 (four years ago) link

please go rau rau

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:34 (four years ago) link

he just said 'exlinguate' with great pleasure.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:34 (four years ago) link

of course this is really interesting because his intonation and reading must be at the centre of why his sentences are so bad.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:35 (four years ago) link

the reaction of those friends he read to in full: also rau rau rau

mark s, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:36 (four years ago) link

oh no they want to talk about QAnon and Covid 19

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:36 (four years ago) link

lol xpost.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:36 (four years ago) link

"the conscious spreading of mistruthes as the germ theory of disease."

this is v bad.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:37 (four years ago) link

"post truth is a much darker thing than pre-truth"

"yes, i think that's truth"

this made me laugh out loud

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:37 (four years ago) link

'that's true' sorry.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:37 (four years ago) link

are academics in your sights? asks the interviewer?

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:37 (four years ago) link

he just said 'exlinguate' with great pleasure.

― Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 bookmarkflaglink

glad you are enjoying yourself

xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:38 (four years ago) link

MR James is the genius of the clash between someone who thinks he knows everything and the world where explanations don't fit.

John wonders whether it's implicit in the form - a confrontation between the impulse to explain and things that can't be explained.

Yes ok, but by god this is 101 delivered as great intellect.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:39 (four years ago) link

'there's a wonderful line in... (one of the stories' says the interviewer. outright lies.

oh it turns out lancho borrowed this from someone he knows.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:40 (four years ago) link

borrowed.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:40 (four years ago) link

he frowns a lot when thinking and saying 'i haven't really thought this through about ghost stories'

a warning to the totally incurious

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:42 (four years ago) link

interviewer: 'for 80% of the time you're describing reality, the unreality of reality. is the supernatural dimension not an afterthought but a chance to explore that 80%'

JL: 'well the thing is i wanted these to be re-readable'

massive lol here.

'You have to watch it with the supernatural, the revelation of the supernatural component, the touch needs to be as light as possible before it delivers its punch'

lol big touch for a light man.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:44 (four years ago) link

"the stories have to be about the texture of modern life in general

it's about getting quotidian life in it.

the spooky things are realer if the rest of the setting is real too."

SOLID GOLD

interview just referred to the subtleties in his writing.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:45 (four years ago) link

think interviewer just referred to @Aelkus tweet.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:45 (four years ago) link

lanchester says you can't outdo contemporary reality for outlandish things happening, citing philip roth.

how do you write satire in a time like this RITE

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:46 (four years ago) link

While you're on, could you ask Lancho to ask the LRB to stop fucking emailing me 9 times a week? You could frame it as a 'I think the servers are haunted lol'. Thx.

Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:49 (four years ago) link

i've asked a questiohn

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:50 (four years ago) link

lol china ski

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:51 (four years ago) link

a lot of talk about the social concepts, but i was wondering if i could ask a question about the writing: what’s your draft,revision, editing process (slightly comes from a comment by mike mccormack who said the excellent quality of irish writing at the moment was to do with the excellent quality of editors)

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:51 (four years ago) link

it's difficult to ask lancho good questions because his speciality isn't anything really.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:53 (four years ago) link

all his thinking is underpinned by milquetoast inexpert opinions about stuff that many others have talked about better. this includes his imaginative thinking.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:53 (four years ago) link

my GOD man. he's just heard about a k shaped recovery.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:54 (four years ago) link

this man is a dullard.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:54 (four years ago) link

he must just spend most of his day sitting in a moronic self-satisfied stupor.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:54 (four years ago) link

what if his speciality is,,, everything

mark s, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:54 (four years ago) link

'i've long thought there would be a populist backlash and i didn't realise it would come from the right, and surely at some point you'd've thought by reversion to the mean, the pushback from the left and social democracy, from actually common sense, why in a democratic system would you have a system where most people lose out'

why john why. feeling his way to sensiblism with slow wondering steps.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:55 (four years ago) link

he's working on a tv adaptation of the wall. INTERVIEWER: i wonder if in a brechtian sense you are more likely to write within i won't say mainstream but larger audience reaching formats.

too many broken lols in the world, there's too many lols have been broken in two.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:56 (four years ago) link

climate change is all encompassing, global and catastrophic apparently. 'it's difficult to get your head around'

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:57 (four years ago) link

'personally i find climate denial very easy to understand, why wouldn't you deny it'

realtime Lanchester sentence there.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:57 (four years ago) link

who is the interviewere btw

mark s, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:58 (four years ago) link

lanchester deeply agrees with china mieville.

john's brain buffers from time to time.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:58 (four years ago) link

young, shiny faced, dyed blond slicked back hair. probably brighter than he's coming across. trying to put thinking into this is hard.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 18:59 (four years ago) link

i do actually think john lanchester is a bellend.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 19:00 (four years ago) link

do you think everyone has a unique experience of social media because of the algorithms.

'this is a super interesting point'

'i believe this has broken the notion of the agora, the greek democratic space'

this is a good example of pompous public school language used with very low levels of intelligence. JL is Jacob Rees Mogg. What happened to him?

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 19:01 (four years ago) link

the algorithm is producing your own personal version of reality.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 19:02 (four years ago) link

that is disastrously stupid.

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 19:02 (four years ago) link

MY QUESTION

Fizzles, Wednesday, 7 October 2020 19:02 (four years ago) link


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