Category: News

In our happy-happy, lovely-lovely times, the past exists only as an opportunity for sentimentalism, the present as a moment in ongoing personal growth, and the future as some vague dream of fulfillment. How, in this context, can this unease be marked? How do you register the distance between an inane, corporate optimism, and the reality of financial upheaval, debt, climatic change and so on? By a hyperbolic performance of despair—an antidote to the hyperbolic performance of happiness! By a re-valuation of the significance of mental suffering, attempting to internalize it, to undergo it, to ponder it rather than let it wander through our lives. By re-narrating our disasters, reclaiming failure as a legitimate response to our social conditions, as a way of witnessing the truth. By heeding the to-and-fro of everyday speech—our grumblings, our laughter, our little protests at the world, seemingly so unimportant. By recapturing ridiculous moments of joy snatched from the jaws of stress and frustration. By remembering what there can be of friendship, what there can be of love. By observing the stress lines on the executive’s face. By tracking the slow hurricane of quotidian nihilism, as it drains life of all meaning and direction, as it plays out in the most ordinary of circumstances. By writing about the misery of adolescents in the suburbs. By writing about futureless youth. By unleashing a wild, misanthropic laughter at the imposture of the happy capitalist. By decrying the destruction of the commons. By quoting from the books we read that help to diagnose the horror. By undoing all story arcs, letting them spin themselves into nothing.

New long interview at the Rumpus. Greg Hunter asked the questions.

I will reading from and discussing EXODUS at Blackwells bookshop, Newcastle, on Tuesday Feb 19th at 6PM. 

Review of Exodus, from Library Journal, Vol. 138 No. 3, p.92.

The third in a series after Spurious and Dogma, this work offers a series of short vignettes involving two disillusioned academics on a philosophical tour of Britain. One is referred to as W. and the other, our narrator, is sometimes referred to as Lars. As they proceed from university to university they decry the death of philosophy and engage in clever criticisms about clever criticisms. Kierkegaard, Kant, and Deleuze as well as many other philosophers are repeatedly mentioned and considered. While the tone seeks to be light and jovial, the reading is ponderous. The work is enlivened by references to the movie Blade Runner and to the band Joy Division. However, a chunked-up narrative creates a sort of schizophrenic antinovel; there are brief moments of lucidity but the whole reads like a dissonant series of overlapping, overheard conversations.

VERDICT A very challenging work, the mental equivalent of being slapped lightly in the face 50 or 60 times by academics posturing about academic posturing: only for the most intrepid.—Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos P.L., CA

W. and Lars often evince the desire to be judged – to be told off, corrected. They are like children who purposely test the rules in order to be punished. But no punishment comes. No judgement. W.’s and Lars’s scholarly labours are ignored by the academy. So they judge each other’s work instead – W. through insulting Lars, and Lars through the writing of the trilogy. This judgement has to be relentless, because it is never definitive – neither W. nor Lars takes the other to have the authority of judgement that the institution might have had. W. will carry on insulting Lars, and Lars will carry on writing his blog about W. because the academy has other things on its mind.

New interview with me in Totally Dublin. Kevin Breathnach asked the questions.

Without a relationship to Modernism, no future. Without knowing that the relationship to Modernism is utterly impossible, no future. Without knowing that there is no future, no future.

Interviewed at 3:AM. Antônio Xerxenesky asked the questions.

In some sense. For me, what writers up until the period of late modernism could rely upon was the prestige implicit in the idea of literature. What contemporary writers, in my view, need to contend with, is the marginality of literature within our culture. Kafka did not believe in religion but he could still believe in art. That same belief in art today, if not grotesque, is based upon a great capacity for denial.

'How Refreshing it is to be Insulted': New interview with me at the New Statesman. Juliet Jacques asked the questions.

Exodus by Lars Iyer: Exodus, which follows Spurious and Dogma, is the eminently satisfying and unexpectedly moving final installment in a truly original trilogy about two wandering British intellectuals—Lars and W., not to be confused with Lars Iyer and his real friend W., whom he’s been quoting for years on his blog—and their endless search for meaning in a random universe, for true originality of thought, for a leader, for better gin. (Emily M.)

Exodus is featured in The Millions Books 2013 preview. 

It's also one of the Interesting New Books 2013 featured on Conversational Reading.

Exodus by Lars Iyer (Melville House). The final volume in Iyer's gloomily brilliant trilogy about a toxic friendship between unfortunate philosophy dons, boozing and bitching in the great tradition of Beckett's double acts.

The Guardian chooses EXODUS as one of their books to look out for in 2013.

DOGMA longlisted for the 3:AM novel of the year prize.

The Exodus London book launch will be at the Betsey Trotwood, on the 24th January. More details as the event approaches.

I will also be reading Exodus at Oxford event at Blackwells on the 23rd January.

There will be a Newcastle event, too, once again at Blackwells. Details to follow.

I will be doing various events in New York from the 11th-13th February, and in Boston after that. Details to follow.

That Manifesto of mine appears in Portuguese translation in edition 12 of the Brazilian magazine Serrote.

I keep company with Godard, Keiller, Angelopolous and Krasznahorkai in Nick Cain's 12 things from 2012, in the end-of-year edition of The Wire.