Scan barcode
A review by batbones
Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyer
5.0
I drowned in this book in one sitting. It seemed that as long as I was on the page, leaving the book alone was impossible.
An extraordinary, witty stream of consciousness narrative about philosophy, philosophic-religious despair, the economics of education and where it all leads us. But to say all this would be to reduce it to the sum of its parts, its ostensible plot of an austere philosophy professor and his twelve (often drunk) students amid lurking Cambridge dons. The story's real beauty - as is the beauty itself that it reaches and tries to teach - lies in wording the wonder that lies at the heart of an encounter with knowledge, against the ruined deceptive wonder and rush of the present-day.
Iyer writes with moving poetry. (The whole book can almost be called a sustained prose-poem.) His style is enchantingly sparse, so concentrated; the smallest word carries a weight that cannot be dismissed. Its spareness and episodic nature lend a soft mirroring voice to the fleeting quality of everything the book touches upon (life, youth, or Wittgenstein's Tractatus).
Everything in it evokes the unbearable lightness of being. But it is also a light book, trading in familiar references (Facebook statuses, office-jobs) and jokes ("Doyle to Mulberry: You have a quantum penis. It's both there and not there.") The plays in-between (enacting death-scenes of famous philosophers) contain the most memorably comic passages.
While some may feel the romance at the end is startling and seemingly superficial, I felt it was, already, a thing lying dormant from the very beginning, carried along in the narrative current and waiting to surface. That it was written grants it poignancy, and a kind of wish fulfilment, on the part of the reader who by that moment would have been influenced by the students' curiosity. That is also part of the point here. After all, this book circles around, and finally, in that last moment, answers the fascination with what it means and feels like to have touched genius, even if it is for a while. It would not be too much to say that Iyer accomplishes this brilliantly.
"We’re drowning in openness, he says. In our sense of the possible. We’re ready to take anything in – to learn about anything, and therefore about nothing. Everything is available to us, and therefore nothing is available to us. Everything is at our disposal, and therefore nothing is at our disposal. We are infinitely open-minded, which is to say, infinitely closed-minded."
An extraordinary, witty stream of consciousness narrative about philosophy, philosophic-religious despair, the economics of education and where it all leads us. But to say all this would be to reduce it to the sum of its parts, its ostensible plot of an austere philosophy professor and his twelve (often drunk) students amid lurking Cambridge dons. The story's real beauty - as is the beauty itself that it reaches and tries to teach - lies in wording the wonder that lies at the heart of an encounter with knowledge, against the ruined deceptive wonder and rush of the present-day.
Iyer writes with moving poetry. (The whole book can almost be called a sustained prose-poem.) His style is enchantingly sparse, so concentrated; the smallest word carries a weight that cannot be dismissed. Its spareness and episodic nature lend a soft mirroring voice to the fleeting quality of everything the book touches upon (life, youth, or Wittgenstein's Tractatus).
Everything in it evokes the unbearable lightness of being. But it is also a light book, trading in familiar references (Facebook statuses, office-jobs) and jokes ("Doyle to Mulberry: You have a quantum penis. It's both there and not there.") The plays in-between (enacting death-scenes of famous philosophers) contain the most memorably comic passages.
While some may feel the romance at the end is startling and seemingly superficial, I felt it was, already, a thing lying dormant from the very beginning, carried along in the narrative current and waiting to surface. That it was written grants it poignancy, and a kind of wish fulfilment, on the part of the reader who by that moment would have been influenced by the students' curiosity. That is also part of the point here. After all, this book circles around, and finally, in that last moment, answers the fascination with what it means and feels like to have touched genius, even if it is for a while. It would not be too much to say that Iyer accomplishes this brilliantly.
"We’re drowning in openness, he says. In our sense of the possible. We’re ready to take anything in – to learn about anything, and therefore about nothing. Everything is available to us, and therefore nothing is available to us. Everything is at our disposal, and therefore nothing is at our disposal. We are infinitely open-minded, which is to say, infinitely closed-minded."