#john lanchester

[justforbooks]

“This is not a conventional cookbook,” writes Lanchester’s hero Tarquin Winot in this thriller-masquerading-as-foodie memoir. Over a variety of “seasonal” chapters, Winot weighs in about his various relatives and friends, “the many extant batter, waffle and pancake dishes” from “Swedish krumkaker” to “Polish naleśniki” and his convictions in relation to fish (“lemon sole is a very underrated fish, much closer in quality to its more highly regarded Dover cousin than wisdom normally permits”). Lanchester crafts Winot-as-author to be infuriating – he’s pompous, tricksy and pedantic – but a fancy prose style soon turns out to be the most innocent of his vices. A dark, funny and exquisitely crafted book.

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[yourtrashcollector]

Nessuno di noi è in grado di parlare con i propri genitori.

Con «noi» intendo quelli della mia generazione

John Lanchester, Il muro

[thequietabsolute]

In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy.

— John Lanchester, from The Debt to Pleasure 1996.

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Debt to Pleasure | Author: John Lanchester | Publisher: Picador (2014)

[plantdad-dante]

Book #174 - The Wall by John Lanchester

(page after page, I was praying that Kavanagh would just fucking drown already. but alas. 'twas not to be.)

I have read this fucker twice now. I guess I could have just thrown it out without rereading it for this fool's sideshow I call a blog, but I decided that hey. Maybe I had misunderstood something last time. Maybe I had just approached it with the wrong expectations before, and this time, it would click for me and this book would turn out to be a hidden masterpiece.

And yeah, no, that did not happen. I hate it. I hate this book so much.

The world building sucks ass, both when it's there and the fact that it's mostly not. The main character sucks, and deserves death, violently. Every other character is one-dimensional at best, the love interest has a name, and some physical features, and that's it (halfway through Kavanagh realizes he loves her and I literally wrote down "but why?? who is she, tell me"), and the truly harrowing dystopian future does not reach a resolution, or a point, or even a narrative climax. Instead, it somehow utterly fails to do even the thematic minimum of having its main character and narrator realize that the Wall is an unconscinable and fascist institution in which he was, willingly or not, complicit.

But no, Kavanagh never reckons with the immorality of his country's (and therefore, by extension, his own) actions. He consistently thinks of himself, his personal relationships, his politics and his decisions in terms of his military service and seems incapable of empathy, critical thinking, or ever changing his mind. His feelings are largely stated and then forgotten about, as he does what he is ordered to, what he is expected to do, or what the plot thinks is the most rational and effective action to take in any given moment. He never truly reflects on anything, meaning in a way that matters, that brings about a change of heart. No, Kavanagh, above all, is an empty, self-absorbed vessel that is not here for any sort of personal arc; only to be inhabited by plot and the strange, petty, unchanging apathy with which he narrates and regards the dystopia he lives in.

Kavanagh portrays his entire world and identity through his service as a military conscript, even after his government literally exiles him. He seems to regard the politicians' nationalist propaganda with disinterest and resentment - not because of its content, mind you, but because none of the members of the "elite" did time on the Wall, and therefore all they say is, to him, illegitimate by default. His and his friends' suffering on the Wall is greater than anyone else's, and so the "elite" as well as his entire parent generation get dismissed and diagnosed with being useless because they are so wrapped up in their "guilt" over "letting the world break" - whatever that means.

The world-building never explains what the Change actually did, beyond the vague notions of "rising sea levels" and "global collapse", which is less than nothing to go on. Everyone in the country is ID-chipped, which gets never elaborated on, nor is it explained how anyone unchipped gets found and taken into state custody within a matter of days, apparently. The country runs on nuclear energy, though it is unclear who thought this was a smart idea, were a literally walled-off country wants to put the trash, or how they get the uranium necessary for it, and how that solves other scarce-ressource-dependant problems, like heating. Commercial flight has been limited to the elite because of fuel shortage, yet the army can still do daily recon flights out over the sea to spy out and sink refugee boats, which sounds like the exact opposite of cost-effective, but whatever. There is a state-"owned" slavery system that is never given thematic weight enough to be anything but vile, exploitative set-decoration, and the one (1) humanizing moment that it leads to feels out of place and never even connects to anything else in the book.

