Lars Iyer

John Self puts Spurious on his personal Booker shortlist.

I will be speaking in London on the 10th November alongside Michael Stewart, Julian Gough, Mark Thwaite and Sam Jordison at a Not the Booker celebration and online criticism event on 10th November.

It will run from 7.00-8.30 PM at the Book Club at 100 Leonard Street, Shoreditch, EC2A 4RH, and is hosted by Melville House publishing house. For more details, see here.

(Apologies to the person with whom I was corresponding about David Markson – I accidentially deleted your email and contact details. Please do get back in contact.)

A truly gifted human being does not recall the single incidents of his life as so many discrete images of situations which come to his mind. He understands them together, in some way. And this continuity in them is the only thing that can assure him that he is living, that he is in the world.

Wittgenstein, Notebooks

I'm discussed alongside Lee Rourke and Tom McCarthy in Daniel Davis Wood's academic essay, 'Rebirth of the Nouveau Roman: 9/11 as a Crisis of Confidence in American Literary Aesthetics'.

All human beings may in truth perhaps be genuinely religious, because hidden religiousness is true religiousness, the hidden inwardness in one who is religious, who even uses all his skill just so that no one will notice anything special about him.

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

Since an existing humourist is the closest approximation to the one who is religious, he too has an essential conception of the suffering that he is in, in that he does not grasp existence as one thing and fortune and misfortune as something that happens to the one existing, but exists in a way in which suffering stands in relation to existence.

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

To lead a really spiritual life while physically and psychologically healthy is altogether impossible. One's sense of well-being runs away with one. If one suffers every day, if one is so frail that the thought of death is quite naturally and immediately to hand, then it is just possible to succeed a little; to be conscious that one needs God.

Kierkegaard, journals

Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.

Wittgenstein, Tractatus

May I die a good death, attending myself. May I never lose myself.

Perhaps the nearness of death will bring light into life. God enlighten me.

In constant danger of my life. By the grace of God the night went well. From time to time I despair. This is the fault of a wrong view of life.

I've had the time and quiet enough for working. But nothing stirs me. My material is far away from me. It is only death that gives life it meaning.

Understand people. Whenever you feel like hating them, try instead to understand them. Be at peace within yourself. But how do you find this peace in yourself? Only if I live in a way pleasing to God. Only so can one bear life.

Wittgenstein, Journals

I have always tried, in my own works, to mark my respect for those writers with whom I felt an affinity, to raise my hat to them, so to speak, by borrowing an attractive image or a few expressions …

Walser must at the time have hoped, through writing, to be able to escape the shadows which lay over his life from the beginning, and whose lengthening he anticipates at an early age …

… if Walser had any literary relative or predecessor, then it is Gogol. Both of them gradually lost the ability to keep their eye on the centre of the plot, losing themselves instead in the almost compulsive contemplation of strangely unreal creations appearing on the periphery of their vision, and about whose previous and future fate we never learn even the slightest thing.

In the 'microscripts' […]can be seen – as an ingenious method of continuing to write – coded messages of one forced into illegality and documents of a genuine 'inner emigration'.

… it is equally certain that unconsciously […] [Walser] was seeking to hide, behind the indecipherable characters, 'from both public and internalised instances of evaluation', to duck down from the level of language and to obliterate himself.

The exact definition of his illness is of little relevance. It is enough for us to understand that, in the end, Walser simply could not go on, and, like Hoelderlin, had to resort to keeping people at arm's length with a sort of anarchic politeness, becoming refractory and abusive, making scenes in public and believing that the bourgeois city of Berne, of all places, was a city of ghostly gesticulators, executing rapid hand movements directly in front of his face expressly in order to discombobulate him and to dismiss him out of hand as one who simply does not count.

It was enough for [Walser] to call himself – with bitterly resigned irony – at least the ninth-best writer in the Helvetic Federation.

Sebald, from his essay on Walser reprinted as the introduction to the translation of The Tanners

Spurious second in the Not the Booker award, with 108 votes to Michael Stewart's 114. Thanks to those of you who voted.

… under the influence of situationist ideas […] I began to walk around the neighbourhood converted into the prototype of the secretly revolutionary, poetic intellectual. But in fact, being a situationist without having read a single line of Guy Debord, I was on the most radical extreme left, but only through hearsay. And, as I've said, I didn't practice, I devoted myself to feeling extremely left-wing and that was it.

The narrator of Vila-Matas's Never Any End to Paris

… the true writer, as we see him, is the thrall of his time, its serf and bondsman, its lower salve. He is fettered t it on a short, unbreakable chain, shackled to it as tight as can be. His lack of freedom must be so great that he could not be transplanted anywhere else. In fact, if it did not sound ludicrous, I would simply say: he is the dog of his time.

Elias Canetti, The Conscience of Words

For the incomprehensible and unforgettable thing was that this law glowed: it radiated, it scorched and destroyed.

Elias Canetti, The Conscience of Words

I am more and more unable to think, to observe, the determine the truth of things, to remember, to speak, to share an experience. I am turning to stone – this is the truth…. If I can't take refuge in some sort of work, I am lost.

