Product Description
Great photographs change the way we see the world; The Ongoing Moment changes the way we look at both. Focusing on the ways in which canonical figures like Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, and William Eggleston have photographed the same things—barber shops, benches, hands, roads, signs–award-winning writer Geoff Dyer seeks to identify their signature styles. In doing so, he constructs a narrative in which these photographers–many of whom never met–constantly encounter one another.The result is a kaleidoscopic work of extraordinary originality and insight. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

readable
I'm a little puzzled by the enthusiasm about this book. It's even won a photographic writing award. If you don't know much about American photography you may find it interesting, it is well written and easy to read. If you are already well informed about the work of classic American photographers like Walker Evans, Stieglitz, etc then this won't strike you as an especially interesting book. It's a very loose set of comments about recurring themes in American photography. It's one long unstructured essay but without the insights or wisdom of essayists like Susan Sontag.

Astute gem.
As someone who has only dabbled in photo criticism, I found the book's premise very compelling and the writing engaging and attentive without the self indulgence usually found in a book of this type. I could not recommend this work enough.

Engaging dissertation on the photographic image
I have read it twice, and I believe this is the kind of book that I will enjoy re-reading every few years. Not the least, Geoff Dyer reconciles us with the idea that it does not matter how a subject, even a thing, has been photographed before, in and of itself no deterrent to shoot it again.

On the contrary, one could feel invited to add one's photographic interpretation to those of the past, even relish in doing so, guiltlessly.

Goeff doesn't claim that his book is about photography as a whole, it is just about photographs, a whole bunch of them, and the photographers who made them.

So that in the end, we, as readers, might find that after all, this may be the best book we have read, about photography.

The style is engaging, the ideas both original and entertaining, the author's wit and perspicacity matched by the depth of the insights, and a sure-footed intellectual engagement. It's fun to read, while we are given a lot to reflect upon.

For someone who claims not to take pictures, Geoff Dyer knows a lot about photos. Highly recommended.

entertaining
The whole photography establishment seems to have excused itself from all the normal rigors to which the rest of the visual arts submit, and this book is perfectly in step with that attitude. If you liked Camera Lucida, you will like this book. It won't teach you anything about the nature of photographs, why the great photographers are great, general aesthetics, etc., but it is an entertaining read from an engaging writer. Imagine the best kind of sprawling human interest piece from your favorite publication that, instead of an out-of-the-way attraction like an adorable small east-coast town with an old rail car diner, uses the enterprise of photography as its focal point for the author's impressions. That's "The Ongoing Moment". It is a sort of enigmatic snapshot on the subject of enigmatic snapshots.

The Ongoing Moment
Here is a man who thinks about what he sees. Many interesting comments on well-known and not so well known photographer-artists. You'll be introduced to some you've never heard of and of course, you'll think of some he apparently doesn't know but that's the fun of it. A very intriguing mixture of insight and gossip. There aren't many books on photography that criticizes a Steiglitz photograph of Georgia O'Keefe's genitalia because it doesn't show enough detail! I strongly recommend this book for all photographers, particularly those many who look without seeing.Rating would have been 5 stars if it weren't for indifferent reproduction of photos plus omission of some images discussed in the text. Apparently some artists ( or their estates) are possessive to the point of paranoia.

... Read more

Product Description
A New York Times Notable Book

A Best Book of the Year: The Economist, The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate.com, and Time

In Venice, at the Biennale, a jaded, bellini-swigging journalist named Jeff Atman meets a beautiful woman and they embark on a passionate affair.

In Varanasi, an unnamed journalist (who may or may not be Jeff) joins thousands of pilgrims on the banks of the holy Ganges. He intends to stay for a few days but ends up remaining for months. 

Their journey—as only the irrepressibly entertaining Geoff Dyer could conjure—makes for an uproarious, fiendishly inventive novel of Italy and India, longing and lust, and the prospect of neurotic enlightenment.Amazon.com Review
Book Description
A wildly original novel (what else would we expect from this fearless and funny writer?) that explores the underbelly of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning.

Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman—a jaded, dissolutely resolute journalist—whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled party-going is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets Laura, he is rejuvenated, ecstatic. Their romance blossoms quickly but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly?

Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only for a few days he ends up staying for months, and finds—or should that be loses?—a hitherto unexamined idea of himself, the self. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced.In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other. Could two stories, in two different cities, actually be one and the same story?

Nothing Geoff Dyer has written before is as wonderfully unbridled, as dead-on in evocation of place, longing, and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment, as irrepressibly entertaining as Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.
About the Author
Geoff Dyer is the author of three previous novels and five nonfiction books, including But Beautiful, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, and Out of Sheer Rage, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. The winner of a Lannan Literary Award, the International Center of Photography's 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography (for The Ongoing Moment), and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E. M. Forster Award, Dyer lives in London.

Questions for Geoff Dyer

Q: What is this book about?

A: At the risk of being cowardly, I'll take refuge behind a line from one of Kerouac’s letters: "It's my contention that a man who can sweat fantastically for the flesh is also capable of sweating fantastically for the spirit." (See also answer to question 4.)

Q: Is it a modern twist on Death in Venice? If not, what's up with the title?

A: Yes, the first part is a version of the Mann novella--the opening sentence is ripped straight out of the opening line of the original--but mine operates at a far lower cultural level. His protagonist is a world-famous composer, mine is a hack journalist. And whereas in the Mann, Aschenbach's obsession withthe young boy, Tadzio, is tied up with some quest for ideal beauty, in my book the romance with Laura is very carnal and hedonistic--though that could itself be said to represent some kind of ideal.

Q: Why Venice and Varanasi?

A: They're actually very similar: both are water-based, old, with crumbling palaces facing onto either the Grand Canal or the Ganges with alleys and narrow streets leading off into darkness and sudden oases of brilliant light. And both, in their ways, are pilgrimage sites. I'm not the first person to be struck by the similarities. There are quite a few occasions in his Indian Journals when Ginsberg is so stoned walking by the Ganges that he thinks he's in Venice, strolling along the Grand Canal!

Q: Are the two parts of the book, two stories in two different cities, or are they the same story? How are they linked? One early reviewer claimed that the protagonist in each story wasn't the same person, but two people--is it the same person or not?

A: Well, these are huge questions and this, in fact, is what the book is about. By asking questions like these the reader is hopefully confronted by several more, about what kind of unitythe book has, about the ways in which a novel might be capable of generating an aesthetic unity of experience that is not narrative-driven. Regarding the person in each part, I'll opt for what governments call the N.C.N.D. response, neither confirming nor denying. It is never made clear whether the un-named narrator in Varanasi is the same as the protagonist in Venice. And although sequentially it comes afterwards, there is nothing in the book to suggest that part 2 comes chronologically after part 1. I actually wanted to subtitle the book "A Diptych" but was dissuaded by my handlers. I didn't mind: it so obviously is a diptych there's no need to call it one!

Q: You've clearly spent a lot of time in Venice and Varanasi. Have any of Jeff's adventures happened to you?

A: Yes, I've been to three biennales and spent a big chunk of time in Varanasi. As I've said elsewhere, I like writing stuff that's only an inch from life but all the art--and, for me, all the fun--is in that inch.

Customer Reviews (66)

great writing/fun/different
There are so many in-depth reviews here my my.I'm flabbergasted that certain people hate it and condemn it.I thought it was a jolly good read.The Venice story was so in-the-moment and real, the frustration at being where he is with his greying hair and no success at his age, the escapism he takes in Venice.The spot-on descriptions of the greedy art world folks grabbing their freebies and drinking themselves silly. The Varanasi part is absolutely fascinating.I literally could not put the book down for dinner and hated watching any tv at night ... this part had me so aware of how inept television is as an experience rather than a book.(the descriptions of the river, the cremations, the street-urchins, tourists who move on after one day... so many things I learned in great detail... I found myself googling Varanasi and looking closely at pictures of the Ganges and Ghats).Wow.

I think he (the character not the author)just fell apart in Varanasi after the empty life he was leading.The progression of that was subtle and chilling.You suddenly realise it when he is asked by a tourist "how he got here" and he goes into a long crazed story about his father and childhood.My husband who doesn't read that much enjoyed this book also and he felt Jeff most likely died in Varanarsi. This novel was was a huge surprise and very very different.I'm so glad I found Mr. Dyer, I'd love to meet him!

Game of Two Halves
Readers tend to regard Geoff Dyer as a better-travelled Nick Hornby or a softer Paul Theroux. Dubious phrases such as 'genre-defying' and 'zany' are used to describe his work. Nevertheless, I prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. From reading his praise for, say, Tobias Wolff, Joshua Ferris and Denis Johnson, and his graceful contributions to otherwise duff anthologies (such as the All Hail the New Puritans flop), I felt I was in good hands.

