Lars Iyer's Blog

Spurious reviewed by Emily St. John Mandel at The Millions.

These last few years, thought, the capacity to think is retreating from W. He's losing them one by one, his faculties, the organs of thought …

Species trapped on islands see changes in scale. They can become large – grotesquely large, says W., with giant tortoises and the like and Komodo dragons. Or they can become small – minaturising over the generations, W. says, like that species of human who lived until recently on that remote island. What were they called?

Homo Floresiensis, I tell him, after the name of the island, Flores. They shared their island with pygmy elephants and giant rats, I tell him. They hunted the rats on the back of pygmy elephants, or the pygmy elephants on the back of the rats, one of the two, I tell him.

Homo Floresiensis! They had great flat feet like yours, W. says, reading Wikipedia, and an improbably small brain, no doubt like yours. And they murmured rather than spoke. They whistled and hooted, just as I am a whistler and hooter.

I've become a Homo Floresiensis of thought, W. says. It's terrible. Didn't I used to appear intelligent? Even W. is forgetting. That's how it seemed, he says, improbable as it sounds. And now?

It's your flat, W. says. The squalor of your flat. It's the squalor of your life, your isolation, which is the equivalent of the island of Flores. But haven't I become larger rather than smaller? I'm like one of those giant rats, W. says. He's going to climb on a pigmy elephant and hunt me.

W. too is becoming a Homo Floresiensis of thought, that's what he fears. Isn't he becoming shorter by the day? Aren't his feet getting bigger and flatter? Isn't his brainpan shrinking and his chin looking a little more sloped?

He's following my example, W. says. He's declining, W. says. He's beginning to forget the higher ideas. Good God, he can barely count! He can barely add two numbers together! Is this what happened on the island of Flores? Is this where our collaboration has led him?

Sometimes in my company, W. feels like Jane Goodall, the one who did all that work with chimps, do I remember her? Jane Goodall, the chimp specialist, who not only studied chimps, but went to live with chimps, among them, slowly gaining their confidence and learning their ways.

What has he learned about me through his studies?, W. wonders. What's become clear to him? Admittedly, he first approached me as a collaborator. He first thought: here is a man I can think with. Here is a companion in thought.

Wasn't I the one he'd be waiting for? Wasn't I a thinker like he was, of the same cast, with the same inclinations, the same distastes? I seemed clever, too, back then. I spoke well. My voice resounded. – 'Your voice', W. says, 'what happened to it?'

Some seemed to have hopes for me. I was going somewhere, they thought. And W., too, concluded the same. Our collaboration – when did it begin? Several years ago now. Several years …

W. sought a thought-partner, for a companion in thought, but what happened? He became a witness to my decay. He saw me falling off into space like a lost satellite. I squandered it all, didn't I? Or perhaps it was never there, W. wonders that, too. Perhaps it was never there, my talent, my ability. Perhaps it was entirely an illusion, being what W. wanted to see.

A thought-companion, isn't that what W. wants? And instead what does he have? What has he become? A kind of zoo-keeper, he says. A chimp specialist.

Hadn't he become fascinated by my decline? Wasn't he watching, fascinated, for every twist in its story? He'd become an anthropologist, W. decided. No, a chimp-specialist. I'd brought him closer to chimp-observation than to thinking.

W. has grown increasingly convinced that intellectual conversation itself is an affectation. At first, he had supposed it was bad manners to talk of abstract things at dinner. When you eat, eat, that's what he had thought, and save the abstract matters for later.

But now? Intellectual conversation – so-called intellectual conversation – is itself a ruse, an excuse, he says. We have to plunge into concrete matters, W. says. Our conversation must be as concrete as our eating.

It's time, W. says. No: it's after time. It's late. We're living on its lateness. We live a posthumous life.

Perhaps this is already hell, W. muses. Perhaps we already live in hell – is that it? They – the ones we once were – lived out their whole lives somewhere else, on earth – on the real earth. No doubt they committed terrible crimes. No doubt they were guilty of the worst, and we're what's left, serving out their sentence having forgotten everything … Hell, but perhaps it's heaven, for is life really so bad? Not now, not today, on this pleasant afternoon …

But perhaps, W. muses on another occasion, we're souls waiting to be reborn. Perhaps this is a great waiting room, this the time before a dentist's appointment, where nothing very important happens; you leaf through a magazine, you gaze out of the window …

But they've forgotten to call our names, haven't they? They've forgotten we are here, in the eternal waiting room. We've been left to ourselves, like abandoned children. And our seriousness is only a sham seriousness; our apocalypticism is only a kind of dressing up – and all our reading – the books of our philosophers – is only of the articles in some gossip magazine …

We are dead men, the walking dead. Oh God, the burden of disgust, of absolute disgust! We're disgusted with ourselves, we'll tell anyone who asks us. We've become terrible bores, speaking only of our disgust, and our self-disgust.