Kafka, Diaries, July 28 1914

Not Thinking

When did you know?, W. says with great insistence. When did you know you weren't going to amount to anything? Did I know?, he asks, because sometimes he suspects I never did. Well he knows at any rate for both of us. Neither of us are going to amount to anything!, he says with finality. Neither of us! Anything!, he says imperiously.

We might carry on as if we're going to amount to anything, W. says, but that does not alter the fact that we're not going to amount to anything. We haven't had a single thought of our own, for one thing, W. says. Not one!

Most thought provoking is that we are still not thinking, I say to W., remembering Heidegger. Most thought provoking is that you think you are thinking, says W. Because you do, don't you?

A Lower Branch

The kernel is in Poland, W. often says. The secret is in Poland. But what does he mean? we run through our memories. Our Polish adventure! When were we happier? It all came together there. In a real sense, it all began.

There we were, ambassadors for our country, in our teeshirts and jungle-print shorts. There we were, intellectual delegates, who had a civic reception. Wasn't it the mayor of Wroclaw who greeted us? Of course, the welcoming committee in Wroclaw looked at us in bemusement: was this the best Britain had to offer? – 'And that was before they heard you go on about blowholes over dinner', W. says. That was before the real fiasco began, he says, when we re-enacted the primal scene for them on the dancefloor. It's a British dance move, we told them. It's what we do on British dancefloors, but they looked away from us appalled.

But they treated us with European grace. We attended a grill party in the sun – that's what they called it, a grill party. There were sausages and beer. We're a loutish people, we told them. Don't expect anything from us. We told them we'd disappoint them, we warned them in advance, but after a while, they seemed to find us charming.

I think we won them over, in some sense, W. says. They came to like our inanities. To them, we were like a race apart, like elves or something. A lower branch on the human tree. Once they knew they could expect very little, it was okay. We were free from any expectations.

Yes, that's where it all began, W. and I agree. Free from our hosts' expectations, we also became freer from our own. It was then, in our jungle-print shorts, that we accepted what we were.

He plays rhythm. He plays off the beat. He plays on the upbeats. He'll play a rhythmic phrase in order to get the attention going. He's not just thinking harmonically and melodically. He's thinking rhythm. It's like a drummer. He would constantly talk about rhythm…. Coltrane was straight ahead, it wasn't about rhythm, it was about lines and motion. With Miles this thing was about up and down, get in between the beats, in between – like boxing…. When you think about Miles' playing…. it's a ballet. It's a dance. It's a ball bouncing. It's not like some stream of air or stream of water.

Dave Liebman, recalling playing with Miles Davis in the early '70s.

In the beginning we knew whether something we played was good or not. Even though we were trying out new things, our approach was still pretty much tied in with a more traditional way of playing. But the more the stuff developed, the harder it became to tell if what we were doing was working or not. For one thing, Miles more and more recorded things in bits and pieces, just little ideas here and there that were later on strung together. It was fascinating to work like that, but during the recording sessions we couldn't tell if the stuff was good or bad, or what it was at all. We'd play and then we'd wonder, "What was that? What did we do?"'

Herbie Hancock, on working with Miles Davis in the late '60s.

I think that the content of that work at the moment of arrival at the page is exactly the strategy that allows you to get there. Because getting there is the trick, getting there is the trouble. But once you get there, once your life is organised so beautifully so that there is a table, a chair, a typwewriter, that is an incredible triumph.

Most people give up […] My mind is not particularly fertile. My only success is the fact that I've been able to get to the desk. My whole life has been trying to arrange those moments when I take care of everything that is not in the room, and have the moment to arrive. And usually what I am writing about is everything I've had to do to get to the moment of writing at the desk.

Leonard Cohen, speaking to Michael Silverblatt

The Open University

The university of the outside … The truly open university …

W. wants to discover the opposite of Britain within Britain, he says.

He thinks of Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus, and Rosenstock’s Camp William James. He dreams of Arendt, Strauss and the University in Exile …

They didn’t go far enough, W. says. Mind you, none of them were British. They didn’t understand how far they had to go … And isn’t it of that that W. dreams of now: of a university set up by those who knew how far they would have to go? How far from Britain they would have to go, W. says. How far from Oxford, from the old order, W. says. And how far from the Beast, from the new order, W. says.

Tomorrow …

The university of the streets … The university of perpetual protest …

We remember the activities of the Committee of Writers and Intellectuals during the Events of May 1968. Blanchot, ‘pale but real’, Duras beside him. Mascolo. And students, hordes of students. And workers!

They wrote handbills and bulletins. They collectively authored the now famous slogans. Tomorrow it was May: that was the title of one of their tracts. Tomorrow it was May …

Trust

The university of unconditional welcome … The university of hospitality …

W. reminds me of Deleuze’s seminars. Anyone could come to them! You could just wander off the streets. Vagrants twitching in the audience … Alcoholics shouting abuse …

You have to trust the author you’re studying, Deleuze used to tell his audience. You must silence the voices of objection within you. You must let the author speak for himself, analyse the frequency of his words, the style of his own obsessions. His thought invents coordinates and develops along its own axes …

Deleuze would speak for hours, lost in his cloud of cigarette smoke. Sometimes, he’d pause to take questions from the floor – mad questions, vagrants’ questions … Sometimes, Deleuze would pause in his analysis of Spinoza to let the hubbub die down. He’d look up, with his tender eyes, surveying his audience, half-amusedly, half-lovingly. And then he would begin again, as though he hadn’t been interrupted.