I think I was half right. 'Novel' doesn't really describe this book. (Granted, 'novella with a piece of travelogue tacked on at the end' wouldn't have made good copy.) Eight pages in and the narrator already has you grimacing--another callow London media type who thinks the lives of callow London media types are inherently interesting. He doesn't like his job, but doesn't have the stones to quit it; the people his work requires him to meet are shallow and stupid, but the glamour that rubs of them onto their hangers-on, like garlic on stale bread, keeps him attentive.

In fairness, this insular, bratty world is described with some redemptive disgust. One character lances through all the fine prattle about the life-changing qualities of art with his more modest claim: "Nine times out of ten, in fact, it's precisely the life-changing experience that enables you to come to terms with the unchangingness of your own life." Dyer's quick-fire dialogue, if not always realistic, has its moments, and just about salvages at least one of the book's many ludicrous sex scenes.

It's said that Dyer's works of non-fiction are his strongest. Although this book was a misfire, the thought that I have his others yet to read makes me eager to watch him aim again.

An intense, vivid trip
Geoff Dyer's fourth work of fiction is a brilliantly bifurcated exploration of the emotional poles of sensual pleasure and spiritual quest. It's a smart, funny, eyes-wide-open take on our search for meaning, one of those rare novels that begs to be read again the moment you have turned to the final page.

In the novel's first half, "Jeff in Venice," Dyer introduces Jeff Atman (in a sly nod to the second part of the book, the word means "soul" or "true self" in Hinduism), a cynical 45-year-old British journalist who has just dyed his hair for the first time and taken off for Venice. He is headed there on assignment to cover the Biennale and write a piece on the ex-girlfriend of a prominent artist (the latter a task he bungles spectacularly). Jeff seems more intent on sampling the pleasures of the Italian city (a torrent of bellinis and never-ending helpings of risotto the most prominent). There, he meets Laura Freeman, a ravishing young woman who works for a Los Angeles art gallery. The two zip around the city's waterways on its fleet of vaporettos and quickly tumble into a relationship that features copious bouts of sex (described in NC-17 detail) and cocaine, interspersed with a mind-numbing swirl of parties and gallery visits.

Astonished by the ample, unanticipated pleasures of his encounter with Laura, Jeff strides the streets, dumbly celebrating his good fortune: "He swaggered through Venice as if he owned the place, as if it had been created entirely for his benefit. Life! So full of inconvenience, irritation, boredom and annoyance and yet, at the same time, so utterly fantastic." Though it seems the two have made a connection that transcends the purely carnal, Laura departs for Los Angeles after three magical, if inexplicable, days. They enact the obligatory exchange of email addresses and phone numbers, and we're left with a feeling that seems both inevitable and somehow fitting that they'll never see each other again.

The second section of the book, recounted in the first person by an unnamed narrator with enough similarities to Jeff to let us conclude it's the same protagonist, is set in India's holy city of Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges River. After polishing off the magazine piece that has brought him there, the narrator abandons any plan to return home, slowly adapting to the rituals and rhythms of the ancient city ("I'd come to Varanasi because there was nothing to keep me in London, and I stayed on for the same reason: because there was nothing to go home for."). But as he does so, he undergoes an emotional transformation that becomes more profound as time glides past like the spiritually pure, dreadfully polluted Ganges. "All I'm saying," he concludes, "is that in Varanasi I no longer felt like I was waiting. The waiting was over. I was over. I had taken myself out of the equation." He shaves his head, dons a dhoti and in one of the most striking demonstrations of Dyer's art, we ponder whether "Jeff" is evolving toward some higher plane of spiritual ecstasy or descending into the depths of madness.

The novel is suffused with a sharp, picturesque description of its disparate yet strikingly similar settings. "Every day, for hundreds of years," Dyer writes, "Venice had woken up and put on this guise of being a real place even though everyone knew it existed only for tourists." Varanasi, with its ubiquitous ghats and their cremation pyres, is drenched in an almost hallucinatory swirl of colors, sights and smells: "The colours made the rainbow look muted. Lolly-pink, a temple pointed skywards like a rocket whose launch, delayed by centuries, was still believed possible, even imminent, by the Brahmins lounging in the warm shade of mushroom umbrellas."

Given the superficially unconnected stories, it's fair to ask whether the work really is a "novel," or, more correctly, two novellas with interwoven themes. Regardless, the effort of teasing out the links between the two sections is one of the book's numerous pleasures. To start, both are set in watery cities steeped in history. And with a deft touch, the stories' language and images echo each other, illustrated by this handful of many such examples: begging bowls, real and metaphorical appear in both cities; the term "otter" does double duty as the way Jeff hears Venetians describe the heat and how "Jeff" imagines his "sleek" appearance at the end of the novel; there's an image of a kangaroo that surfaces at the climax of both stories; and Jeff's Venice dream of having his arm devoured by a dog becomes frighteningly real when that fate befalls a corpse in Varanasi.

Strikingly contemporary and utterly timeless, JEFF IN VENICE, DEATH IN VARANASI is an intense, vivid trip to a pair of exotic cities and an equally provocative journey into the twisted passageways of the human soul.

Bill Bryson without the humour
Two books in one. Why? Maybe because neither of these stories has enough going on to extend it to a full-length novel. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I felt that nothing really happens in this book(s). In 'Jeff', the jaded hack has a good time, falls in love, then goes home. In 'Death', the jaded hack goes to Varanasi and indeed 'goes native'. But half the time, what are we reading?Geoff Dyer has some good observations on modern art, but he's not pushing any kind of argument through this book. And in both books, the descriptive writing runs out of steam in places and reads more like a travel guide. Maybe Geoff is the jaded hack, bashing away at this book, wondering if he's filled the wordcount yet. He throws everything in (except plot). Did someone say this was a funny book? Where exactly? It was a humour-free zone, and almost made me want to pick up a Bill Bryson for well-observed travel writing that can actually be funny.
Sometimes books that pack in references to art, philosophy and culture get treated by critics with kid gloves (anyone read Foucault's Pendulum, for example?). I can only think that's why this book has got so well reviewed in the press. Maybe I'm just too low-brow.

Not my cup of tea
After reading the reviews, I was excited to read this book.I have been to India on two occasions, and was hoping for either an in depth account or at least something humorous.Sorry, I found no depth and no humor. ... Read more

Product Description

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

Dyer's fascination with Lawrence's minorabilia suggests not only an obliquecriticism of the contemporary novel, but a promising direction for thememoir. Perhaps clean, well-lighted subjectivity is a dead end, and thefuture lies with eccentric, provisional works along the lines of Flaubert's Parrot andHow Proust Can Change YourLife--or Out of Sheer Rage. After all, Dyer's bright (andbrilliantly shambolic) book of life reminds us of why we read in the firstplace: to see the surprising ways one person can be brought to life byanother. --Michael Joseph Gross ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Not my cup of tea
Out of sheer honesty, I did not enjoy this book very much.The descriptions were tedious, and I thought a lot of supposedly humorous situations were overworked, becoming very repetitive.For example, near the middle, when Ciccio kept calling Renata in the restaurant.One or two times, okay.After that, it was just...extraneous, and didn't add to the writing at all.(At least for me.)
There were parts that I liked.Some of Dyer's adventures were interesting.Once you got past the first forty or so pages of 'should I stay or should I go or stay or go or stay,' etc., and the author really let himself become immersed--with some pit stops and road bumps along the way, of course--in his study of Lawrence, I began to actually see who Lawrence was.
Another thing I liked about the book was its keen observations into human nature.The little habits that a lot of people share, but never really realize how universal they are until someone points them out and you realize, 'Hey, I do that, too!'Some examples: when Dyer is complaining about how he could not sneeze or sleep on his side, and that he never really appreciated the values of these things until he could no longer do them; when Lawrence describes "suffering one of those strange losses of purpose that come over one from time to time"--seemingly without cause.
The writing in some parts is very insightful and interesting; but just when I think that maybe it will keep my interest, I am once again lost in seemingly trivial details.I can't say that I hated the book, because there were exceptions; however, overall, it was hard for me to get through, and difficult for me to sympathize for the narrator, who seemed to have such great opportunities spread before him but spent 90% of the book whining, or "shaking [his] fist at the world" (153).I felt throughout that he didn't earn the cynical perspective he adopted throughout the book.
So no, I didn't like the book, and I do not consider it worth keeping.However, I can see how someone who appreciates this brand of humor would wholeheartedly disagree with me.