Every character is willing and ready to kill to a degree that is frankly ridiculous for a conscript army put under such harsh working conditions with only six weeks of base training (newsflash: the average civilian considers killing to be wrong and would a) need to be pushed to quite pressing and immediate extremes to do it, and b) would still be traumatized by it afterwards). Kav and crew never even think about it, no one is ever affected by it, and even the deaths of friends and comrades are shrugged off and quickly forgotten. No one, not even Kav's closest friend Hughes, gets mourned.

After the Captain gives his very very good reasons for why he betrayed them (namely "I wanted a future for my people, you entitled assheads"), Hifa asks him if he isn't going to apologize, which apparently the entire group expected him to do (???), and I had to write down in my notes "girl, you boomroasted eight of his people without batting an eye". Which she did, not thirty pages earlier. Kav killed about five "Others" over the course of his service on the Wall, and he also never, not once, even registers that he ended five human lives. He also never, to the very end, lets go of calling everyone outside the Wall "Other" - just includes himself and his mates in it, post-exile. Our protagonists, fellow humans.

And I haven't even mentioned the racist bulllshit of that visit to Hifa's mum, the stupid generations war that fundamentally misunderstands why and how young people today have bones to pick with their elders, the fact that more than half the inhabitants of the raft community are mentioned so sparingly that their presence (when Kav herds them into cover during the pirate attack) comes as a confusing suprise, and that he consistently misuses literary terms and techniques. I know that last one is a petty nit-pick, but that is not what a metaphor, prose, a haiku, or a fucking story is. Stop trying to sound poetic when you all you are doing is ascribing a non-physical thing a physical presence and then patting yourself on the shoulder for being oh so profound.

Jesus fucking Christ, fuck this book.

[zmkccommonplace]

In politics, it doesn't really matter what the numbers are, so much as whose they are. If people are arguing about your numbers, you're winning.

John Lanchester, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n18/john-lanchester/get-a-rabbit

[goryhorroor]

more legendary faces of horror

[lacnunga]

even magical kings get a bit sleepy...

[sacredwhores]

John Farrow - The Big Clock (1948)

[uskglass-mirror-house]

So I went to a con and bought myself this very cool piece of art by Lothlenan. It features Howl and Sophie from Howls' Moving Castle as The kiss by Gustav Klimt. The more I looked at the fanart, the more I thought "Man, this is a great idea for most of my fictional couples". And this is how I ended with this piece of John Uskglass/ William of Lanchester fanart!

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out. I like how John's robe looks and also I'm pretty satisfied with the background. William's moustaches and beard were also a lot of fun to draw.

However, there are some things that I want to improve (and that I will change when I make another version of this): fixing John's eyebrow and eye (they look weird af and idk what happened there they were fine in the sketch lol), improving the design of William's armour, maybe trying to get my hands on some paint and do a mix to add some difference in texture, replace the ivy with the original yellow flowers (I put the ivy there because magicians, but for the colour composition the original is better), and make the background way darker to invoke John's shadows. I also think William's clothes need to be darker to match John's and be true to the spirit of the original painting (studying the original for inspiration made all the things I learned about it resurface and I realised that next time around I have to try and maintain some of the original symbolism).

Anyway, happy 20th anniversary to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and to my favourite niche blorbo ship!

[merrymorningofmay]

yeah so the fun thing i meant to share is that i was researching anglo-saxon charms for uh, inspiration for my william of lanchester wip, and i came across these four charms for finding stolen things (or cattle).

basically there are three incantations (well, more like two, one of which survives in two slightly different versions) and also this thing:

and all of these charms feature a cross in some capacity, the logic in the incantations being "may i find my stolen stuff like st. helena found the holy cross" (+ two of them also add "may the thief be exposed like judas' betrayal was exposed"), which reminded me a lot of the spell to see your enemy in jsamn.

(and on some level i do think that drawing a cross on some water to see a vision is an intuitive enough idea that susanna clarke could've just come up with it on her own, but even if that's the case, a nice parallel there)

[gatutor]

Elsa Lanchester-Ricardo Montalban "La calle del misterio" (Mystery street) 1950, de John Sturges.

[letterboxd-loggd]

The Big Clock (1948) John Farrow

January 13th 2024

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Fragrant Harbor | Author: John Lanchester | Publisher: Penguin (2003)

[camyfilms]

MARY POPPINS 1964

You know, you can say it backwards, which is "docious-ali-expi-istic-fragil-cali-rupus" - but that's going a bit too far, don't you think?

[citizenscreen]

Ann B. Davis, Elsa Lanchester, and John Forsythe for “The John Forsythe Show” (1965-1966)