Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook186 pages2 hours
Dogma: A Novel
By Lars Iyer
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
A plague of rats, the end of philosophy, the cosmic chicken, and bars that don’t serve Plymouth Gin—is this the Apocalypse or is it just America?
“The apocalypse is imminent,” thinks W. He has devoted his life to philosophy, but he is about to be cast out from his beloved university. His friend Lars is no help at all—he’s too busy fighting an infestation of rats in his flat. A drunken lecture tour through the American South proves to be another colossal mistake. In desperation, the two British intellectuals turn to Dogma, a semi-religious code that might yet give meaning to their lives.
Part Nietzsche, part Monty Python, part Huckleberry Finn, Dogma is a novel as ridiculous and profound as religion itself. The sequel to the acclaimed novel Spurious, Dogma is the second book in one of the most original literary trilogies since Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable.
“The apocalypse is imminent,” thinks W. He has devoted his life to philosophy, but he is about to be cast out from his beloved university. His friend Lars is no help at all—he’s too busy fighting an infestation of rats in his flat. A drunken lecture tour through the American South proves to be another colossal mistake. In desperation, the two British intellectuals turn to Dogma, a semi-religious code that might yet give meaning to their lives.
Part Nietzsche, part Monty Python, part Huckleberry Finn, Dogma is a novel as ridiculous and profound as religion itself. The sequel to the acclaimed novel Spurious, Dogma is the second book in one of the most original literary trilogies since Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable.
Unavailable
Author
Lars Iyer
Lars Iyer is a lecturer in English at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. He is the author of Spurious, Dogma, and Exodus for which he was nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize. He is a regular contributor to ReadySteadyBook and also blogs at spurious.typepad.com.
Read more from Lars Iyer
Nietzsche and the Burbs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWittgenstein Jr Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Dogma
Related ebooks
Dogma: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Night by the Rose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTramping With a Poet in the Rockies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExodus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House Without a Key: A Charlie Chan Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spring and All Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlarms And Discursions (A Selection Of Essays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoison & Conspiracy: Historical Crime Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew York: Give Me Your Best or Your Worst Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Door in the Wall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death Waits for You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLie the Liar Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Garden of Trees Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Indian Winter, or with the Indians in the Rockies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVacation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nightmare Magazine, Issue 85 (October 2019): Nightmare Magazine, #85 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCatch the Rabbit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seven Terrors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Boy Detective: A New York Childhood Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Me Too: Volume V of The Bandy Papers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Raie'Chaelia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Artist, The Painter, The Idiot, The Troubador, And Carlos The Bunn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDarling Clementine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sign of Jonah Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Crime and Punishment: Deluxe Hardbound Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Pit of the Serpent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dark Flower: "If you do not think about your future, you cannot have one" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5MacLeish Sq. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Dark Humor For You
Post Office: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swamp Story: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Candy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Death with Interruptions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Into the Woods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eunuchs and Nymphomaniacs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Family Fang: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Murdery Mystery Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Florida Roadkill: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five People You Meet in Hell: An Unauthorized Parody Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Laws of the Skies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Snobs: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Barbara Isn’t Dying: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hippopotamus: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dice Man: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After the Revolution: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Flood's Last Resort: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Company: A Novel of the CIA Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dog's Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5P.S. Your Cat Is Dead: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trout Fishing in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Between the Bridge and the River: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ginger Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just by Looking at Him: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Dogma
Rating: 3.526315789473684 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
19 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In which a pretentious intellectual poseur and his deferential sidekick trade ripostes about life's big questions. The two characters are straight out of the imagination of Samuel Beckett as they ramble through vignettes constructed within their inner universes, which are, unfortunately, not that interesting. The book comes blurbed as hilarious, which it is not; amusing at times, yes, but it's pretty difficult to imagine anybody finding it laff-riot stuff. And if the book is shooting for any sort of philosophical profundity, it's difficult to see that as a credible possibility in a book where the flippant chapters are rarely more than two pages long. This is a quick, entertaining read, and those are not qualities to be undervalued in a book, but there are far better works of light intellectual fiction out there..
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)By all laws of the current literary market, the comedic novels Spurious and Dogma by philosopher Lars Iyer (comprising two-thirds of an as-yet unfinished trilogy) shouldn't really exist at all, and it's a testament to the suddenly hot Melville House that they've not only published them, but have been promoting the newest with all the pomp and resources usually afforded only to Stephen King potboilers; for these are not traditional novels nearly as much as they are the spiritual grandchildren of Samuel Beckett, absurdist and cyclical tales where the point is not really to see "what happens" but rather to wallow in the abstract pleasures of language itself. Comprised as a series of conversations between a philosopher who just happens to be named Lars and his doppelganger and frenemy known only as W., and with the story details grounded in just exactly enough reality to seem plausible (they live on opposite sides of Britain; W. has recently become a Malcolm-Gladwell-type popular public prognosticator; Lars is experiencing a mysterious mold problem in his house that threatens to take over the entire building), readers will nonetheless get quickly frustrated if expecting such silly things from these books as a plot or character development; instead, this is more like getting a glimpse of what it must be like inside the head of a college professor while they're in the middle of having a nervous breakdown, a series of funny yet sometimes impossible-to-follow rants and arguments between the two that reference as many obscure thinkers and experimental artists as Family Guy does '80s television shows (and many times just as randomly). I agree with a lot of other critics I've come across, that I immensely enjoyed these silly yet high-falutin' comedies, but can't imagine another human being who will as well; and for that many unrelated strangers to say the same thing is a powerful statement indeed, and makes one understand why the publisher has put such a big promotional push behind what's essentially the very definition of idiosyncratic writing. As you can tell, it takes a special type of personality to enjoy these books; but if you're already a fan of such things as Waiting for Godot and A Confederacy of Dunces, you owe it to yourself to at least take a stab at these frustrating but ultimately satisfying head-scratchers.Out of 10: 8.8
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The return of this most one-sided of double acts—the philosophers “Lars” and “W.”—is most welcome. The droll delights of Spurious are equalled here in the fretful eschatology of Dogma. It is the end of things: the end of humanity, the end of life, the end of the rat infestation of Lars’ damp digs and, worst of all, the end of the Philosophy and Religion department at the University of Plymouth which spells the end of W.’s desultory career. Only dogma can save them now. Or Plymouth Gin, which (except in America) is readily available.Iyer has a fine comic touch. The almost silent character, Lars, recounts the interactions between himself and W. primarily through the reported speech of W. It’s as though Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy, were silently telling the tale of he and Hardy’s dependent-abusive relationship. It is a technique that forever wrong-foots the reader. But you rather expect pratfalls here.Lars and W. travel to America, where they (that is, W.) are astounded by the aforementioned absence of Plymouth Gin. They follow the conference circuit to Oxford, where they (that is, W.) set out the rules of their intellectual movement, Dogma. They visit Lars’ damp abode in Newcastle and W.’s sorry Plymouth. And throughout W. maintains a steady stream of quasi-philosophical speculation, abuse, and drunken revelation. Despite the attraction, death is too good for them. Narrative is frustrated. Character is besotted. Philosophical and religious ideas flit by like moths headed for an open flame. This is the intellectual picaresque. And it should raise a smile or two, with or without Plymouth Gin.