Out of Opaque Rage
Dyer's quasi-treatise on D.H. Lawrence amused me to no end when I started reading it.Although the book's subtitle -- WRESTLING WITH D.H. LAWRENCE -- leads one to believe the book is about the famed author, it is actually more about wrestling as a life choice.Wrestling with one's desires, one's life, one's hopes and dreams.Dyer's opening pages flicker back and forth between the occasional comment on Lawrence, mingled with rambling monologues on how he manages to sabatoge his own pursuits due to his overwhelming tendency for procrastination and self-doubt."One of the reasons, in fact, that it was impossible to get started on either the Lawrence book or the novel was because I was so preoccupied with where to live.I could live anywhere, all I had to do was choose -- but it was impossible to choose because I could live anywhere.There were no constraints on me and because of this it was impossible to choose ... when all you have to go on is your own desires, then life becomes considerably more difficult, not to say intolerable."

This kind of ironic introspection is a clever counterpoint to Dyer's actual academic purpose, but it stales with use.Dyer uses the exact same formula to explain why people don't wear seatbelts, why he's bad at DIY home projects, why his knee hurts, and why he always brings the wrong books on his various vacations.On the one hand, it's kind of funny.On the other hand, the same joke over and over gets old.

Dyer's conceit here is that he mingles these long-winded mutterings with the occasional delve into Lawrence's own life and letters.He does this with seamless skill at the beginning (noting, for example, that Lawrence himself struggled with the decision of where to live), but the further along his book progresses, the more the technical analysis juts out, at odds with the rest of the awkwardly intimate details that Dyer gives of his own life and losses.

What ends up happening is that you get a vague idea of what Dyer and Lawrence are/were both like as people, but without ever getting the full force of that rage that the title claims is there.The book's title is derived from a quote by Lawrence, but it would've been more accurate to have replaced "rage" with "despair," since the book is less about Dyer and Lawrence than it is about how to wrestle with the overwhelming amount of ennui and confusion that all people (but writers especially) must deal with on a near-daily basis.

The goal is lofty, but the book's answers are a bit pat, especially when Dyer wraps things up and feels compelled to put a neat, little bow on the top of the sloppy, endearing mess he's just created.What starts as a humorous co-mingling of philosophy and self-sabotage turns quickly into a poor blend of a literary exegesis with a caustic self-help concept."That is the hallmarkof academic criticism: it kills everything it touches," Dyer writes.He hopes to expound on Lawrence by using his own life -- "...how can you know anything about literature if all you've done is read books?" -- but since his life is such a shoddy and repetitive affair, his novel becomes equally shoddy and repetitive.Hilarious in spots, illuminating in others, and eloquently revealing, OUT OF SHEER RAGE is still missing the furious focus and strength that would make it a truly good book.

One of the funniest books I've ever read; totally unexpected take on literature and contemporary life
If you like reading literary biographies or literary histories, you will be shocked and more than pleasantly surprised by Dyer's self-revealing look at D. H. Lawrence (he hasn't read), travel, his parents, and how to blame your girlfriend for all your problems.... this book is also a form of apology.It is extremely sharp, funny, and strangely touching.It will make you a Dyer addict.His newest novel is incredible.

If you're dead inside, read this book!
There are some writers one reads to escape, others one reads to engage; Geoff Dyer engages! He grabs you and brings you on his trek to discover D. H. Lawrence via nude beaches in Mexico and motor scooter crashes in Greece. Dyer's "non-genre" writing weaves from his internal struggle with creating a biography (hilarious) to his external struggles traveling as homage to and research of DHL. Shattering hide-bound distinctions between biography, memoir, travel-writing and academic criticism. A stunning, obsure and unique book.

beyond catagory
Not especially distinguished as a storyteller, or a travel expert, or a memoirist, what Mr Dyer is primarily is a writer - he has the rare quality of rendering anything he alights on into literature, no matter what the genre. His wide-ranging interests, reflected in his bibilography, are a result of his admitted indolence, his oft-stated desire to run away from any kind of graft and 'watch telly'. A curse for him perhaps, but a blessing for all who read him. Every sentence which isn't simply descriptive resonates and lingers; better to say that every sentence is a kaleidoscope, lighting on things half-remembered, half-known by us all. The biggest compliment you can pay him is that while reading, you wish he would tackle your own favorite subjects so that he could illuminate them in all the ways you would wish to. Midway though the book he quotes George Steiner as saying 'The best readings of art are art' going on to say that 'in such instances the distinction between imaginative and critical writing disappears'. He's not Lawrentian enough to claim this status for his own work, but most who read this would I think agree it fitting. ... Read more

Product Description
'In the race to be first in describing the lost generation of the 1980s, Geoff Dyer in THE COLOUR OF MEMORY leads past the winning post. "We're not lost" one of his hero's friend's says, "we're virtually extinct". It is a small world in Brixton that Dyer commemorates, of council flat and instant wasteland, of living on the dole and the scrounge, of mugging, which is merely begging by force, and of listening to Callas and Coltrane. It is the nostalgia of the DHSS Bohemians, the children of unsocial security, in an urban landscape of debris and wreckage. Not since Colin MacInnes's CITY OF SPADES and ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS thirty years ago has a novel stuck a flick-knife so accurately into the young and marginal city. A low-keyed style and laconic wit touch up THE COLOUR OF MEMORY' THE TIMES ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Lovingly Constructed
Geoff Dyer's first novel begins like a first novel and develops into an accomplished work in its own right as the story progresses.The reader follows a small clique of twenty-somethings in the bohemian London enclave of Brixton.The novel is not plot-based, but is instead intended to paint a picture of a particular place at a particular time while encouraging the reader to see his or her own life reflected.

I had a few minor complaints: the introduction of the characters at the beginning is a little awkward and seemed forced.When Dyer waxes prolific, making statements about the "Lost Generation," his writing takes on the cynical self-indulgence of Martin Amis which seems out of place with characters who are warm, likable people.

But once past all of this, and it doesn't take long, the book segues into a series of loving vignettes, carefully crafted and simultaneously personal and universal in character.We all remember pieces of events and it is the details that make memories vivid and important to us.Geoff Dyer captures this in writing that is wispy and urban at the same time.

One can see his future writing ("Out of Sheer Rage" and "Paris Trance") foreshadowed in much of this and although I recommend starting with those two, in that order, any fan of Dyer's style will fall in love with this novel as well.

What Remains of our Hopes: Colour of Memory
Geoff Dyer's The Colour Of Memory is an amazingly well-written first novelnovel,perhaps more so for how it iswritten than for what actually takes place on the pages-moreabout this a bit later. The narrator of Colour Of Memory,plus five or six close friends are allyoung, university-educated and living a near-impoverished existence in aseries of barely inhabitable South London,Council flats.

In Colour Of Memory, Dyerdescribes in beautifully vivid detail a series of intimatesnapshots of life lived day to day on the margins ofThatcher's Britain in the mid-1980's. Thenovel begins with a kind of lost generation, Hemingway-esque line: "InAugust it rained all the time-heavy,corrosive rain from which only nettles and rusty metalderived refreshment". From this line onward, the tone isset with the narrator losing hislow-paying, unengaging, government-sponsored job as well as being evictedfrom his Brixton apatment. Narrator andfriends are all portrayed by the author with a wistful,near-biographical approach. Discussing the Darwinist,capitalist landscape of Tory-dominatedBritain, listening to Maria Callas on a cloudy afternoon, arguing themerits of John Coltrane's sixties-erarecordings, smoking strong dope on the roof of the narrator's flat,attending parties in dangerous neighborhoods andjust scraping by while trying to nurturetheir separate, artistic ambitions. Without question, the characters ofColour Of Memory, narrator included, areall 1980's beatniks of one kind or another and the novel makes clearhow quixotic a life this really is- living in asociety and an atmosphere that values financialprowess and ordinary survival skills over creativity of any variety.

What takes place on the pages of Colour OfMemory is seemingly woven together with aninvisible thread; there appears to be no obvious plot, rhyme or reason tothe action. Yet, the reader is propelledforward through one shimmering vignette after another.One can'tarticulate why, one just seems to feel someconnection to these people and therefore caresabout what comes next, no matter the order of happenings. Colour OfMemory could be seen as self-indulgent anda tad mundane, but fortunately for the reader it easily escapesthis fate by presenting itself as a compelling group ofbeautifully written recollections,sometimes sad, usually funny and certainly tracing the beginning of a greatwriter. Maybe Dyer summarized this novelbefore it even began with a quote from John Berger, probablyhis biggest influence: " What remains of our hopes isa long despair which will engender themagain".

