Spurious was released in the USA and Canada on January 25th, and will be released in the UK and elsewhere on March 24th.
Here's a list of the reviews so far:
San Francisco Chronicle, by Kevin Canfield, Feb 27th 2011.
The Millions, by Emily S. John Mandel, Feb 22nd 2011.
Known Unknowns, by Emmett Stinson, Feb 15th 2011.
KGB Bar Lit Magazine, by Linus Urgo, Feb 2011
Complete Review, M.A. Orthofer, 31st January 2011
Washington Post, Book World, by Carolyn See. 'Foolish Posturing Atop the Ivory Tower', 27th January 2011.
NYLON, not online, in a co-review with Correspondence Artist by Barbara Browning. Review by Erinrose Mager:
A tragic mien, too, undercuts the sheer hilarity of Lars Iyer’s Spurious (Melville House). “Start with these letters on a piece of paper: s-p-i-n-o-z-a,” quips W., our narrator’s companion and co-philosopher. “Ponder that in your stupidity.”Iyer, a British scholar of the theorist Blanchot, started a blog called Spurious in 2003, the content of which serves as the base for Iyer’s first novel. A narrative My Dinner with Andre turned on end, Spurious is peppered with moments of epistemic interrogation: “Were we the condition of thought?” “Are we capable of religious belief?” “Is he the Messiah? Am I?” W. and the narrator don’t want the reader to answer their questions, but rather for them to acknowledge the significance of their being posed in the first place. All along, they attempt to uncover a fungus that molders in the narrator’s flat, lest it consume the place entirely. The high/low binary we find in Browning’s prose appears again in Iyer’s; to read Spurious is to discuss Kafka’s The Castle and farts in one exacting sentence–all the while reeking of gin.
Modern Painters, by Scott Indrisek (not online), February 2011:
Two “mystics of the idiotic” argue over their own insufficiencies in this hilarious and eminently quotable debut novel. The essentially plotless tale portrays unconventional friendship and crushing self-doubt, and circles around various obsessions: Kafka, booze, the Messiah, genius, and the lack thereof. “Our position is structural, we’ve always been convinced of that,” laments the narrator. “We’re only signs or syndromes of some great collapse, and our deaths will be no more significant than those of summer flies in empty rooms.” The pair awaits the end of the world while lamenting their own stupidity.
Book Forum, by Erik Morse, 25th Jan
LA Times, by Susan Salter Reynolds, from her 'Discoveries' column, 23rd Jan 2011
Publishers Weekly, not online, Jan 2011:
Two friends drink, walk in the English countryside, and talk (and talk and talk) in Iyer's playfully cerebral debut. The action--what there is of it--revolves around an unnamed Hindu narrator and his frenemy, a mopey professor known as W., who harbors a deep insecurity, is contemptuous of the narrator, and loves Kafka. The narrator, meanwhile, lives in a rotting home that's being taken over by a creeping fungus and suffers W.'s constant tongue lashings with a resigned cheeriness as the pair muse, debate, ponder, and talk endlessly about their places in the world. Iyer finds ways to weave in contemporary cultural artifacts, from film director Bela Tarr and rock group Godspeed You Black Emperor to a range of influential European intellectuals, though it's not clear whether the narrator and W. are more yin and yang or Abbott and Costello. It's a love it or hate it book: repetitive, too much in its own head, and self-satisfied, yes; but also piquant, often hilarious, and gutsy.