Exiled and wretched, Solomon Maimon – the ever-neglected Maimon – was said to give accounts of his disgrace for the price of a drink. And ours? Who will listen to the story of our disgrace? We have to buy them drinks, that's the terrible thing, W. says. We have to pay them to listen to us. Even our disgrace is uninteresting.

Is there any sight finer than this?, I say of the Tyne Bridge as it skims the roofs of the buildings in the gorge. You could touch its green underside from the highest of the roofgardens. The streetlamps, painted the same green, jut upwards from the bridge sides, one hundred and fifty feet in the air. And the great arch of the bridge rises a hundred feet higher … 

'You need a project', says W. 'You need something with which you can be occupied'. W. has his scholarly tasks, of course. He's even deigned to collaborate with me. But I've never taken it seriously, our collaboration, not really. I've never risen to the heights he envisaged for me.

Hadn't W. always wanted us to soar together in thought? Hadn't he pictured it in his minds as two larks looping and darting in flight – two larks, wings outstretched, whose flight was interlaced, interwoven, separate and apart; or as two never-resting swifts, following parallel channels in the air … We were never to rest. We'd live on the wing, one exploring this, one that, but always reuniting, always coming together in flight, in the onrush of flight, calling out to one another across the darkness …

To think like a javelin launched into space. To think like two javelins, launched in the same direction, arching through the air. To think as a body would fall – as two bodies fall, tumbling through space. Thinking be inevitable as falling under gravity. Thought would be our law, our fate … But we'd fall upwards into the sky … upwards into the heights of thought …

And instead? There is no flight; not mine, not W.'s. I am his cage, W. says. I am his aviary. What he could have been, if he left me behind! What skies he could have explored! But he knows that this, too, is an illusion; that my significance for him is as an excuse. He can blame me for everything. It's his fault, he can say, even as he knows nothing would have happened if he were free of me.

'The overexamined life is not worth living …' Great review of Spurious by Emmett Stinson.

How much time do we have left? You can't tell, says W. The conditions for the disaster are here, they're omnipresent, but when will it actually come? He reads book after book on the oil crisis and the climate crisis. He reads about the credit crunch and the futures market. The conditions for the end are here, but not the end itself, not yet.

Are we part of those conditions?, W. wonders sometimes. Are we part of the conditions of the collapse? He suspects so, he says. How else could he account for it? Somehow, at the end of the end, the door was open enough to let us in. Somehow, at the last minute, and in the last second of the last minute, it was time to admit us, but only as a kind of parody. Only as a kind of clown act, the auto-satire of philosophy.

Our eternal puppet show, says W. Our endless ventriloquy. Who's speaking through us? Who's using our voices? Sometimes he swears he hears a voice within our own, W. says. He can hear it, he says, on the threshold of audibility, a little like the grinding of the celestial spheres Pythagoras claimed to hear. Only this time it's idiocy that grinds itself out. This time it's an amazing force of idiocy, a solar wind sweeping through space.

The latest part of Spurious: an A to Z.

W. remembers the worst, he says. He remembers the green dressing gown with its great holes. He remembers the stretches of white flesh which showed through those holes. – 'Your rolls of fat', says W.

It was like Noah over again, when Shem saw his father naked. He might as well have seen me naked, W. says, and shudders. Actually, that would have been better. But the green dressing gown, with its holes … It was the worst of sights, W. says. The very worst.

The signs are coming more quickly now, we agree. The current's quickening, as it does when a river approaches the waterfall. And who are we who can read such tell tale signs? To whom has the secret begun to reveal itself?

The apocalypse will reveal God's plan for us all, that's what it says in the Bible. And if there is no God? No plan, either. We're lost, quite lost, as the signs quicken. My life, for example. W.'s. Our friendship; our collaboration. Signs, all signs, which in turn enable us to read signs, as though our lives, our friendship was only a fold in the apocalypse, a way for it to sense its own magnitude.

