Iyer - Dogma

Its wonderful. Id recommend the book for its insults alone.

SAM JORDISON, THE GUARDIAN

Fearsomely funny.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Viciously funny.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Im still laughing, and its days later.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

A tiny marvel. [A] wonderfully monstrous creation.

STEVEN POOLE, THE GUARDIAN

This novel has a seductive way of always doubling back on itself, scorching the earth but extracting its own strange brand of laughter from its commitment to despair.

THE BELIEVER

Ought to be unreadable, but manages to be intelligent, wildly entertaining, and unexpectedly moving instead.

THE MILLIONS

[A] hilarious and eminently quotable debut novel.

MODERN PAINTERS

Spurious is full of paradox. Its about everything and nothing. Its a funny book which uses exclamation marks (I know!). It provokes thought while evading easy understanding. Its characters speak simply about knotty concepts. [I stopped] on almost every page to smile, think, or sense a cartoon lightbulb of understanding begin to glow above my head before popping out just as I concentrated on it.

JOHN SELF, ASYLUM

Evoking literary duos like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and Othello and Iago, Iyers portrait of two insufferable academics fumbling for enlightenment illustrates what the author comically calls the most honorable cruelty: friendship.

ERIK MORSE, BOOKFORUM

Spurious is an amusing take on intellectual frustration and anomie, its two characters going through the motions in a world where its unclear what the right motions are any longer.

THE COMPLETE REVIEW

A tragic mein undercuts the sheer hilarity of Lars Iyers Spurious. To read Spurious is to discuss Kafkas The Castle and farts in one exacting sentenceall the while reeking of gin.

NYLON

Iyers playfully cerebral debut [is] piquant, often hilarious, and gutsy.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The novel is addictive and immersive and funny and disturbing and maddeningly repetitive, all at once. For something that reads like the travelogue of a mind (or minds) going in endless circles, its fantastically good.

THE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

DOGMA

Copyright 2011 by Lars Iyer

All rights reserved

First Melville House Printing: January 2012

Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
mhpbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

Iyer, Lars.
Dogma / Lars Iyer.
pages cm
eISBN: 978-1-61219-047-1
1. PhilosophyFiction. I. Title.
PR6109.Y47D64 2011
823.92dc23

2011045059

v3.1

You should never learn from your mistakes, W. says. He never has, he says, which is why he associates with me. And nor have I learned from my mistakes, in all the years of our collaboration. Because I am incapable of learning.

Table manners, the art of conversation: what hasnt he tried to teach me? But I have barely learnt to keep my trousers on, W. says. I have barely learnt to sip my tea.

Even today, as we walk through the gorse towards the shore, he feels as though hes taking a lunatic out on day release, W. says. Listing my shortcomings above the sound of the breakers, he knows Ive already forgotten everything hes said.

The roaring of the sea is like the roaring of my stupidity, W. says. Its a terrible sound, but a magnificent one, too. Its the sound of unlearning, he says. Its the sound of Lars, of the chaos that undoes every idea.

My stupidity: thats what saves him, W. says. If it werent for my stupidity, where would he be? He wouldnt have learnt the fundamental lesson, W. says. He wouldnt have understood that the great tasks of thought must begin from a kind of non-thought, that achievementreal achievementis only possible once youve passed through the most abject of failures.

What would Socrates have been, without knowing that he knew nothing? What would Nicholas of Cusa have been, without his learned ignorance?

Isnt that why hes kept me close?, W. says. Isnt that why hes refused to learn from his biggest mistake?

W. has no great love of nature, he says as we walk. The sublimity of nature, mountain peaks, the surging ocean, all that: it means nothing to him. Hes a man of the city, W. says. And if were out of the city todayapolis, as the Greeks would sayit is only to return to the city refreshed, catching the bus back from Cawsand to Plymouth.

His city, W. says. But not for much longer. By what cruel fate will he be made to leave? For what reason will he be forced out? He knows the time will come. Hes always known it, which has made his relationship to the city that much more intense. Hes always known the city would slip through his fingers.

Anyway, hes glad to be out of the college for the day, W. says, as the path rises into Cawsand. Hes glad Ive flown in from the north. There are rumours in the corridors, he says. There are murmurings in the quadrangle. Compulsory redundancies the restructuring of the college the closure of whole departments, whole faculties Its a bit like ancient Rome, before they stabbed Caesar to death, W. says.

Of course, hell have to leave if he loses his job, W. says. Hell have to take to the roads. Because theres no work here, not in Plymouth, he says.

And wont it be the same for me? Wont I eventually be driven out of my city?Dont think youre safe, W. says. Dont think youre going to live out your life in the pubs of Newcastle.

Theyre coming to get us, W. says. Who? Whos coming?, I ask him. Hes not sure. But somewhere, far away, our fate has already been decided.

The end is coming, W. says, hes sure of that. Our end, or the end of the world?Both!, W. says. The one is inseparable from the other. Do I see it as he does? Is he the only one who can see the signs?

He sees them even now, on this sunny day in Cawsand. He sees them in our honey beer, W. says. In the dog that drops a stone at my feet, wanting me to play with it. In the narrowness of the three-storeyed house opposite. In the name of the pub where we are drinking: The Rising Sun. And in me, too?In you above all, W. says.

But what sun will rise over us?, W. asks, as he drains his second pint. A black sun, he says. A sun of ashes and darkness. He sees the image in his minds eye: the man and boy of The Road, pushing a shopping cart down an empty highway. Only, in our case, itll be two men, squabbling over whose turn it is to ride in the cart. Two men with ashes in their hair, exiled from their cities and from all cities.

At the bus stop, W. tells me about his current intellectual projects. They can be summed up under the general heading, capitalism and religion, he says. The and is designed to be provocative, W. says. He wants to provoke the new atheists, he says. Theres nothing more infuriating than the new atheists.

Of course, by religion, W. means Judaism. And by Judaism, he means the Judaism of Cohen and Rosenzweig. If only the new atheists could read Rosenzweig and Cohen, W. says. If only he could read, really read, Rosenzweig and Cohen, he says.