Exodus

Lars Iyer

Melville House, 304 pages, $15.95

Lars and W, the two preposterous, philosophical anti-heroes of Iyer’s two previous novels in this trilogy, Spurious and Dogma, embark in this novel on a relentless mission. They must help gear a guerilla philosophy movement—conducted outside the academy, perhaps under bridges—that will save the study of philosophy after the long, miserable decades of intellectual desert known as the early 21st century. A wickedly funny and satisfyingly highbrow black comedy about the collapse of Western academic institutions under the weight of neoliberal economics and crushing, widespread idiocy.