Our friends, what has happened to our friends? W. dreamt we could stand shoulder to shoulder with them all; that, standing together, we would form a kind of phalanx, stronger than we would be on our own. He dreamt we'd mated for life like swans, and that we could no more betray one another than tear off our own limbs. But he was wrong, terribly wrong, for news has come that they are turning on one another, our friends, just as we, one day, will turn upon one another, W. says.

To be betrayed by your friends: what worse fate is there than that?, W. says. To know your friend has betrayed you in the name of cynicism and opportunism?

It had to happen; he sees that now. It had to fall apart. Wasn't his dream, always, that we could save ourselves from the end? But we will not hold it back; the disaster will begin with what is closest to us. And what's my role in all this?, W. wonders. Where do I stand? Et tu, idiot?, W. will say as I slip the knife between his ribs. Et tu?, as he sees my face is only that of the apocalypse …

How many times have I betrayed him?, W. wonders. I'm on every page of his Book of Betrayals. He's always taken detailed notes. And there are pictures, too. W. wants to remember everything. Everything! One day, he's going to read his notes to me and show me all his pictures, he says. One day, standing at the head of the bed like the Archangel Michael, he's going to read me the great list of my betrayals and show me the pictures.

My decline is precipitous, W. says. It seems to be increasing, he says. And like a cyclone of stupidity, I seem to be gathering everything up as I pass, him included, his whole life, W. says.

How could I understand what I've unleashed?, W. wonders. Does the storm understand that it is a storm? Does the earthquake know that it is an earthquake? I will never understand, says W.; that's my always appealing innocence.

It's time for the reckoning, W. says. It's reached that point. But with whom might he reckon? How to tackle an enemy who has no idea he's an enemy?

Can you see me burning?, W. asks me in his dream. He's on fire! What am I to do? Put him out – but with what? But then I, in his dream, understand: I am the fire. I am what makes him burn.

Best review of Spurious so far, I think.

See also the latest part of Spurious: An A to Z.

I am less and less able to listen to the presentations of others, W. notes. He can see it on my face. I can never hide it. At one point, he says I might as well have been lying on the floor and moaning.

What am I thinking about?, he wonders. But he knows full well. The expanses of nature. Open stretches of water. Don't I always demand, in the midst of presentations, to be taken to an open stretch of water?

There was the lake at Titisee, where we hired a pedallo, W. remembers. There was the trip to the Mersey, when I full intended to catch a ferry, he says. Then there was our aborted Thames trip, the boating expedition all the way upriver … How disappointed I had been!

Yes, he sees it in me, in one who has no feel for nature at other times. He sees it: a desperate yearning for those expanses that are as empty as my head and across which there gusts the wind of pure idiocy.

Literature was our great curse, W. says. To be fascinated by something of which we would always be incapable. And it's not as if we know our limits. We keep bumping our heads against them, over and over again, like idiots.

I close my eyes. – 'What are you contemplating?', W. asks. 'Your next magnum opus?'

'You have to know what you can do, in your case, nothing, and what you can't do, in your case, everything', W. says. 'Where do you think your strengths lie?', and then, 'do you have any strengths?'

What sort of literature would W. write, if he could? – 'I would write a book called The Idiot, and it would be about you'.

A series of jerks and tics , like those a hanged man twitching in the final death throes. A series of involuntary and grotesque spasms: that will have been your life, W. says. Have I ever exhibited a single free gesture? Have I ever shown any natural spontaneity? I'm always crabbed, always as though confined, though of course I haven't been confined.

It's not even desperation; it's more basic than that. There's a rebellion at the level of my reptile brain, that's all W. can surmise. A rebellion at the base of my spine. 'You shouldn't exist', W. says. 'You shouldn't have been born'. That's what my body knows. It's what I know at some abysmal level. And meanwhile, there's my twitching over the void, a man half-hung, neck broken …

Spurious, the book, will be launched in the UK on the 24th March in the UK, despite the earlier date given on Amazon UK. Spurious has its own page here, and there's a overview of reviews and mentions here.

There are some books, of course, over which W. has wept like a baby, he says. Imagine it! Him! Completely disarmed! Completely overcome! He's wept many times, W. says. There are books that have brought him to tears, he says, great floods of tears. He's always been a pathetic reader, W. says. He's always been tremendously alive to pathos.