The Other View
What can you say of a book that starts with the line - "In August, it rained all the time."? Literary connotations of rain, as in Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' immediately come to mind. It is safe to assume that Dyer is well aware of the build-up he is creating - indeed hedraws on Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises) later in his book when one of hischaracters says "We are all a lost generation".

Within thefirst few pages after this remarkable line, the protagonist is thrown outof his 'rented' house, loses his job, and soon has his car stolen. In otherwords he is set up for re-entering the 'other life'. Through him, Dyerleads us into the 'other world', the 'other view' of life.

In ahigh-pitched discussion at a drunk party, one of his main characters,Steranko, makes a crisp speech about how he is involved in some of the mostimportant political work of his time- "I don't eat at McDonalds.., Idon't see [s**t] films, if someone is reading a tabloid-I try to make surethat I don't see it.., when people talk of house prices, I don'tlisten...!". This aversion to mass activities and interests is theunderlying theme of the book.

The small group of friends that 'ridestogether' in Brixton is in a world of its own. They think their ownthoughts, discuss the most important and most trivial issues of lifeamongst themselves,and play their own invented card games. Theirperspective on life, though impractical at times, is fresh and often throwsinsights into life that 'normal' people 'who buy houses' miss.

Dyer'sexcellence at his craft keeps the book rolling at a perfect pace withoutany overt plot, moving from one snapshot of the city's life in the 1980s toanother. The structure of the book is itself a rebellion againstconventional forms of the novel. As Freddie, the wannabe author says abouthis own book "Oh no, there's no plot. Plots are what get peoplekilled."! Maybe not as challenging as James Joyce's "FinnegansWake", but certainly a refreshing way to look at the concept andstructure of a novel.

In many ways, the rebellion of his characters andtheir unacceptance of conventional wisdom, is reminiscent of J.D.Salinger'sHolden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye). The issues change, the age groupand geography is different, but the cynicism with which the protaganists ineach book regard accepted human occupations is similar.

There is a needto run away from it all. The book actually culminates with the break up ofthe group which starts with Freddie's sudden decision to leave thecountry.

In all a wonderful, painful book, that lets you in to life onthe other side. A book to hold when you remember similar phases in yourlife, or are going through one. A book that raises several importantquestions, and probes us to think of answers.

The other view
What can you say of a book that starts with the line - "In August, it rained all the time."?

Literary connotations of rain, as in Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' immediately come to mind. It is safe to assume that Dyer is well aware of the build-up he is creating - indeed he draws on Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises) later in his book when one of hischaracters says "We are all a lost generation".

Within thefirst few pages after this remarkable line, the protagonist is thrown outof his 'rented' house, loses his job, and soon has his car stolen. In otherwords he is set up for re-entering the 'other life'. Through him, Dyerleads us into the 'other world', the 'other view' of life.

In ahigh-pitched discussion at a drunk party, one of his main characters,Steranko, makes a crisp speech about how he is involved in some of the mostimportant political work of his time- "I don't eat at McDonalds.., Idon't see [s**t] films, if someone is reading a tabloid-I try to make surethat I don't see it.., when people talk of house prices, I don'tlisten...!". This aversion to mass activities and interests is theunderlying theme of the book.

The small group of friends that 'ridestogether' in Brixton is in a world of its own. They think their ownthoughts, discuss the most important and most trivial issues of lifeamongst themselves,and play their own invented card games. Theirperspective on life, though impractical at times, is fresh and often throwsinsights into life that 'normal' people 'who buy houses' miss.

Dyer'sexcellence at his craft keeps the book rolling at a perfect pace withoutany overt plot, moving from one snapshot of the city's life in the 1980s toanother. The structure of the book is itself a rebellion againstconventional forms of the novel. As Freddie, the wannabe author says abouthis own book "Oh no, there's no plot. Plots are what get peoplekilled."! Maybe not as challenging as James Joyce's "FinnegansWake", but certainly a refreshing way to look at the concept andstructure of a novel.

In many ways, the rebellion of his characters andtheir unacceptance of conventional wisdom, is reminiscent of J.D.Salinger'sHolden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye). The issues change, the age groupand geography is different, but the cynicism with which the protaganists ineach book ragard accepted human occupations is similar.

There is a needto run away from it all. The book actually culminates with the break up ofthe group which starts with Freddie's sudden decision to leave thecountry.

In all a wonderful, painful book, that lets you into life onthe other side. A book to hold when you remember similar phases in yourlife, or are going through one. A book that raises several importantquestions, and probes us to think of answers. ... Read more

Product Description
Walker is at a party where he meets Rachel. Two days later she turns up at his apartment. However it's not Walker she wants , but her husband Malory who has gone missing. She wants Walker to find him. So begins this strange, beautiful, road-movie of a novel that takes the hero across the vast landscape of middle America on the trail of a man he has never met. And as Walker's search grows in its weird intensity it seems that somebody else is following, searching for him too. ... Read more

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This isn’t a self-help book; it’s a book about how Geoff Dyer could do with a little help.In mordantly funny and thought-provoking prose, the author of Out of Sheer Rage describes a life most of us would love to live—and how that life frustrates and aggravates him.

As he travels from Amsterdam to Cambodia, Rome to Indonesia, Libya to Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert, Dyer flounders about in a sea of grievances, with fleeting moments of transcendental calm his only reward for living in a perpetual state of motion.But even as he recounts his side-splitting misadventures in each of these locales, Dyer is always able to sneak up and surprise you with insight into much more serious matters.Brilliantly riffing off our expectations of external and internal journeys, Dyer welcomes the reader as a companion, a fellow perambulator in search of something and nothing at the same time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (29)

From Vanity To Glory
One minute the writer floats meaninglessly in shallow waters, the next we find ourselves diving deep into a universal well.Leptis Magna was a standout, and worth the wait as we waded through some swampy water.

Finding the Zone
Geoff Dyer's more recent book, "Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi," won my vote for best book of the year; so I figured I'd see what his earlier books were like. I was particularly interested in learning about "Burning Man" which Dyer said was one of the highlights of his life. "Burning Man" is a happening which takes place in the Nevada desert each year: art, music, etc., and I figured maybe I should chance going to Burning Man for the experience. The "Yoga" book concludes with Geoff's descriptions of "Burning Man" but it did not inspire me to head out there...(although I do visit Nevada often.) Geoff was there for the first "Burning Man" in 1990, and again in 1991. I think it was different in those days. Nowadays, they inspect your vehicle before they let you in, for stuff like "2-ply toilet paper" (not permitted), and at my age I do need my 2-ply. And I'll use ever more-plys if you got 'em.

Well, the book is "Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi" - Light. Dyer travels around the globe, gets "stoned" pretty much everywhere, beds pretty much every woman he meets, gets "stoned" some more, wanders around modern cities or ancient ruins, can't find his hotel he's so stoned, wanders around some more, quotes Rilke and Auden to complete strangers, finds something called "The Zone" where he feels at one with the universe and it brings him to tears, etc etc etc.

I DID enjoy the book.Very relaxing and funny.Definitely good reading for subway riders on the way to work. That's the real "Zone."

An Ubermensch takes a fall
Halfway through this book, I felt that there was no real cohesion to the book, that the book was a collection of separate travel essays.I decided that this was fine as I enjoyed the writing.Then around a little more than 3/4ths (Leptis Magna essay) way into the book Dyer makes the statement that he was lonely and in fact had always felt lonely as well as unloved.This threw me for a loop.I started skimming back over the pages trying to find if I missed these aspects in the earlier essays.In his essays he is always with other people, usually a girlfriend but sometimes a friend he has made on his travels; so I did not connect him with loneliness.I realized as I went back over the book that Dyer is slightly aloof in these essays, mostly because of the copious amounts of drugs, but sometimes I felt he never seems really engaged with people but only really with himself.He always seems slightly self satisfied and more often than not stuck in his own imagination.

After he realizes he is lonely and a possible failure, he falls into a kind of existential despair.In the Leptis chapter he writes about ancient ruins.He looks at a tall pillar against the horizontal sky and thinks of the vertical pillar as Time and the horizontal as space.He finds transcendence in this image.He realizes that the pillar will eventually crumble and become one with space.He mirrors this idea again in the last essay in the book.In this essay he goes to the burning man festival where participants make a giant figure of a man in a large open expanse in the desert and ritualistically burn it down.Thus the vertical image of man (Time) becomes one with space.Dyer sees himself in this burning man, as a man heading toward ruin, perhaps already a ruin.He finds transcendence in this idea.This is okay because in a strange way it liberates him from Time.I must confess that I'm not too knowledgeable about philosophy so most of it I think went over my head.I personally can't imagine Time and Space as separate; for me they always exist together.For me they just are.

