Perish the thought: trying to impress the philosophy tutor

Besides the sad realisation that after graduating these people will never realise the potential their teacher sees in them, there is deep melancholy beneath their fantasies about “Wittgenstein Jr” praising them.

By Juliet Jacques

(Photo By Fuzzy logic: Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Wittgenstein Jr
Lars Iyer
Melville House, 192pp, £12.99

Lars Iyer’s fourth novel carries an epigraph from Ludwig Wittgenstein, impelling thinkers to “descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there”, but its core theme lies in the lament of its central character, a lecturer at Cambridge, that: “The philosopher’s misfortune is to be a part of nothing. To stand apart from everything.”