Lanchester City

I first came across John Lanchester's writing in the London Review of Books, where he's a frequent contributor. His stuff is always sharp, playful and curiously wise; it is sleepy and yet profound and witty. In short, it has the soul of a cat. That's not say Lanchester is 'catty' in the spiteful way in which people use the word. No; he is feline, with that odd juxtaposition of random letters that makes you think of both felis and felix— 'cat' and 'happy'.

In Lanchester's 2000 novel, Mr Phillips, are found many wise (etc, etc) things. Unfortunately, because there are so many gems in the overall presentation, it is easy to forget specific gems and get lazy and tell others to just read the whole book themselves.

But for today, I shall leave you with a quote from the end of Chapter 2.5 which I found humorous then and prophetic now.

Mr Phillips presses on up the road, past the nasty modern building where the Labour Party has its headquarters, into which a despatch rider has just stridden, past the dwarfing, monolithic government buildings along the Embankment. Further along the road he can see the beginnings of Westminster, all grand and Gothic and trying to look a million years old.

If banks try to look all secure and posh and safe and stable and big and respectable and stuffy and built to last for all time, for the simple reason that at heart they are all just casinos, what is it that these government buildings were concealing? Probably that they tried to make people feel small, so that the actions of the people in these buildings will seem far beyond their understanding, impersonal and authoritative and independent of anything so trivial as the consent of the governed.

There is a reason why we continue to study literature. It teaches us more about seeing the world than science does; science can only tell us what is or will be seen, while literature gently lures us to consider what may yet be seen.