The Endless End

It’s like Jandek, W. says … Didn’t I teach him everything he knows about Jandek? Didn’t I instruct him? Didn’t I take him through the later albums one by one? I Threw You Away. The Gone Wait. The Ruins of Adventure. Raining Down Diamonds … What titles! What album sleeves!

Jandek only sings about suffering, I told W. Only despair, suffering and pain, and their variations. Jandek begins at the end, at the very end. And he somehow goes on from the very end. He somehow continues, beginning at the end and not relinquishing the end, a man alone in a room with a guitar, with a reel-to-reel tape recorder running. He goes on, plucking or strumming open strings, leaving them to rattle, crying and howling and moaning and gasping …

Jandek doesn’t teach us about the end of the world so much as the endlessness of the end, W. says.

I don’t know what to do except/ Sit in a chair/ Maybe walk around/ Once in a while/ But quick, back to that chair …

Let me tell you about my blues/ My blues have turned black/ Black, black, black, black, black …

The things Jandek’s known, W. says. The things he’s experienced. Jandek’s gone outside, W. says. Jandek’s stayed outside …

Ordinary People, Ugly People

The university of fate … The university of hope … W. reminds me of how Tarr only cast his friends in his films. The same friends, every time. Ordinary people. Ugly people. Drunkards.

Tarr shot everything in one take’ W. says, in awe. One take – and these were non-actors. If the shot went wrong, the shot went wrong. Tarr would simply begin again, and over again. And some of these shots were fifty minutes long! There was the TV version of Macbeth that he made which comprised two takes. Just two takes … and one of the actors was a terrible alcoholic who kept fluffing his lines … Never mind, never mind, Tarr would simply start shooting again, once again from the top, once again …

Anti-Prophet

The university of vagrancy … The university of prophecy …

W. recalls how Herzog cast Bruno S. in his films. Who else could play Kaspar Hauser other than a real outsider, a man who had never acted, a man who had no interest in acting, but was only himself in the two films he made with Herzog? Kaspar Hauser: himself. Bruno S: no one other than himself!

Bruno – the real Bruno – always spoke in the third person, which W. really admires. ‘Bruno is sad. Bruno is angry’. I should take it up: ‘Fat boy hungry. Fat boy want dinner’. Seriously, though, there was always that distance … as though he were also someone else, something else, something impersonal, like fate.

They are closing all the doors on Bruno, and oh, so, politely.

Bruno’s getting pushed aside as if he didn’t exist. …

Bruno was a kind of prophet, W. says. An anti-prophet, who only sees doom, only ruination. He knows in advance that it's all going to fail. We're going down: he knows that. The end times have begun: that’s all he knows.

Bruno knows it will end, that it's all coming to an end, but he hopes nonetheless. He hopes nevertheless, against himself and against fate. He hopes: and that’s what you can see in him, too, W. says … That’s what Herzog must have seen in him. It’s pathetic. It’s nothing, nothing. The faith of a child, the hope of a child …

The University in the University

W. dreams of leaving the university behind. He dreams of ending our captivity.

We need to discover the university in the university, W. says. We have to turn the university inside out like a glove, exposing it to everything it excludes …

To the working class, barred from the university by the cost of studying. To the insane, barred from the university because of their wayward reasoning. To the melancholics, barred from the university because of the misery of their lives. To the alcoholics, barred for shouting, barred for fighting. To the homeless, the vagrants …

W. reminds of how Robert Lenkiewicz, the Plymouth Rembrandt, used to let vagrants live in his studio. There were about fifty of them, in and around the huge canvasses he liked to paint, most of them crazy, most of them disturbed, screaming and shouting …

Lenkiewicz believed it was possible to become an ‘artist-saint’, he said. He was interested in ethics, he said, in a certain way of behaving, that was at one with painting. That was part of his calling.

One of the vagrants hanged himself in the studio. Lenkiewicz remembers cutting him down. The vagrant had lost an eye a few months ago, crashing through a chemist’s window, looking for a fix …

And he embalmed another vagrant, keeping his corpse beside him in the studio, to remind him not of his own mortality – that would be banal, W. says, but of the mortality and vulnerability of others.

Lenkiewicz used to keep a record of what they said, his vagrants, W. says. 'Without suffering, I'm lost: I wouldn't know what to do without suffering'. That's attributed to the Singer, he says, reading from his notebook. And there’s Black Sam, who speaks like a voiceover from a Malick film:

We're all strange people; we're all escapin'; we're all fanatics.

You searchin' for somethin', but what? If I could have one spark, just one spark.

There's some force that governs. Some gigantic force, but what does it govern?

Danny Byrne reviews Spurious.

W. himself comments on Spurious.