=books recently read: Spurious by Lars Iyer=

Due to the vagaries of library availability, I read the last book in Lars Iyer's trilogy—Spurious, Dogma, and Exodus—first. On Tuesday, I was able to snag the other two books. I finished the first book second and I'll read the second book third—or last. But first I want to read another book I checked out of the library, a collection of short stories by Stuart Dybeck. 

Okay, now that that's out of the way…

Spurious begins the story of the love-hate relationship between W. and Lars, two friends whose academic careers stand in the way of their true calling: philosophy. I sat down and talked to Lars Iyer in my imagination as I talk to almost everyone with the exception of my husband. I asked Lars a few questions about his trilogy in general and Spurious in particular. 

Red Ignatz: How would you characterize the significance of the friendship between W and Lars as the basis for three novels?

Lars Iyer: In W's mind, he suspects that their friendship represents the infinite. Their incessant chatter. Their incessant feelings of utter failure. This is their own version of the plain of being. The plain is the friendship between them on which they are both perpetually lost. 

RI: W. is a tragicomic figure, as opposed to Lars, who pretty much takes his mediocrity in stride. We laugh at Lars but we don't pity him. He's comfortable with his failure. We laugh at W but it's a laughter tinged with sympathy and pity, even though he can be obnoxious, even cruel. He's a man who wants to be something that he cannot and never will be. But that doesn't keep him from hoping. He's the striving everyman, fated to fall short. If Lars is Ed Norton, then W. is the Ralph Kramden of philosophy.

Iyer: When he was young, W was sure that one day if he worked hard enough he'd have an idea. He lodged in an attic room in which there was only a bed and a work table. He worked day and night. Reading and writing were all that mattered. What happened? Disappointment, and then drinking and smoking. Then there was the apocalypse, which made things worse. Since then he's lived in the ruins of his impression of himself as someone capable of having ideas.

RI: I find this lament particularly amusing. I mean, the pining after an idea…just one truly original idea so that W can take his place among the stars in philosophy's firmament. 

Iyer: It's what he continues to live for. His reason for being.

RI: W. is a true believer. He keeps the philosophical faith that transformation—the transformation of himself into a genuine thinker, a first-rate philosopher—is right around the bend. He believes in the potential messiah of every moment. Lars doesn't have the same faith.


Iyer: No, Lars is not like W at all in this respect. For W, every conversation is on the verge of becoming messianic. It has the potential to inspire that great idea he's always searching. W. likes to journey with his interlocutor through the apocalyptic and towards the messianic. He believes in his interlocutor. He believes in conversation.

RI: In spite of all evidence to the contrary, he continues to suspect he might find this idea in conversation with Lars. But it never happens. Not in three books!

Iyer: No, not yet. But it's true. He can't help hoping. He's put in so much conversational time with Lars already that it would be heartbreaking to give up now. Besides, he still believes in the Lar's "idiocy."

RI: I found this to be a fascinating idea. That discourse could turn your interlocutor into the Messiah, the figure who changes everything, who brings you to revelation. It's almost enough to make me believe that it's worth talking to people. 

Iyer: Anyone might be the Messiah, that's the way W. sees it. The Messiah might be me. It might be you. But the crucial thing is that you can't be alone to experience the Messiah. The Messiah is drunk. Or he's what drunkenness allows. Anyone can be the Messiah when he's drunk. Of course, he might not know it. So you need an audience, an interlocutor. W is not the Messiah for himself, just as I or you or Lars or anyone is not the Messiah for themselves. W is the Messiah for Lars and Lars the Messiah for W. Well, at least potentially."

RI: Of course, then the problem becomes, will we even recognize the Messiah when he comes. He—or she—might be present among us right this very moment. Might be standing three feet away and we never suspect a thing.

Iyer: True. The Messiah is always in the past or in the future. The day after tomorrow: that's when it will reach us, if it does at all. And then, by the time we recognize the Messiah, if we recognize the Messiah, it will already be too late. The page will already have been turned. The idea of the Messiah becomes, perhaps, even more important than the Messiah itself. The idea can burn only for those who cannot see it, who have already gone under. It's on the other side of the mirror although all you can see when you look into the mirror is your own stupid face.

