The United States of Vastation and Waste

Lars Iyer’s Spurious was one of the surprise critical successes of 2011, shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize and named novel of the year by 3 a.m. Magazine. I say it was a surprise because there were a couple factors that might have predicted things going otherwise: the style and some of the content was lifted directly from Iyer’s blog (so why bother to write the novel?), there is no discernible narrative (so again, why write the novel?), the cruel humor that propels the book forward has the potential to alienate readers not attuned to a very specific strain in the British comedic sensibility (so why distribute the novel outside the UK?) and finally the liberal use of “continental” philosophers (Maurice Blanchot, Franz Rosenzweig) and artists (Béla Tarr, Franz Kafka) can give rise to the suspicion that pretension is masking the fact that the book is lacking in substance.