John Lanchester

speaker

548 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 27 Jun

John Lanchester’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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London Review Bookshop Podcast · John Lanchester & Hattie Crisell: Look What You Made Me Do · 27 Jun 2026 podcast

Yeah, there are sometimes points of what do I do about so and so?

How could I fix it?

And I don't have that.

And I think

I mean, I've never tried talking it through, but I think the problem is, writing a book is I have to keep the lid on the kettle.

You know, I can't let the buildup dissipate.

And the experience I've had of having had an idea that I thought was a good idea and talking about it is it just makes it feel dead.

So I haven't been able to square that one.

That was the only time that that process has let me down of planning it and sort of trusting that I'll be able to hear them and carry me forward.

And it was disconcerting to just have this thing that then just suddenly brick wall couldn't carry on.

But as I said, more, I'm hoping to get that email from the unconscious about that one.

Maybe it's going to the spam filter.

I bet that's true.

I mean, I don't think about it consciously though, partly because, you know, I kind of have a pulpit to address things in my own voice in writing journalism and nonfiction.

And I'm wary of writing things where I know what it means.

in fiction because i think it makes things too determinate if you have a completely crystal clear sense of what you want to say and what the intention is i think for i find it quite likely to be inert you know that um it's fully intended therefore you could kind of paraphrase the meaning therefore it's slightly dead i i find and i trust

I basically trust my unconscious that if it's going to kind of mutate and evolve and metastasize and turn into a form of fiction, that there'll be enough of what I think in there.

I know lots of people's process is different on that, but basically the unconscious does the main work for me in writing fiction, and it's the other way around.

The big similarity that they have, the big overlap,

is to do with shaping.

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