Of course, it's different in my case, W. says. My eyes are always dry. When do I weep? Never, W. says. I am only a hooter, a pointer. I can hoot and point at a book, but that's about it, he says. Whereas W. will sometimes read in great sweeps, on a long train journey, for example, my reading is always sporadic and spasmodic; it begins, and is almost immediately interrupted.

In a sense, W. says, I cannot be said to read at all, though I claim to be a reader; I claim to have read books by this thinker and that thinker; I claim to be an admirer of literature. But what can it mean to me, all this philosophy, all this literature? What can it mean to one who has never wept like a baby over the pages of Cohen? What can it mean who has never felt so compelled, utterly compelled by The Star of Redemption, that tears ran streaming down his cheeks?

Glee: that's what W. always sees on my face. That I'm still alive, that I can still continue, from moment to moment: that's enough for me, W. says. He supposes it has to be. If I realised for one moment … If I had any real awareness … But it would be too much, W. says I couldn't know what I was and continue as I am. I couldn't come into any real self-awareness.

'That's what saves you', W. says. 'Your stupidity'. If only he knew … That's what everyone thinks when they see me, W. says. That's what he thinks.

Meanwhile, it's left to him to bear the terrible fact of my existence, W. says. It's his problem, not mine as it should be, W. says. Everyone blames him for me. What's he doing here?, they ask. Why did you bring him? But he had to, W. knows. He has all the excuses. He's sorry in my place. I'm his responsibility.

Has it really come to this?, W. wonders. It has. Is it going to get any worse? Much worse. This is only the beginning. He feels like a Marie Antoinette being lead out to the chopping-block, he says. He feels like Joan of Arc being bound to the stake.

When's the blow going to come? When are the flames going to leap up and surround him? It'll be a relief after everything that's happened, W. says. The horror of not-knowing will come to an end. For that's all he's experienced since he took up with me, W. says. The horror of not knowing where the next step will lead, for example, he says. The horror of the uncertainty of his destination.

For where's he been heading all this time? Downwards, that much is obvious. Down – and out – that, too is obvious. We've long since left all friendly terrain. We've long since left the last human house. We're in the wilderness now, W. says, mapless and unsure.

Why does he listen to me?, W. says. But he knows why. There'd be sense in keeping people around to inspire him, W. says. But not to destroy him. Unless it's his death-drive, W. says. Unless I'm his death-drive, for how else could he account for it?

Ostracism, that's what I've brought him, W. says. Derision. Every door that was open to him is now closed. The shutters have been slammed on the windows, and W.'s out in the cold, stamping his feet for warmth, and there I am beside him.

What do I want from him?, W. asks. What does he want for himself? Ah, there's no way of telling. He'll simply have to follow where I lead, and listen to what I say. We're heading out, out into the wilderness, he knows that. Out beneath the flashing stars and the silvery pine trees to where nothing can live.

W. has always been immensely susceptible to changes in weather, he says. He can feel them coming days in advance, for example, he says of the Westerlies that bombard his city. He knows there's another low front out over the Atlantic, ready to hit the foot of England with rain and grey clouds and humidity, and another low front behind that. How's he going to get any work done – any serious work?

It's alright for me, he says, staring out of my window at the incoming banks of clouds. I'm on the East of the country, for a start, which means the weather doesn't linger in the same way. Oh it's much colder, he knows that – he always brings a warm jacket when he stays – but it's fresher, too; it's good for the mind, good for thought.

But W. can't think, he says. He knows the Westerlies are coming. He knows low pressure's going to dominate the weather for weeks, if not months. Sometimes whole seasons are dominated by Westerlies, which costs him an immense amount in terms of lost time and missed work.

He's still up early every morning, of course. He's still at his desk at dawn. Four A.M. Five A.M. – he's ready for work; he opens his books; he takes notes as the sky brightens over Stonehouse roofs. He's there at the inception, at the beginning of everything, even before the pigeons start cooing like maniacs along his window ledge.

He's up before anyone else, he knows that, but there's still no chance of thinking. Not a thought has come to him in recent months. Not one. He's stalled, W. says. There's been an interregnum. But when wasn't he stalled? When wasn't it impossible for him to think? No matter how early he gets up, he misses it, his appointment with thought. No matter how he tries to surprise it, thought, by being there before everyone.

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.