Spurious

Author(s): Lars Iyer

Novel | Read our reviews!

In a raucous debut that summons up the ironic British classic Goon Show, writer and philosopher Lars Iyer tells the story of someone very like himself, who - together with his more successful friend - goes in search of more palatable literary conferences where they serve better gin. Another reason for their yammering journeys is the fact that the narrator's home is slowly being taken over by a fungus and no one knows what can be done about it. Before it completely swallows his house, the narrator feels compelled to solve some big philosophical questions.

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THOMAS'S REVIEW:
“What can we, who are incapable of thought, understand of what the inability to think means for a thinker?” If Waiting for Godot’s Estragon and Vladimir were young philosophy lecturers instead of aging tramps, one of them might have written this book about their friendship and about their failures to gain existential traction (either because of personal insufficiency or philosophical impossibility (mostly personal insufficiency (or at least the cultivation of the excuse of personal insufficiency)). Lars and his friend W. consign themselves to the lower rungs of intellectual achievement by seemingly expending their efforts verbally greasing those rungs. They have been born too late for great thought, even if they had been capable of great thought. Damp and then mould spreads through Lars’s flat but, consistent with the stagnation they claim for themselves, nothing happens or develops in the novel (if it is a novel). The book is very funny, and retains its buoyancy by the fact that the narrator, Lars, only appears as described by W. “’Your problem is that you fear empty time’, says W. as we head back to the city. ‘That’s why you don’t think’. And then: ‘Thought must come as a surprise, when you least expect it’. Thought, when it comes, always surprises him, says W. But he’s ready with his notebook, he says, which he keeps in his man bag. ‘That’s why I need a man bag’, he says, ‘in case thought surprises me’. But I fear the empty time which makes thought possible, says W., so I don’t need a man bag.” 


{THOMAS}


Product Information

"A tiny marvel of comically repetitive gloomery.... [A] wonderfully monstrous creation."
--Steven Poole, "The Guardian
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"Viciously funny."
--"San Francisco Chronicle
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"The high value Iyer places on essential human relations is a rebuke to those who deride 'experimental' fiction as narcissistic or self-indulgent evasions of emotion."
"--The New Inquiry"
"What could be more fun than laughing at intellectuals? This, Lars Iyer's first book, sprang from his blog, "Spurious," which sprang from his career as a philosophy lecturer at Newcastle University. I'm still laughing, and it's days later. But who, exactly, am I laughing at?"
"--The Los Angeles Times"
"Ought to be unreadable, but manages to be intelligent, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly moving instead."
--"The Millions"
"Who should buy this book? Intellectuals who face intellectual troubles in their own lives. There's a lot of biting satire about the shortcomings and general foolishness of the so-called life of the mind. This is graduate student wit, which is fearsomely funny."
"--The Washington Post "
"[A] hilarious and eminently quotable debut novel."
"--Modern Painters"
"A tragic mein... undercuts the sheer hilarity of Lars Iyer's "Spurious."...A narrative "My Dinner With Andre "turned on end.... To read "Spurious" is to discuss Kafka's "The Castle" and farts in one exacting sentence--all the while reeking of gin."
"--NYLON Magazine"
"Evoking literary duos like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and Othello and Iago, Iyer's portrait of two insufferable academics fumbling for enlightenment illustrates what the author comically calls the most honorable cruelty: friendship....Solipsistic and chatty, " Spurious" is a comedy in the vein of Bernhard's "The Loser" or Beckett's "The Unnameable." Echoes of "You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on" haunt every scene."
"--Bookforum
"""Spurious" is an amusing take on intellectual f

General Fields

  • : 9781935554288
  • : Melville House Publishing
  • : Melville House Publishing
  • : 0.163
  • : March 2011
  • : 191mm X 140mm X 13mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Lars Iyer
  • : Paperback
  • : 823.92
  • : 176