In this last essay Dyer quotes Auden:

Somewhere are places where we have already been, dear places
Of our deeds and faces, scenes we remember
As unchanging because there we changed.

This is I think the key to the book.The book is a collection of places/ experiences where Dyer changed or felt himself change.Dyer places the meaning of the book at the end.As a result the book reads differently a second time through.

Still not his best book.After reading it again, while all the moments seemed points in his life that he felt himself change and I appreciated the book better, I still wasn't bowled over by it.I find all the Nietzsche stuff annoying, especially the way Dyer sort of thinks of himself as an Ubermensch (especially that bit about Oriental cunning vs. Western aggression).The book will be interesting for anyone who read Paris Trance though.

Loved it
He had humorously captured so many of the thoughts and experiences I have had in travel and in life.It felt as if someone (a lot more skilled than I) wrote down my experiences and insights. Strongly recommend it to anyone who has experienced the world.

buying it again two years later - hauntingly good
This collection of essays is killer!I'm still smiling thinking about it two years later and picking up another copy to read it again!Gave my original copy to a friend instead of Goodwill where most all other books I am ambivalent about go.
... Read more

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Customer Reviews (17)

Prepare to be depressed
I once knew a guy who would tell me about the jazz musicians he'd
met, and invariably he'd say they were jerks, or something to that
effect.I told him I didn't want to hear it any more--I enjoyed
their music, and didn't want to recall his unpleasant tales when
I listened to them.
Geoff Dyer's book had the same effect on me:just made me wish
I'd never read it.So if you love to listen to Mingus or Monk,
and don't know anything about them--you may want to keep it that
way.If, on the other hand, you DO want to know about their
tragic lives, this will enlighten you.Dyer is a very good writer,
but he makes me think of Ken Burns, who is a very good documentary
filmmaker--but boy, are they fond of the dark side!

About as excellent as jazz writing gets
I suspect that most aficionados of modern jazz will appreciate, even treasure, BUT BEAUTIFUL.It is notoriously difficult (impossible, really) to write satisfactorily about music - whether classical or jazz.But Dyer comes closer than most.

The bulk of the book consists of imaginative profiles of Lester Young, Bud Powell, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, and Thelonious Sphere Monk ("Melodious Thunk" to Nellie, his beloved wife and intermediary with the outside world)."Imaginative" because Dyer admittedly improvised on the historical facts of their lives, much as jazz musicians improvise on a theme.Much is embellishment, where Dyer tells about an historical event (such as Chet Baker getting his teeth knocked out or Lester Young's troubles in the Army) through, in part, invented dialogue and action.Some episodes, however, are completely fictitious.Still, Dyer writes, "these scenes were * * * intended as commentary either on a piece of music or on the particular qualities of a musician.What follows, then, is as much imaginative criticism as fiction."

This blurring of fact and fiction might make some readers feel a little uneasy (as it does me), but at least Dyer is up front about it and I do sense that the picture that emerges approaches a generalized plane of "truth" that is beyond more conventional and rigorous biographical/historical narratives.

Interlaced between the profiles is a series of vignettes of Duke Ellington and Harry Carney on the road, driving to their next job, Duke either sleeping or jotting down ideas for compositions on stray envelopes and paper napkins and then stuffing them in the glovebox.The book ends with a 33-page afterword, entitled "Tradition, Influence, and Innovation".In this essay, which for me was the best part of the book (or at least, the part that I am most likely to re-read), Dyer discusses the history of jazz post-WWII and some of the defining characteristics of jazz and jazz musicians, especially recurrent ones that wove in and out of the profiles.

The writing style is unusual - hip, noir-ish, frenetic, and modern.Usually it is successful, even brilliant, but at times it is overdone, at times it is sentimental, and on occasion it turns plain ugly.But that's jazz.The title comes from a conversation (imagined?) between Art Pepper and a married woman he is trying to talk into bed after having just been released from prison.(Perhaps the title is intentionally semi-ironic?)

The profiled musicians were all misfits, to varying degrees.One of the points Dyer highlights in the afterword is that jazz is notable for "its capacity to raise to the level of genius those who would otherwise have lacked a medium to express themselves."Going hand in hand is the propensity for jazz musicians to destroy themselves through drugs and booze.Why so?For one thing, jazz puts such a premium on individual creativity and a stance of rebellion, or at least flouting tradition and the establishment.In addition, a certain measure of emulation of the great Charlie Parker (or, later, of Coltrane, or Miles Davis, or Art Blakey, or Art Pepper) surely was at work, at least with many. But even making allowances for drugs, alcohol, and the odd hours and typically bohemian lifestyle of a jazz musician, several of these figures were at bottom pathetic and deplorable, even reprehensible, people - especially Mingus, Baker, and Pepper (with regards to Pepper, see the tale of the skewered chihuahua).But beautiful?

I will close with a small sampling of quotes from the book:

"It wasn't that jazz musicians died young, they just got older quicker."

Re Monk:"There were days when he was stranded between things, when the grammar of moving through the day, the syntax holding events together fell apart.Lost between words, between actions, not knowing something as simple as getting through a door, the rooms of the apartment becoming a maze."Also: "You had to see Monk to hear his music properly.The most important instrument in the group--whatever the format--was his body.He didn't play the piano really.His body was his instrument and the piano was just a means of getting the sound out of his body at the rate and in the quantities he wanted. * * * His body fills in all the gaps in the music; without seeing him it always sounds like something's missing but when you see him even piano solos acquire a sound as full as a quartet's.The eye hears what the ear misses."

"Electronic instruments define themselves in relation to--and partake of the quality of--din.Acoustic instruments define themselves in relation to--and partake of the quality of--silence.For this reason acoustic instruments will always have a greater purity."

Four-and-a-half stars.

best writing on music ever
best writing about music--the actual music--i've ever read. there are great books about musicians in context, like PLEASE KILL ME and THE REST IS NOISE, but when writer's actually try to describe the music, you can't really hear it, geoff dyer actually gets the sounds of the music through in his writing. it can be done. otherwise, this is somewhere between michael ondaatje's book about buddy bolden COMING THROUGH THE SLAUGHTER and denis johnson's collection about f'ed up people JESUS' SON.

Prescient, priceless portraits.
This work, along with James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues," is as good as any I've read about the jazz life, its creators and innovators, and the high cost of such terrible beauty. I had the advantage of being present while Lester was lost on stage in an alcoholic stupor; Monk was dancing around the piano, knocking over cymbals, rather than playing the instrument; Chet Baker, unable to stand, was expending his last breaths on "The Thrill Is Gone"; and Duke was waiting for Harry Carney to swing by with the car to chauffeur him through the wintry night from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Kansas City. But how a young writer like Dyer managed to capture these moments before his time, freezing them unforgettably in a literary living moment, I can't imagine.

Dyer knows that the foremost responsibility of a music critic is not to critique but to verbalize his non-verbal subject, bringing it to life for the reader. He does so admirably, creating believable, recognizable, fascinating portraits in unlabored, unpretentious prose.

His portraits of the artist ring completely true to the ears of this fellow observer--penetrating glimpses of the creative child trapped in a man's body now reduced to fighting a losing battle against physical and mental entropy.Yet his faith in the living tradition of jazz isrefreshing, as is his characterization of the jazz musician's struggle as a valiant contest with the precursor, not unlike that of the strong poet's.

Though there's an elegaic tone throughout the book, it's never ponderous or depressing. In fact, its human portraits are more likely to interest newcomers than the many text books that catalog styles and names.

This is not to say the book is without shortcomings. The author is much better at capturing the musicians for us than their music. And his appreciation and understanding of Duke Ellington's music seems somewhat limited. Too bad he didn't give at least as much attention to the colorful cast of characters on the band bus as to the private conveyance preferred by Duke.

Yet any listener who has the slightest interest in jazz and its makers simply cannot afford to pass this one up. And it goes a long way toward fleshing out some of the caricatures served up on the Ken Burns' television series.

A Must for Those Who Appreciate Jazzand/or Exquisite Prose
Picture this: "Onstage at Birdland, eyes shut, one arm hanging at his side....trumpet raised to his lips like a brandy bottle--not playing the horn but swigging from it, sipping it."

