Lars Ayer: Ostrovnaya Agent Continent

The main literary event in Britain of this year (from a purely biased point of view, of course) is the access to the Melville Press publishing house the last part of the prose trilogy of Lars Ier , the novel “Exodus” (Exodus). Ayer is one of those “new British writers” who made a choice in favor of modernism, in favor of European continental philosophy and literature - and not in favor of the British novel tradition, coming from Jane Austin through Somerset Maughami directly to Julian Barnes and Ian Macuwan.

This is not to say that in English literature (Irish and Scottish does not count, there was a special story) modernism; You can recall many authors, from Anthony Burges to James Ballard. But they never made the weather, being a little on the sidelines, passing, rather, in the department, either thrillers or fiction. Anyway, the “Clothing Orange” and “Autocatastrophe” are much better known as films than as books. But on the “continent” of Ballard with Burdes (and some other rebels against the “island tradition”) are clearly preferred by ordinary British fiction writers, clever narrators who can “tell history”. A few years ago, in the United Kingdom, the uprising raised an elderly academic philologist Gabriel Yosipovichi, publishing the sensational composition “What happened to modernism?”. He published several books intentionally boring, monotonous, lifeless prose, imitating Borges and Rob Grie at once. But this is, so to speak, the theory. The practice of relatively new British modernism can be found in the prose of Willfa, Lee Rurka , Brian Dillon and some others. Lars Ier is usually called in this row; Not sure that it is completely fair.

Ayer is not a writer, but a philosopher, a specialist for one of the most “dark” authors of the last century, Frenchman Maurice Blancho (who in Britain simply does not know, and if they knew, they would have called a “French deceiver” - like Barta, Foucault, Derrida, all). Ayer teaches philosophy at the University of Newcasl. Before the “outcome”, he published the first two parts of the trilogy - “imaginary” (spurious) and “dogma” (Dogma). It is pointless to retell the content of these works (however, Olga Serebryany wrote about this in detail), it is better to read; I can only say that they are a continuous dialogue of friends-philosophers who endlessly drink, endlessly break, swear life and dream of acquiring some beautiful disease of real continental intellectuals, like consumption. Reading is hilarious and scary.

About a year ago, Anna Aslannyan talked with Lars Ayer about his books - and about his claims to the “traditional” island culture. The interview sounded in the program of Dmitry Volchek "On top of the barriers":

Lars Ayer : Here, in Britain, I have understood since childhood that the official culture gradually becomes more and more alien to me. The exception was one thing - popular music. British pop music has always been alive, interesting, susceptible to European modernist influences. This cannot be said about local literature - it shunes the European traditions from which I start. As for British philosophy, here, as a rule, they are engaged in analytical philosophy, the representatives of which were Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein. There is a galaxy of thinkers of this direction - European, British, American. At first, analytical philosophy was very interesting. Gradually, as it develops, this area - I studied it at the university and share the opinion of many - has become somewhat narrow, certain topics are not considered in it. Therefore, some of us turned to what is commonly called continental, European philosophy - it seems to us more comprehensive, deep, fascinating. This is exactly what brings the heroes of both of my books, “imaginary” and “dogma” - a fascination with European philosophy and its great names.

Returning to British literature, here, probably, you can see the excessive love of realism of a certain type. I do not mean the XVIII and XIX centuries - then there were a lot of experimental, unusual writers. In fact, before the Second World War in Britain, there were living traditions of modernism. But post -war novels with their emphasis on a kind of realism seem to me too limited. In such an atmosphere, it is difficult for me and many others to breathe.

The situation is more complicated with philosophy. Russell and Wittgenstein, as followers of Frege, relied to a large extent to logic - she replaced them with the ideas of fundamental philosophy. It seemed to them that, we begin to improve our methods of reasoning, logically configure our mind, and many problems arising in philosophy would disappear. This is an important difference between a British philosophical school and British literature. Although here we can talk about some similarities: in the post-war period, both of them were distinguished by introversion, even, perhaps, a provincial naris. On the other hand, since I studied analytical philosophy, much has changed in it.

Anna Aslannyan: Pop-music stands in a number of British achievements apart-the subject of national pride for those who are still familiar with such a thing. Do you agree?

Lars Ayer: This is a great mystery. I went to an ordinary British comprehensive school - it is not customary to conduct smart conversations in such. If in an interview with classmates to begin to portray an intellectual, it will be perceived as something strange: either you are a “botanist”, or an upstart. But everything was wrong with music, it was allowed to talk about it seriously. Only in this way we could express ourselves in the sense of intelligence - discussing certain musicians, certain albums. And the British musicians themselves were largely subject to European influence; This is especially applicable to the representatives of the "New Wave". If you look at large industrial cities in the north of the country, in local art a noticeable huge influence of different movements - such as Bauhaus, Dadaism, Surreet, Surrealism. All these traditions came to Britain in the late 70s-early 80s through music. A lot of people whose childhood and youth fell on these years say the same thing: it was the music that helped them get acquainted with continental thinkers, continental authors, even with unusual English writers - take at least Ballard.

Completely conversation with Lars Ayer can be listened to here .