The quest for seriousness, trammeled by idiocy: philosopher-novelist Lars Iyer

Published: March 21, 2011, 3:44 p.m.

Colin Marshall talks to novelist and philosopher Lars Iyer, author the blog Spurious and the new novel Spurious. In both the blog and the book, the philosophers Lars and W. discuss their favorite artists and writers \u2014 Franz Kafka, Andrei Tarkovsky, Maurice Blanchot, B\xe9la Tarr \u2014 and what they see as their own pathetic inability to live up to their collective example. As Lars deals with a dampness problem ever encroaching on his apartment, W. berates him with a seemingly endless series of insults that takes friendly verbal abuse to a high art form.