Geoff Dyer's employs hisexquisite imagery as a starting point for his "imaginativecriticism" of the celebrated and tragic lives of several iconic jazzmusicians (including figures such as Chet Baker, Lester Young, TheloniousMonk, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, and Bud Powell). While photographs arethe inspiration, Dyer's writing is so precise and sensual that he need onlydescribe the photographs (the book has only one small photo).And this isjust right for a book about music, his writing is so lyrical that we almosthear the sounds while reading.(In fact. the least effective aspect of thebook is the Duke Ellington "road trip" that introduces eachchapter, perhaps because the narrative is not connected to any particularEllington sound.)

Many of the scenes and dialogue (especially the innerdialogue) are necessarily fictions, "assume that what's here has beeninvented or altered rather than quoted."But Dyer's explains thatwhile his version may veer from the truth,"it keeps faith with theimprovisational prerogatives of the form." He mixes truth andfiction into portraits that illuminate what strictly factual history cannotalways convey.(Think of Robert Graves' in his WWI memoir/fiction"Goodbye to All That.").Dyer explains that while a photodepicts only a "split second," its "felt duration" mayinclude the unseen moments before and after that split second."ButBeautiful" invites us to improvise (as Dyer does) into that unseentime, and discover our own subjective relationship to the music.

Listento this: "Chet put nothing of himself into his music and that's whatlent his playing its pathos...Every time he played a note he waved itgoodbye.Sometimes he didn't even wave."

The evocative wordpictures are unusually perceptive and sensitive. Although personal andoften imagined,it's really like an improvised solo that either feels"right" or not. I think"But Beautiful" hits theright notes and rhythms: his words evoke the music, and, after reading it,the music will evoke the words.Not without its flaws, it is still anastonishing feat. ... Read more

Product Description
'Head bowed, rifle on his back, a soldier is silhouetted against the going down of the sun, looking at the grave of a dead comrade, remembering him. A photograph from the war, is also a photograph of the way the war will be remembered. It is a photograph of the future, of the future's view of the past. We will remember them' Relying more on personal impressions than systematic analysis, Geoff Dyer weaves a network of myth and memory that illuminates our own relation to the past. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Stunning
An unforgettable and beautifully written book that should not be overlooked by any student of the Great War.A work of personal impressions which left me in tears at times.Mr. Dyer touches the reader with cutting realism and deep emotion.

That which I least expected...
I must confess that I bought this book only because Geoff Dyer wrote it and he is my favorite author and I am a completist.I figured it was an early novel, something to give me insight into his development.

Imagine my disappointment when it arrived and I discovered it was History.Mind you, I love history (check the other reviews I've written), but I tend to find a subject and read everything I can about before I burn out and move onto something else and I really couldn't be bothered to develop a new fascination for the Great War with so many others still going.

A year later, on a whim, I brought the book with me on vacation and found myself in Paris dining alone after marching against the war.It was the first book in my bag that I grabbed and by the end of dinner I was getting all choked up and teary-eyed.By chance sitting not so far from the Somme with this book in my hands, thinking of a war not yet started, at the table in the corner, it was very affecting.But I think anyone who is interested in this perspective will find it moving whether in peacetime or war, in Nebraska or Tokyo or Egypt.

The book itself succeeds because it's not about numbers and casualties, but how we remember these struggles and how we forget them at the same time.It succeeds by placing the reader not in the conflict, something he/she could never know, but in his/her own seat: remembering that which wasn't experienced.To say more would be to demean the book and Dyer's superb writing so just read it.

How to explain the fascination of Flanders?
If you've ever wondered why it is you have a particular empathy with the soldiers of the first World War, especially of Flanders, this book is for you. It goes a long way towards explaining that peculiar fascination we have with the bravery of those who died, and how the details of this war, almost a hundred years later, can touch our hearts today in a way that nothing else can.

Something Different
Geoff Dyer presents in this book a moving and multi-layered outcry against the slaughter and consequences of World War I -- the "Great War".The main theme is remembrance, private and public, and the manifestations of both in the post-war years in Great Britain.The role of well-known British poets who served and died in the War is woven throughout.This book is well written by a literate and talented author; however it may be difficult to follow for those not well steeped in the history of that period, and especially the fate of British Army units in various Western Front battles.The basic subject is well covered in printed literature; what Dyer adds here is yet another dissection of the far-reaching impacts of the cataclysmic years of 1914-1918. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (21)

Compelling But Not Compassionate
While the romp through Paris that is the center of the novel is, indeed, compelling, the central character Luke is difficult to identify with in that he totally lacks compassion.His viewing of his lover, Nicole, is obsessive and borderline clinical.Luke is in Paris ostensibly to write a book about the kind of life he ends up finding: a meandering existence filled with good conversation, ambitious and exploratory sex, and a fair smattering of alcohol and drug abuse.In other words, a riotously good, if not ambitious, time.

Luke develops a relationship with a coworker, Alex, who at times narrates the story and who, nearly always, idealizes and idolizes Luke for the qualities that he later finds to be his friends downfall.When Alex is not our narrator, the POV shifts to third person omniscient which actually suits the story better.It is far easier to watch the story unfold without the over the top narrative tone of Alex's recapping and rationalizing Luke's behavior.And frankly, there is no need for those sweeping moments of exposition because Dyer has done his job creating a lush world of characters with powerful inner lives as well as intriguing experiences.His fault, here, is in not allowing the characters to breathe and move freely but instead he ties them up a little too neatly.

The book is good, though.It was easy to read and made me want to read faster and more deeply to grasp the points I know the author is making even in the smallest details.And there is an image of a woman in a park holding a sign that breaks my heart utterly and completely...an image that, in its total and complete simplicity, sums up entirely what it means to be alone.And that is worth 4 stars.

Got to understand how European mind works to understand the book...
I thought this book was terrific. I'm not a big fan of romantic novels, but this one got me going for a week or so. It has a plot that for some may not make too much sense, the writing itself is very straight forward and quite real...you can almost feel those characters to be a part of you.

What I loved most about this book is the language the author uses, his examples....how he describes the scenes of love, sex...it's very raw, ugly in a way, but real and beautiful at the same time.

If you want to read a story about how people in Europe feel about sex, love, relationships, the importance of work...happiness you can read this book, because it will give you a very close point of view...

Definitely recommended, very different from what so called "New York Bestsellers" are trying to sell you...enjoy it and I hope you do as much as I did. I spent every free moment I had to read this book.

A BLEAK RATHER INCOHERENT TALE
Just as a drunk's jokes fall flat before those who are sober, so drug induced experiences are surreal to those whose awareness has not been chemically altered.Such is often the case in Paris Trance, the seventh novel by English author/journalist Geoff Dyer.One wishes to empathize with the characters, but finds it difficult to relate.

This puzzling rather incohesivetale of misspent youth set in the City of Lightcovers several years in the lives offour twenty-something expatriates who trade arch remarks, go to many movies (Cassavetes films being a special favorite), are often strung out on Ecstasy,and have non-stop sex.

Luke arrives in Paris from England with the announced intention of writing a book, but he never sets pen to paper.He is lonely, yet neglects to learn French, and wandersaimlessly until he finds work at the Garnier Warehouse overseen by Lazare, who seeks contentment in "whipping himself into a froth of anger and irritation."

It is at the warehouse that Luke meets Alex, a fellow Britisher and film buff with whom he becomes fast friends as "there was an immediate ease and sympathy between them."

"They flourished in each other's company, their intimacy increased as they met more people.Things Alex said in groups were always addressed implicitly to Luke; other people were used as a way of reflecting back something Luke intended primarily for Alex."

Shortly thereafter Luke meets and becomes involved with Nicole, a Belgrade, who came to Paris on a scholarship and now works as a translator. Alex partners with Sahra, an interpreter from Libya.The foursome become inseparable, sharing meals, holidays, and dancing the nights away with drug fueled energy.

In a year or so the two couples go their separate ways - Sahra and Alex stop taking E and "Saying no to E - or anything else for that matter - was like saying no to Luke,"
whose "happiness had begun to have a desperate edge to it."

As abruptlyas hehad arrived on the scene Luke leaves Paris.He goes first toAmerica, later Mexico, then finally returns to London.

Some eight years later when Alex is in London for a relative's funeral, he again finds Luke.He is living in a dismal flat where, as Alex writes, "As soon as I stepped inside I could feel the loneliness, could smell the life he led..."

Mr. Dyer is a capable, gifted writer.He has a keen ear and exhibits a deft knack for innovative, colorful phrasing.Nonetheless, with Paris Trance he has painted a bleak landscape littered with wasted lives.

