Spurious by Lars Iyer Page B

asks himself how he could have been kinder, better and more gracious. Every time he thinks of his friends (except me), he asks himself what he might do to help them or to look after them better; he asks himself what he might do to further their thought or their writing.
    ‘What does friendship mean to you, really?’, W. asks. ‘Do you think you’re capable of it? Do you think you’ve ever been a friend to anyone? Can you even conceive of what being a friend might mean?’: these questions constantly pass through his head, W. says, as he knows they do not pass through mine.
    Friendship makes the highest demands upon him, says W. It’s a kind of test. It’s the only chance for him, friendship, says W.; that and love. Love and friendship are the only things that might redeem him, W. says.—‘And what about you?’, he says. ‘How will you redeem yourself? What are you going to do to repent for your miserable existence?’

 
    W., as usual, is reading about God. God and mathematics, that’s all he’s interested in. Somehow everything has to do with God, in whom W.’s not capable of believing, and mathematics, which W. is not capable of doing. And he’s reading about God and mathematics in German, W. says, which means he doesn’t really understand what he doesn’t really understand. He’ll send me his notes, W. says, they’re hilarious.
    W.’s going to write on God, he says. And messianism. How are my studies of messianism coming along?, W. asks me. And then: Should we really be writing about messianism? In fact, that’s how he’s going to begin his essay on messianism: by saying he is in no way qualified to write on messianism.
    But what about God? He’s not really qualified to write about God either, W. says. God least of all. How could he, W., write about God?—‘Of course it’s all a joke to you’, W. says. ‘You’ll write about anything—anything! You’ve no shame. Nothing inside you prevents you from parading your ignorance’.
    W. wants to believe in something, he says, but he believes in nothing.—‘It’s a game to you’, he says. ‘Messianism, God: what meaning can they possibly have for you?’ How am I going to begin my essay on messianism?
    It’s beyond masochism in my case, W. says. It’s not that I want to punish myself by parading my ignorance, or not merely that, he says. It’s something cosmic, he says. There’s something cosmic streaming through me. There’s a cosmic storm howling through my ignorance and my shamelessness, says W.
    He blames me for everything, W. says. Somehow this is all my fault.—‘You’re dragging me down’, W. says, ‘everybody says so’.
    But then perhaps some part of him wants to be dragged down, W. has to concede that. But I am dragging him down even more quickly than he would want to be dragged down, he says. It’s cataclysmic. How could he have guessed at the humiliations that lay before him? How could he have known?
    But then, too, he must have wanted to humiliate himself in some sense, even as he was drawn to me as the means of that humiliation. What crime has he committed? Why did he want to place himself on trial? His immense sensation of guilt is mysterious, W. says, but it led him straight to me, his judge, his guillotine.

 
    Overpraise is the answer, W. says. We should only speak of each other to others in world-historical terms, he’s always been insistent on this. These are dark times, after all. No one’s safe.—‘These are the last days’, W. says. ‘No one could think otherwise’. And then, ‘It’s all shit, it’s all going to shit. It will always have already been shit’, W. says, as I take a photo of him by an evangelist with a placard saying end times .
    Overpraise is all we have, W. always says, that and sticking together. We have to be a pack, a phalanx prepared to die for one another.—‘I’d die for you’, says W., quite serious. ‘What about you—would you die for me?’ That’s what friendship