Kafka was always our model, we agree. How is it possible that a human being could write like that?, W. says, again and again. It’s always at the end of the night when he says this, after we’ve drunk a great deal and the sky opens above us, and it is possible to speak of what is most important.
At the same time, we have Kafka to blame for everything. Our lives each took a wrong turn when we opened The Castle. It was quite fatal: there was literature itself! We were finished. What could we do, simple apes, but exhaust ourselves in imitation? We had been struck by something we could not understand. It was above us, beyond us, and we were not of its order.
Literature softened our brains, says W.—‘We should have been doing maths. If we knew maths, we might amount to something. As it is, we’ll amount to nothing’.
There’s nothing wrong with literature per se, says W., who cannot go a day without speaking of Kafka, but it’s had a bad effect on us. Besides, he says, he bets Kafka was good at maths. He was good at law, after all, which is probably a bit like maths. Perhaps we should drop out and become lawyers. Perhaps that would be the making of us.
Literature destroyed us: we’ve always been agreed on that. The literary temptation was fatal. Of course, it would be different if we read literature alongside philosophy, W. says, but literature, for us, could not help infecting our philosophy.
But doesn’t W. admire the fact that we feel something about literature? Doesn’t he think it’s what saves us? W. is not persuaded.—‘It makes us vague and full of pathos. That’s all we have—pathos’.
Once, W. thought of himself as a writer, a literary writer. He filled notebook after notebook. It was in his early twenties. Everyone wants to be a literary writer in their early twenties, W. says. Of course no one ever is. W. realised it pretty quickly. He knew he was no Kafka, he says. That’s what I don’t know yet—I don’t know I’m not Kafka. I don’t have a sense of myself as a failure, which is ironic because I am a failure.
It would be different if either of us had literary talent, W. says. Do I think I have literary talent?, he asks me. W. knows he doesn’t have literary talent, he says. But he doesn’t think I know. Admittedly, I never said I had literary talent. But I don’t deny it enough. Anyway, it’s very clear: I don’t have literary talent, W. says. And just so I know, I haven’t got any philosophical talent either, he says. Does he have any philosophical talent? He has more than I do, he says. Just a little bit more, but that’s already something.
For a long time, W. thought he might become Kafka. He was all W. read. Constantly, again and again, everything by him and everything about him, and he speaks lovingly of discovering the brightly coloured Schocken editions of Kafka.
...
For a long time, W. says, he saw little difference between Kafka and himself. Imagine it—a boy from Wolverhampton who thought he was a Jew from Prague! How is it possible for a human being to write like that?: yes, that was always W.’s question before Kafka.
How was it possible? W. stopped writing after his undergraduate years. He’d write all the time, but he realised he would never be Kafka. W. gave his notebooks and writings to a girlfriend.—‘I didn’t keep a scrap’, he says, as German teenagers gather round us in the Augustinerplatz, playing early Depeche Mode on a ghetto blaster.
from Lars Iyer, Spurious
"Cum îi faci pe critici să te citească – în noianul de cărţi apărute în fiecare zi ? Scrii un manifest dur despre moartea literaturii, a criticii şi a lecturii, garnisit cu exemple clare şi distincte şi apoi explici pe înţelesul tuturor ce se mai poate face în peisajul literar post-apocaliptic.
Aşa a procedat scriitorul englez Lars Iyer, autorul a două romane deja traduse cam peste tot (o dată cu manifestul cu pricina, intitulat „Gol în cadă, pe marginea abisului"). Eu l-am citit în spaniolă, pe http://www.fronterad.com (unde aveţi link şi pentru varianta în engleză) şi m-a interesat pînă la capăt, cînd face un elogiu al romanului lui Roberto Bolaño, Detectivii sălbaticişi dă sfaturi din subterana-grota-canalul literar în care ne aflăm, după el, cu toţii! Sfaturile lui retorice sună cam aşa: folosiţi, în scris, simplitatea totală, chiar aliterară (căci jocul literar s-a terminat, n-a mai rămas nimic din el, iar „Literatura nu mai e altceva decît Marea Dispărută“); rezistaţi în faţa operelor maeştrilor, oricare ar fi ei, (admiraţia nefiind altceva decît „necrofilie liteară“, iar mediul literar de după Literatură nemaisuportînd decît „viaţa ca farsă“); în fine, fiţi conştienţi de propria impostură! Lars Iyer, discipol al lui Blanchot şi profesor în Newcastle upon Tyne le respectă, cel puţin în manifestul său literar, pe toate." (S.S., din Dilema)
