Lars Iyer's Blog, page 89

[...] all one has really is the posture of lament. Left with neither joy nor sorry, all that remains are the repetitions of gloom and palliative consolations; namely, for W. and Lars, drink and conversation while slouched over a bar. What I find interesting about this repetition, in light of Iyer's manifesto concerning literature, is that it occurs purely for the enjoyment of others. We, the mostly university educated, some of  us vaguely professorial, derive the sort of pleasure these repetitions are patently designed in the book to avoid.

Very interesting review of Dogma by Brad Johnson at An und für sich.

The great David Winters has won a Critial Hit Award for his review of Dogma.

Rather than, say, foregrounding the constructed and unstable nature of reality through unreliable narration and winking gestures toward the fictiveness of the text, Iyer's self-deprecating presence in the story makes his prose more direct and his satire more poignantly pathetic.

Fascinating review of Spurious and Dogma by Saelan Twerdy at The New Inquiry.

Fascinating review of Spurious and Dogma by Saelan Twerdy at The New Inquiry.

Wittgenstein in those days often warned us against reading philosophical books. If we took a book seriously, he would say, it ought to puzzle us so much that we would throw it across the room and think about the problem for ourselves.

He had he said, only once been to high table at Trinity and the clever conversation of the dons had so horrified him that he had come out with both hands over his ears. The dons talked like that only to score: they did not even enjoy doing it. He said his own bedmaker's conversation, about he private lives of her previous gentlemen and about her own family, was far preferable: at least he could understand why she talked that way and could believe she enjoyed it.

He liked the north of England, too: when he asked the bus conductor on a Newcastle bus where to get off for a certain cinema, the conductor at once told him it was a bad film there and he ought to go to another. And this started a heated argument on thus bus as to which film Wittgenstein ought to see and why. He liked that: it was the sort of thing that would have happened in Austria.

From Karl Britton's 'Portrait of a Philosopher', his memories of Wittgenstein

Do not think, he said, that you can understand what another philosopher is saying (and I believe he mentioned Spinoza as an illustration). The nearest you can get to it is this, 'The landscape is familiar. I have been in this neighbourhood myself'.

I went on to ask why he had left his chair in 1947, and I think I can recall the words he used in his reply: 'Because there are only two or three of my students about whom I can say, I do not know I have done them any harm'.

From  Tranoey's reminiscences of Wittgenstein

Tiny Camels muses further on Dogma, the fragmentary, tweets, and other things.

How many misspellings can you count? Charlie McBride's short interview with me in the Galway Advertiser.

He remembers them well: my work years, W. says. My writing years. I used to sleep in my office, in my cupboard, didn't I? I used to live in my office, showering in the gym, living on discounted sandwiches (as I still live on discounted sandwiches, W. says) …

How much I wrote! How much I published! I was like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, W. says, gone mad and deaf in my belfry, ringing out the bells of my stupidity ...

Even he was inspired, W. says. Oh, not by what I wrote – it was complete rubbish, he says. But by my shamelessness in publishing it at all. One essay after another, one essay and then another in every kind of academic journal, W. says, across every discipline you could name.

It was pell-mell, W. says. Completely shameless. Completely opportunistic …

Ah, but my work years are long past. What do I do all day?, W. wonders. How do I occupy myself? Do I read? Write? Do I continue to refine my knowledge of Sanskrit? Of ancient Greek? Do I continue to try to understand mathematics, and keep up with the latest developments in the sciences?

Ah, he knows the answer, W. says. He knows how I live.

A hot day. Dundee's famous micro-climate. - 'You don't sweat much, do you?', W. says. 'It must be your Hindu genes'.

Indians have more sweat glands: haven't I told him that? You'd think that that would make you sweat more, W. says.

At the same time, I have the thick skin of a Scandinavian, W. says. Thick skin, to keep the Viking warm during the long winters.

And there's blubber under your skin, W. says. I'm as warm as a walrus, no matter how cold it is, he says. As warm as a sperm whale, diving beneath the Arctic ice. I am insulated by my fat, just as my head is insulated by my stupidity.

A fathead, that's what I am, W. says. But perhaps you need a fat head to dive into the depths of thought. Perhaps you need a kind of insulation, he says. Perhaps only the fat-head can think, W. says. Well, he'll dive with me, a whelk on the side of a whale.