RI: One of the running gags throughout these books is that W and Lars, for all their dedication to philosophy, realize that they are third-rate thinkers. They will never be Deleuze. Never be Badiou or Blanchot or Bataille. No matter how hard or long they think.

Iyer: Being a philosopher is like being a great athlete or artist. You can't reach the pinnacle through hard work and dedication alone. It's a gift.

RI: Early in the book, you describe their encounter with one of their philosophical heroes. They realize that he isn't struggling to have thoughts. Instead, the thoughts come to him. As if he were an open channel.

Iyer: As though his life were only a receptacle for something infinitely more important. As though his thoughts had him and not the other way around.

RI: Right. Still, they don't give up trying. Well, at least W doesn't give up. And he won't let Lars give up. He keeps whipping his friend forward, urging him on, though its surely futile. They realize how expendable they both are.

Iyer: If they died, others would come along to replace them. Their position is structural, they've always been convinced of that. They're only signs or syndromes of some great collapse, and their deaths will be no more significant than those of summer flies in empty rooms.

RI: There is a significance, if you can call it that, in their insignificance. They are symbols of the Insignificant Man. But the thing is, the world needs insignificant men. Every Franz Kafka needs a Max Brod. If it weren't for Max Brod, after all, Franz Kafka would probably never have come to our attention.

Iyer: Everything begins when you understand that you are Max Brod. You, whoever you are, are Max and everyone else whoever they might be is Franz Kafka. Which is to say you will never understand anyone else and are endlessly guilty before them and that even with the greatest effort of loyalty you will betray them.

RI: Getting back to your idea of the Messiah, this notion reminds me of the position of John the Baptist vis-a-vis Christ. It always struck me what an enormous amount of humility was required for John the Baptist to accept his position of second banana. As Ed McMahon to Jesus's Johnny Carson. His whole role in life—and death—was basically to be an emcee for the coming of the real star. Heeeere's Jeeezus! Still, all that said, W still can't believe he's not a real thinker.

Iyer: He's still amazed at his lack of ability. Why? He's not sure. But he is amazed and he will never get over it and this will be his life: this amazement and his inability to get over it.

RI: Still, there's an understanding that arises from their insufficiency that may even surpass, at least in some ways, the heights of vision attained by the greatest of philosophers, the most successful of cultural heroes.

Iyer: Yes. They've noticed that the world is shit. To them, it's the most obvious thing that it's all going to shit. You can't struggle against it. You can't do anything at all. Those at the center don't realize it. They haven't grasped their essential powerlessness. Only we have grasped it, we who live at the periphery of our own interests, no longer advancing our own cause.

RI: Their self-proclaimed idiocy becomes a kind of gift. A natural talent you have to have from birth. They are athletes and artists of idiocy.

Iyer: Theirs is a very pure kind of idiocy. They're idiots who do not quite understand the depths of their idiocy. They're mystics of the idiotic, mystical idiots, lost in their cloud of unknowing.

RI: And there is a kind of delight they take in their misery. They're a bit like two characters out of Beckett. Miserable, complaining, bickering, stumbling in the ditch, wallowing in the shit, but cracking jokes all the way.

Iyer: They're full of joy, that's what saves them. Why do they find their failures so amusing? Their limitations fascinate them. From the first they aimed themselves against their limits in defiance not of the world that expected something from them, but of their own expectations. 

RI: In the end they are happy, I think. Happy being third-rate thinkers, failed philosophers, men of the plain. Strivers, never arrivers. Always failing, but still walking the plain. Thinking, arguing, waiting for the messiah that never quite arrives. The journey is everything.

Iyer: In the end, they are content with very little—a frozen chicken in a bag and some herbs and spices, walking home in the sun. The gift of laughter. The gift of idiocy. 

RI: Thanks Lars. We'll talk again after I've read Dogma.

Iyer: I'm looking forward to it, Meeah!