My Weil

by Lars Iyer

Genres: General Fiction; Disaster Fiction; Black Humor; Humorous Fiction

Synopsis

"Memorable characters make this a singular exploration of the human condition." - Publishers Weekly

A scathingly funny look at a group of quirky graduate students majoring in Disaster Studies who are forced to reconsider their cynicism when they confront a new student who, remarkably, has the same name as the 20th Century Catholic mystic philosopher Simone Weil ...

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 immediate enemies are the drone-like Business Studies students all around them, as well as the assured and serene PhD students of the posh university up the road. And they’re working together on a film, through which they’re trying to make sense of their lives in Manchester and, in particular, to the Ees, a mysterious patch of countryside that appears to have supernatural qualities.

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.

The narrator, Johnny, who was brought up in care and is psychologically fragile, and deeply disturbed by the poverty of his adopted city, gradually falls in love in Simone. But will his love be requited? Will Simone be able to save the souls of her new friends and Manchester itself from apocalypse?

Release date: August 29, 2023

Publisher: Melville House

Print pages: 352

Sample

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  …

A PhD is a passion of studious solitude. A trial of the soul! A dark night of the intellect!

So why are the Business Studies supposed PhD students here? Why have they returned to the uni?

Because they sense what’s coming in the world out there. They know this is just the looting phase … the before-the-collapse phase … the end-of-empire phase … the game-will-be-up-pretty-soon phase. Like in Titanic, when the ship goes perpendicular …

A Business Studies fake PhD student, actually coming our way …

Brace yourselves, Valentine says.

Why don’t we try to turn him?  Marcie says. He’s cute.

You do it, Marcie – I’m out, Valentine says.

Marcie, pouring wine for Business Studies Guy … Smiling at Business Studies Guy …

***

Professor Sentinel, addressing us all. Bidding us welcome. Professor Bollocks, telling us we have an exciting year ahead of us. Our new method class lectures, compulsory for all PhD students … (doesn’t he understand that there’s only an anarchy of method in profound study?) The inaugural Disaster Studies conference … (doesn’t he see that the disaster means the impossibility of conferences? The impossibility of the uni!)

***

Escape to the street.

Police helicopters overhead.

So loud! Gita says. So blinding!

People are being murdered all around us, we tell Simone. Gang vendettas. Drug deals gone wrong. Manchester’s a death-trap! Manchester’s the pit! Manchester’s one of the circles of Hell!

But shouldn’t they just let the world go down? we wonder. Let Manchester destroy itself? They can’t keep it on life-support forever …

Looking up at the towers. The new mancunian skyline…

There’s something true about the Manchester streets, we tell Simone. Things are laid bare here. Things are revealed. Things those wankers in the towers will never see …

The Man’s going vertical, we tell Simone. The Man’s bought the sky. He’s going to sit out the catastrophe in a luxury eerie with a patio and a pool and a private helipad …

The towers are named after famous Mancunian albums, we inform Simone. Unknown Pleasures … Technique …

They haven’t called one Bummed yet, Marcie says.

Power, Corruption and Lies – that’s what they should be called, I say. Meanwhile, we’re down here with the rabble. With the homeless. The screamers.

It’s the new Manchester, Valentine says. Tramps on the ground, elites in the sky.

Ismail, filming the heavens.

And there’s the moon, too, shining down on everything, I say.

Johnny hates the moon, Valentine says.

It’s the way it just hangs there in the sky, I say. Flaunting itself, all dead. I mean, the moon’s just death, right? It’s just white ashen death in the sky … And it’s a full moon, too. A full moon brings out the madness in everybody. Mancunians don’t need to be any more mad. They don’t need the encouragement ...

Johnny’s been mugged forty-seven times by mad mancunians, Marcie explains. It’s a local record.

You bring it on yourself, Johnny, Valentine says. It’s your children’s home orphan thing. People either want to shelter you or stab you.

Whereas Val would actually like to be mugged, Marcie says.

Gita, falling behind, on her phone.

Bet it’s Russell, Ismail says. That’s Gita’s Russell-face.

