Lars Iyer's Blog, page 63

 

Speaking at the Franklin Park Reading Series, Feb 11th, Brooklyn, New York. 

'The Consternation of Philosophy': the great Stephen Mitchelmore reviews Exodus.

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. 

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.

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

Since so many people who are totally unqualified to be authors (no essential idea to communicate, no essential mission, no ethically conscious responsibility) nevertheless become authors, being an author becomes for men a kind of distinction similar to woman's adorning themselves: the primary point and the purpose for writing are to become noticed, recognised, praised.

 

Kierkegaard, journal entry

Short review of Exodus at Publisher's Weekly.

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.

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