Lars Iyer - Exodus

A bad review: isn’t that what I craved? Indignant emails from experts in my field. Letters of abuse from real scholars … To be told off, as by a stern but kindly headmaster. To be reprimanded, and then re-admitted to class. I wanted standards. I wanted punishment, W. says. I wanted not to be able to get away with it .

What I really wanted was to be shot down, W. says. To feel a hot bullet in my temple. To feel it cracking through my skull. I wanted to be cut down by machine gun fire. I wanted to be bayoneted and collapse in the snow, W. says. He sees it in his mind’s eye: my dying face with a smile that says, justice has been done …

But in truth, there’s no one to offend, not any more, W. says. There are no sentries at the gate. No one cares. It’s collapsed — isn’t that what I’ve taught him? W. says. The academic system’s collapsed. Academic publishing’s collapsed. My book — and the millions of other books, there being more books published now than ever before — meet with perfect silence, perfect indifference. The university’s finished, and we’re in outer space, tumbling head over heels into the darkness.

My Manchester was Old Hulme, of course, W. says. Old, unregenerated Hulme, with its low-rise crescents, system-built in the ’60s and now condemned and nearly deserted. My Manchester was Hulme Free State , which had made squats out of the maisonettes of stained concrete.

That was my bohemian phase, W. says. My-living-like-a-hippie-phase. Only I could never live like a hippie, could I? I could never live like the crusties and ravers around me …

I was a failed bohemian , W. says, living rent free in my squat, with colour photocopies of Hindu gods blu-tacked up on my wall. I was a botched communalist , avoiding my flatmates, emerging from my room only in the early hours, and skulking along the decks so I wouldn’t be seen.

You would have thought that a half-Dane would be stirred by egalitarian ideals, of sharing possessions and resources, of group decisions and non-hierarchical structures, W. says. You would have thought that a half-Dane would be well prepared for communal life: for cooking together and cleaning together and planning socially-minded activities together.

How long was it before the failed bohemian broke the house rules? W. wonders. How long before my squatmates were muttering and grumbling about my inability to clean, my general squalor? How long before they realised that I was utterly incapable of communal living ?

Playing Jandek on the shared stereo … did I think that would bind everyone together? W. says. Tacking Louis Wain prints to the living room walls … did I think that would produce fellow feeling ? My endless insomniac pacing … did I believe that would endear me to my new squatmates? And, worst of all, the dreadful sight of me when I rose in the morning, rolls of fat visible through the holes in my dressing gown: why should anyone have to see that?

I’m not socialised . That’s the problem, W. says. I’m not housebroken . But there I was, W. says: the failed bohemian , trying everyone’s patience. Didn’t I singlehandedly destroy my commune? Didn’t the failed bohemian drive away all his fellow squatters? I was a living reminder, for them, of how far Old Hulme had fallen. I was the living embodiment of the forces that were destroying Squat City.

But in truth, everyone was leaving, W. says, I’ve told him that. Trouble had come to the crescents: travellers with pit-bulls, French skinheads, rumoured to be on the run for murder, junky casualties of rave culture, ready to stab you with a syringe for loose change.

Armagideon : someone painted that on a crescent wall, I’ve told W. Sky is burnin : someone painted that across the boarded-up health-food shop. Blood inna fyah : across the metal shutters pulled down over PSV. Earth a run red: sprayed across the windshield of a crusty van.

He feels sorry for me, in a way, W. says. I was too late for real counter-culture. I was too late for the rebellions of the ’80s, in which he had a part, W. says. I was too late for politics …

A few years earlier, and I might have taken part in the Poll Tax riots, W. says. A few years earlier, and I would have lived through the glory days of Old Hulme, when sound systems would reverberate from the roofs, and ravers would come from all over the city to the nightclub they’d made by jack-hammering through maisonette walls.

But now the failed Bohemian was one of the last men of Old Hulme, W. says. One of the last residents, along with the Rastas, wandering the empty decks.

The squat became damper. Colder. The walls were blackening. The electricity was cut off. There was no more hot water … The smell of rotting rubbish was overwhelming. Fires burned everywhere on the decks. Packs of half-wild dogs ran on the greens.

Who did I imagine I was? W. says. What fantasy was I living? What film was playing in my head?

‘How on earth did you come across Kierkegaard in Old Hulme?’, W. asks. ‘And why Kierkegaard, of all thinkers?’

In our time — and this is an indictment of our time — a figure like Kierkegaard becomes a magnet for all kinds of lunatics, W. says. That’s how it was for me, wasn’t it, in the middle of Old Hulme? First came my obsession with Kafka, which launched me towards my undergraduate studies. Then came my obsession with Kierkegaard — which launched me, threw me, towards my post graduate studies. But why Kierkegaard?

Internal exile. That was my solution to the problem of Britain, wasn’t it? W. says. To carry out an internal correlate of the great external voyages of Joyce and Beckett, of Flusser and Gombrowicz. I was going to go inward , just as they went outward . I was going to discover a Paris of the soul, a South America of the mind.

Expect nothing from the world! I said to myself, didn’t I? Sit life out! Go on the dole! On the sick! Claim to be seeing things! Hearing things! Claim to be in the grip of imaginary mental illnesses! Get yourself committed! Locked up! Dream away your life in a serene captivity!

But then there was Kierkegaard, W. says. Then, for some reason, Kierkegaard saved me. Either/Or : that was the book I came across in an Old Hulme jumble sale, I’ve told him that. Either/Or : that was the book which awoke me from my bohemian slumbers .

Of course, my type usually lose themselves in conspiracy theories and books about UFOs, W. says. My type usually lose themselves in the collected works of Colin Wilson, or in Dennis Wheatley’s Library of the Occult. So why Kierkegaard? What was it about Either/Or ?

Was it the infinite variations on the expression of despair of A., the pseudonymous author of the first part of Kierkegaard’s book, that impressed me? W. wonders. Was it A.’s pages of lamentations? Or was it the call-to-arms of B., the pseudonymous author of the second part of Kierkegaard’s book, that spoke to me? Was it B.’s exhortations to look at oneself in the mirror ?

Either a life mired in shit, or a life of thinking about a life mired in the shit: isn’t that the choice Either/Or presented me with? W. says. And so shit began to think about itself, W. says. Shit looked at itself in the mirror …

I read Philosophical Fragments as gangs of Hell’s Angels fought outside over drug deals, I’ve told W. I read the Concluding Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments as I heard gunshots in Woodcock Square. I read Repetition in the laundrette, and Fear and Trembling as I queued for patties in SamSam ’s.