My Weil

Informationen zum Autor LARS IYER is a Professor in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, where he was formerly a longtime lecturer in philosophy. He is the author of the novels in the Spurious Trilogy , and more recently, the widely acclaimed Wittgenstein Jr ., and Nietzsche and the Burbs . Klappentext "My Weil follows a group of twenty-something PhD students of the new-fangled subject Disaster Studies at an inferior university in Manchester, England, the post-industrial city of so much great music and culture. They're working class, by turns underconfident and grandiose (especially when they drink) and are reconciled to never finishing their dissertations or finding academic jobs. Their enemies? The drone-like Business Studies students, as well as the assured and serene PhD students at the posh university up the road. Into their midst arrives Simone Weil, a PhD student, a version of the twentieth century philosopher, who becomes the unlikely star of their film. Simone is devout, ascetic, intensely serious, and busy with risky charity work with the homeless. Valentine, hustler-philosopher, recognises Simone as a fellow would-be saint. But Gita, Indian posh-girl, is suspicious: what's with Simone's nun-shoes? And Marcie (AKA Den Mom), the leader of the pack, is too busy with her current infatuation, nicknamed Ultimate Destruction Girl, to notice."-- Leseprobe Chapter 1 Monday night. The postgraduate social. Room-temperature prosecco. Ismail, to the most interesting looking new arrival: Do you believe in God? Please say yes. We could do with a little faith around here. I believe that I believe, she says. That’s good enough for us, Ismail says. So you’re really called Simone Weil? I say. Like the philosopher? Simone, nodding. She starved herself to death, right? Valentine asks. She died as a martyr, Simone says. During the war. She sounds like a nutcase, Gita says. Are you a nutcase, too? Marcie asks. Simone, smiling. How come you’re called Simone Weil? I ask. Come on, Johnny, Ismail says. Like, duh. I changed my name, Simone says. Sure – this is Manchester , Valentine says. Fuck the CIS-stem. This is where you come to be reborn. Are you actually studying Simone Weil, too? Ismail asks. I want to … develop some of her ideas, Simone says. Well, you’re on trend – Christianity’s coming in again, Marcie says. It’s all the rage. I thought God is dead in Disaster Studies, I say. I mean, I thought that was kind of a given. Is that true, Simone? Is God dead? Ismail asks. Or is he just playing dead ? The God of the philosophers is dead, Simone says. Isn’t the real trial believing in God after he’s dead? Valentine says. No – the real trial’s believing in God after you’re dead, Marcie says.   *** Surveying the scene. Disaster Studies PhD students mixed up with Sociology PhD students mixed up with Literature PhD students … And Business Studies PhD students! Look at them! All cheerful! A mockery of the PhD student. The very opposite of the PhD student … Where’s their doom? Where’s their crushedness? Their diseases of the soul? There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with them. Discussion. What do Business Studies pretend PhD students even research? Kleptocracy? Corporate raiding? Debt leveraging? Overgrowth? Financial engineering? The pillaging of the system before the final collapse? Do they even understand what doing a PhD means? The final academic frontier . There is no higher qualification! No course of study that’s so open! So risky! Where you’re carried away from everything known, everything certain! In a movement of infinite philosophical eros  ...

Product details

• Authors: Lars Iyer
• Publisher: Melville House
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.08.2023
• EAN: 9781685890605
• ISBN: 978-1-68589-060-5
• No. of pages: 352
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 208 mm x 26 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature