Interview with a writer: Lars Iyer

People call Lars Iyer a ‘cult author,’ which is odd, because almost every paper to have reviewed him from here to Los Angeles has praised him endlessly. The ‘cult’ thing is probably down to people naturally associating innovative, serious and challenging art with the marginal. This no doubt plays up to Iyer’s own theories about the climate of contemporary literature, but the reception of these books tells quite a different story. While his manifesto claims masterpieces cannot be produced in our age, and that no contemporary literature could be as important as anything by Samuel Beckett, critics call his books masterpieces and constantly compare him to Beckett. His characters lament a dearth of new ideas and go on about a messiah whom they know will never arrive, while the books themselves seem to fulfil the books’ messianic hopes. It is as if the world is bent on contradicting Iyer’s literary pessimism.