- Gail Cooke

Self-indulgent amateur hour
I'm hoping this is the author's first book.From the jacket descriptions and the subject matter I thought this would be a sure winner just to put me in the mood of Paris in the fall.But the writing was so tepid and clumsy, the characters so poorly sketched and the dialogue either so badly written or falsely pretentious that I couldn't even finish half of this book.The sex scenes are basically just snapshots of the author's own perversions and are neither necessary nor believable.To me this book is a complete failure.If you were drawn, like me, to France and the idea of intelligent romance read James Salter or James Baldwin instead.You will be glad that you did.

BTW

Interesting - but not enough.
4 characters. Luke. Alex. Sahra. Nicole. Living in Paris. In love. Having fun. Having sex. Taking drugs. Uh-huh. What else? Not much.

Reading this book was like eavesdropping on a conversation.At its best, the tale told was amusing, sometimes curious and I read with uncommitted interest.At its worst, it was as insipid as any conversation one might overhear between strangers. And, to me, these characters remained strangers - indistinct, faded strangers - from start to 300-page finish.What specific insights and traits a reader could glean from the characters, Dyer spoon-feeds us through direct narration and heavy-handed depictions instead of subtle guidance and gestures. I couldn't understand why any of these character would consider the others interesting or compelling.Moreover, there did not seem to be any ultimate truth or principle in the novel that was worth pondering over. (The theme of "living out one's destiny no matter the cost" was weak and, at least in the way Dyer developed it, not worth more than a few seconds thought.)

Oddly, the strength of this novel was that it *did* make me feel as if I were eavesdropping.As I read (listened to) their conversations, stories, and jokes, observed their interactions, I was vaguely curious about their lives and relationships with one another in the same remote way I'd be interested in 4 people sitting next to me in a cafe.In other words, from a distance, the interaction between the characters and the outward structure of the relationships seemed real.But, when I tried to become more interested in Luke, Alex, Sahra and Nicole as individuals, I realized that I couldn't.There just wasn't anything there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Artist's Perspective
I take issue with the other review of this book.The reviewer seems to expect this book to be something it clearly is not, nor ever intended to be.Jennifer Gough-Cooper is a fine art photographer who created an absolutely beautiful series of photographs about the experience of seeing Rodin's work in the context of the Rodin Museum, with all its wood floors, French windows, glass vitrines,antique mirrors and mouldings.The photos are not about having "special access" and taking the works out of their context to give a sterile "objective" perspective.In terms of the "soft focus," this is an intentional product of the artist's choice of a shallow depth of field.The images in this book are not documentation, but fine art.In fact, the Rodin Museum chose to exhibit these photographs in their museum and acquire a set for their permanent collection.This book is pure poetry and I highly recommend it.

A Major Disappointment
I have a serious collection of Rodin books and look forward to every new one that is published, so I was anxious to get this book. Unfortunately the book is a major disappointment. While a few of the photographs are interesting, the majority are an embarrassment - no better, and often worse, than any museum goer could take with a simple point & shoot digital camera.

It seems apparent that the photographer, Jennifer Gough-Cooper, was not given serious access for photographing the sculptures. She had to shoot through the glass display cases just like any museum goer and, for whatever reason, she does not use a polarizing filter. In many photographs the results are reflections which obliterate the sculpture itself, because of the reflections from the glass cases.

And the "soft focus" of some of the photographs seems more attributable to using an auto focus camera and the problems of shooting through glass than any artistic decision. Of the many other Rodin books that I own, none has such poor photography though admittedly not all are of the high quality of David Finn's photographs. ... Read more

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Geoff Dyer's books have been widely praised for their originality, variety and range - qualities displayed even more boldly in his journalism. Avoiding any specialism, writing on whatever interested him at a given time, he has achieved enviable freedom as an essayist, journalist and critic. ANGLO-ENGLISH ATTITUDES brings together his best freelance work of the last fifteen years. There are sustained meditations on photographers (from canonical figures like Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa to the barely known master William Gedney), on painters (Bonnard, Gauguin), musicians (Coltrane, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) and close critical engagements with writers (Camus, Graham Greene, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Ondaatje and Martin Amis). Also here are idiosyncratic reflections on boxing, on collecting, on Airfix models and Action Man, and often hilarious accounts of his 'misadventures': flying in a Mig-29 in Moscow, on the razz with Def Leppard in Seoul, on safari in Africa, and in trouble learning to freefall parachute. And much, much more... ... Read more

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France’s leading philosopher of postmodernism takes to the freeways in a collection of traveller’s tales from the land of hyperreality.From the sierras of New Mexico to the streets of New York and LA by night—"a sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity"—Baudrillard mixes aperçus and observations with a wicked sense of fun to provide a unique insight into the country that dominates our world. In this new edition, leading cultural critic and novelist Geoff Dyer offers a thoughtful and perceptive take on the continued resonance of Baudrillard’s America.  ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

A Fascinating Perspective
I really enjoyed this book. Jean Baudrillard is well known in the relevant academic circles for saying that America's way of life is so representative of a pure simulacrum that places like Disneyland exist for the sole purpose of distracting Americans (and, indeed, the world) from the fact that ALL of America is, in fact, Disneyland. This book is an elaboration of that concept. Baudrillard see the American aesthetic as represented most purely by its deserts, timeless and sublime concretions of inertial movements whose cause has long passed. Baudrillard's America is also a cinema without borders, whose lack of European-style social theatrics is nevertheless compensated for by a natural, naïve and almost primitive penchant for living the very essence of virtuality: sunny California lives awash in an endless profusion of signs, carrying out its frenzied enthusiasms, and yet careens ever forward without any stable referent to speak of. But none of this, he insists, is a bad thing; the singular quality that makes America so powerful, he says, and makes it work so well beyond the fetters of Europrean intellectualism, is its die-hard extroversion, its propensity for realizing its thoughts and plans as models with which it builds its utopian way of life, oblivious to Europe's endless grappling with the 19th century quandaries of ideology and history.

Baudrillard's Great Prose Poem
Since his recent death, there has been a lot of Baudrillard bashing in the media. He is variously written off as a "comedian of ideas," as obscurantist, as saying everything about nothing and nothing about everything. Indeed, these are claims that can be said to be true of French cultural discourse in general, but they are actually inaccurate when used to describe Baudrillard, who really did have interesting and important things to say about culture. His prose is difficult; there is no denying that. But then so is Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Oswald Spengler, etc. Would it be wise to characterize these men as having nothing important to say because of the difficulty involved in working through their dense prose? Of course not. While Baudrillard is neither as profound nor, ultimately, as insightful as these other philosophers--and this is generally true of French thought as opposed to German thought, despite what your English professors would have you believe--he is witty and entertaining.

America provides the novice with a good in-road to his thinking, since Baudrillard is more relaxed and informal in these meditations upon what, after all, is a very informal land, indeed. The interesting thing about this book is that Baudrillard's attitude toward American culture--and this is certainly atypical of the average Euro thinker--is not condescending. This is a Frenchman (for a change) who is genuinely fascinated by America and its kitschy world of movie screens, parking lots, freeways, strip malls and airports. What fascinates him, in particular, as he writes in his chapter on "Utopia Achieved," is how American society represents such a radical break with history. It is an achieved utopia that has fled from the nightmare of world history and managed to succeed in erecting a civilization in which that very history is denied and largely ignored. Thus, the ahistorical cities of the American Southwest, and L.A. in particular, are places where events with inward cultural significance no longer take place. Instead, it is a world in which history has been replaced by historical simulacra in theme parks like Disneyland or the Getty Museum or Venice Beach. No more history, Baudrillard insists, means no more culture. America is just an endless horizontal expanse of kitsch and hyperreal meaninglessness utterly devoid of significance. And yet he does not mean this derisively, as a typical Euro thinker would. He is fascinated by the boldness and insolence of this attempt to achieve a paradise on earth in which history has been rendered obsolete. Bookstores, coffee shops, museums: that is Old World; shopping malls, theme parks, and theme towns like Las Vegas; that is the New. And Baudrillard is utterly taken by it all. He admits the shallowness of American culture, and then turns around and embraces it for exactly what it is. Americans, he says, are at their worst when they try to duplicate European high culture with their insipid California wines and their all-encompassing museums. They are better off, he says, with their roller coasters and their Hollywood movies. That, after all, is what is original in the world today.

Ultimately, then, Baudrillard's very readable book is a celebration of American culture. And, in many ways, it is an introduction to Americans of their own world, since those who are submerged in a particular environment cannot see that very environment due to its disappearance into banality. It takes an outsider to help us see ourselves anew, for only an outsider (or an artist) is capable of holding up the mirror to reveal ourselves as we really are.