Gita’s queer in theory, but straight in life, Marcie says.  She’s bidding goodbye to heterosexuality by fucking her supervisor.

A long goodbye, Valentine says. A long, clichéd, abject goodbye …

Marcie, arm around Business Studies Guy.

Den mom, on the other hand, will fuck anyone and anything, Valentine says.

***

Ruin Bar.

Raw wood tables. Exposed brick wallpaper. Edison bulbs, hanging bare. Visible pipes. Industrial chic, with a ruination twist, borrowed from the bars of Budapest. Décor, ruined (as-if ruined). Comfort ruined (pretend ruined). Health-and-safety, ruined (supposedly ruined). And the canal, dark and silent outside.

Picklebacks all round. A Tennessee classic. The sweetness of bourbon … The tang of pickle …

Simone, declining a pickleback. Simone, sipping a mineral water.

Is there ever a good reason not to drink? Valentine asks. Is there ever a good reason not to start drinking right away? Is there ever a good reason not to drink yourself to death?

Drunken philosophy – that’s our specialism, Marcie says. We follow the drunken path, that does not run in a straight line. That wavers, wanders. Goes its own way.

If we’re not helpless with drink, then what? Valentine says. If we’re not staggering from drink, who are we? Our purpose, or reason for being: drinking, now and forever. As refusal of our new teetalo-totalitarian world. As naysaying to the soft Prohibition. To the Man’s anti-drinking nudges.

They want to outlaw drunkenness – of course! Marcie says. They want to condemn drinking – obviously! In the name of public health, which means public death. They’ve declared war on us – on our kind. On drinkers.

They hate us – they hate drunken joy, Valentine says. But we’re not haters, not in the end. We hate this world – this form of the world. But we love what we could be, right? We love Potentiality. We love what’s Possible. We love Utopia.

So a toast to us, and our drunkenness! Marcie says. To living against the world, refusing the world, refusing to succumb to the world. To this holding cell. To this open prison.

We’re looking to light the touch-paper, Valentine says. Looking to launch. Look to find thoughts that we could not have thought otherwise. So that our drunken nights will not have been in vain! So we’ll understand them as a quest! As a search that can only be undertaken through drinking! That needs drinking! That begins with drinking, and perhaps ends with it, too!

It’s time for some pickleback reasoning, people, Marcie says. It’s time to follow pickleback logic to the end of the night …

***

What we’re working on.

Ismail: Performance philosophy. Showing that films can think.

And he actually gets to make films, too, Valentine says.

Yeah, but it’s the stuff they show in art galleries, not on TV, Marcie says.

Pure artwank, on other words, Valentine says. In the international elitist art-wank style.

Our job is to keep Ismail down, Marcie says. These artists ...!

He’s lucky to have us, Valentine says.

My turn. Ontological evil, I say. The evil that’s actually in things.

The madness of evil, or the evil of madness – right Johnny? Valentine says.

Yeah, I say.

Johnny’s quiet but you’ll have to watch him, Marcie says. One of these days he’s just going to EXPLODE …

Valentine’s turn. The religious avant-garde, he says. Religious anarchism and the anarchism of religion. With special reference to the Acéphale group, led by Georges Bataille.

They were kind of like Dead Poet’s Society back in the ‘30s – but with human sacrifice, Marcie says.

Valentine’s actually hoping to conduct a human sacrifice, Marcie says. So watch out.

Marcie’s turn. My genius is in my life, she says. My dissertation … pah! Who cares?

Oh come on ..., Ismail says.

Lumpenproletariat revolt as ultra-politics if you must know, Marcie says. The figure of the knave, across world history. I’m reclaiming the idea of the lumpen, which means the very opposite of heavy and grey …

And now Gita. I’m sick of my PhD and I don’t want to talk about it, she says.

Something about late heterosexuality, isn’t it? Marcie says. About queer communism … Very radical.

Gita’s a refugee from Victoria, the real university of the city, Valentine says. She began a PhD there. Dropped out for some obscure reason …

Well, you could hardly study queer communism at Victoria …, Gita says.