In short, this is a great place to start if you have never read Baudrillard. It is highly readable and very well written. But Baudrillard is always read best as a kind of prose poet, not a true philosopher. People who claim not to be able to understand him are trying, as it were, too hard to understand him. His prose is best read as poetry, and America is best understood as a prose poem about the historyless civilization of the New World.
--John David Ebert,
author of Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

Sharp and poetic
If some of the reviewers could forgive Baudrillard for being French, they might be able to see his razor sharp eye and lucid thoughts. Baudrillard acknowledges America for what it is, and although at times may seem critical, he seems to love it in his own way. One of the best books on the subject by one of the most brilliant thinkers.

A simply amazing read
This book was an incredible read! The extremely spatial nature of the text unfolds throughout each line, disclosing a thought process that is evolving as much, if not more than incredible journey you are taken on as Baudrillard manifest a vision of a nowaday hyperreality. Sculptural, sci-fi, timeless and visionary!

Excellent stylist and amazingly insightful!
You got a love a Frenchman who drinks whiskey!This is a 'light' book for Baudrillard, very much like his passion for photography, and these essays, though at times almost frighteningly piercing and insightful, are only snapshots of New York, California, Utah and the Nevada desert.Baudrillard comes face to face with his entire theory of the Simulacra in America and, though he dreads much of it, he has the courage to acknowledge that America is the future and that 'Old Europe', (another term like the 'matrix' that he uses years ahead of everyone else), even part of Old Europe worth saving, is dead and, or dying.There are some hilarious passages in here as well, the section on the strangeness of Salt Lake City architecture and topography and the 'mutants' that live there, being one of them.Essentially, according to Baudrillard, we Americans, prefiguring the rest of the planet, are all mutants living in a land with no real past, present or future, with no real ideology, convictions or perceptions of where exactly we are in the universe.According to Baudrillard we are America as moving picture, as cinema, as air-conditioned somnambulists sliding down our sanitized grocery ailes and freeways, obeying no moral code or ideology, but the code of capitalsit signs and symbols, of advertising, as objectified and commodified as the objects we purchase.Baudrillard, whiskey in hand, shows us America as hyperreality fait accompli.He is the most important writer writing today whose use of metaphor and satire topples any current novelist or poet.It makes perfect sense that his books are just now, 15 years ex post facto, being translated into English.15 years later and his theories proven true his ideas are still too strong, too painful, for most people to get their head and heart around.Awesome stuff. ... Read more

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Boulevard is a visual tale of two disparate cities: Paris and Los Angeles. In the early 70s Adam Bartos began to use color photography to document the contemporary urban landscape, infusing his images with a quiet calm and finding composition in even the most random corners. He often focused his lens on his native New York and published a monumental series of photographs examining the modern architecture of the United Nations.In the late 70s and then again in the early 80s, Bartos traveled to Los Angeles and to Paris. These two influential trips would have a strong and lasting impact upon his vision. And yet, until recently, Bartos had never considered the two cities--or bodies of work--together. In this book, an intriguing dialogue takes place before our eyes. As we venture through the scarcely inhabited hotel rooms, backyards, gas stations, and, inevitably, city streets, we are struck by the graphical relationships, the surprisingly similar color palate between the two. There is a magnetism and repulsion operating here polar opposites--in art and life--that at unexpected moments converge and suddenly attract. Novelist, essayist, and travel writer Geoff Dyer examines the two.Essay by Geoff Dyer.Clothbound, 11.75 x 9.75 in./120 pgs / 59 color. ... Read more

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'People talk about love at first sight, about the way that men and women fall for each other immediately, but there is also such a thing as friendship at first sight .'In Paris, two couples form an intimacy that will change their lives forever.As they discover the clubs and cafes of the eleventh arrondissement, the four become inseparable, united by deeply held convictions about dating strategies, tunnelling in P.O.W. films and, crucially, the role of the Styrofoam cup in American thrillers. Experiencing the exhilarating highs of Ecstasy and sex, they reach a peak of rapture - the come-down from which is unexpected and devastating.In his latest novel Dyer fixes a dream of happiness - and its aftermath - with photographic precision. Erotic and elegaic, funny and romantic, PARIS TRANCE confirms Dyer as one of Britain's most original and talented writers. ... Read more

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Unacclaimed Master: Reading John Berger
Since the early 1950's, John Berger has authored an almost dizzyingnumber of works on art history, art criticism, fiction and politics,as well as a large body of writing that seems to defy categorizationaltogether.And that is why one can't help but feel a kind of admiration for Geoff Dyer's courage to take on, for his first full-length book, a difficult critical subject and author in Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger.

Although Dyer clearly seesBerger and his work as massivelyinfluential yet nearly alwaysoverlooked by his peers andcontemporaries, it is obvious that Ways ofTelling is a great dealmore than a mere reaffirmation of, or acritical love letter to, anillustrious writer and his sometimesground-breaking work.In Ways ofTelling, Dyer looks carefully at thebroad spectrum of Berger'scareer, from articles on politics andaesthetics during the early1950's published in Socialist newspapersand magazines, to novelswritten in the mid-1980's. Perhapsbecause Dyer intended (one could plausibly surmise) Ways ofTelling tobe not only an academic critique but a work written for aslightlywider readership, we are invited to take a closer look atseveral ofBerger's more universally known works.These include G, anhistoricalnovel influenced by Socialist Realism and according toDyer,possiblyinspired by the Cubist movement as well.We look at APainter of OurTime, Berger's breakthrough novel about the strugglebetween the moralimperative of being true to one's creative giftsversus fidelity toone's political beliefs. Scrutiny is also given tothe near-canonicalWays of Seeing, both the BBC television series andthe widely-read1972 book of the same name.Dyer is quick toacknowledge thatalthough the polemical, class-based attack onconsumer-drivencapitalism and "the authority of property" by way of a beautifully written critique of Western Art is often crudely drawn in Ways of Seeing. One might miss the point entirely if one chooses to ignore the manner in which Berger's sharp sense of aesthetics and his critical eye opened the floodgates to what is now the standard method for looking at art for an ever-widening audience.

No doubt it isa tall order for any reader, or writer to separate JohnBerger'sDemocratic-Socialist and Humanist value systems from much ofhis work,Dyer reminds the reader that any attempt to do so is pointless and probablyan unnecessary exercise.To quote Dyer " He is agreat writer,but the quality of his work is important, finally, notfor what itreveals of him but for what it enables us to glimpse ofourselves, ofwhat we might become-and of the culture that mightafford him therecognition that it is due." ... Read more

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A BLEAK, UNHAPPY TALE



Just as a drunk's jokes fall flat before those who are sober, so drug induced experiences are surreal to those whose awareness has not been chemically altered. Such is often the case in Paris Trance, the seventh novel by English author/journalist Geoff Dyer. One wishes to empathize with the characters, but finds it difficult to relate.

This puzzling rather incohesive tale of misspent youth set in the City of Light covers several years in the lives of four twenty-something expatriates who trade arch remarks, go to many movies (Cassavetes films being a special favorite), are often strung out on Ecstasy, and have non-stop sex.

Luke arrives in Paris from England with the announced intention of writing a book, but he never sets pen to paper. He is lonely, yet neglects to learn French, and wanders aimlessly until he finds work at the Garnier Warehouse overseen by Lazare, who seeks contentment in "whipping himself into a froth of anger and irritation."

It is at the warehouse that Luke meets Alex, a fellow Britisher and film buff with whom he becomes fast friends as "there was an immediate ease and sympathy between them."

"They flourished in each other's company, their intimacy increased as they met more people. Things Alex said in groups were always addressed implicitly to Luke; other people were used as a way of reflecting back something Luke intended primarily for Alex."

Shortly thereafter Luke meets and becomes involved with Nicole, a Belgrade, who came to Paris on a scholarship and now works as a translator. Alex partners with Sahra, an interpreter from Libya. The foursome become inseparable, sharing meals, holidays, and dancing the nights away with drug fueled energy.

In a year or so the two couples go their separate ways - Sahra and Alex stop taking E and "Saying no to E - or anything else for that matter - was like saying no to Luke," whose "happiness had begun to have a desperate edge to it."

As abruptly as he had arrived on the scene Luke leaves Paris. He goes first to America, later Mexico, then finally returns to London.

Some eight years later when Alex is in London for a relative's funeral, he again finds Luke. He is living in a dismal flat where, as Alex writes, "As soon as I stepped inside I could feel the loneliness, could smell the life he led..."

Mr. Dyer is a capable, gifted writer. He has a keen ear and exhibits a deft knack for innovative, colorful phrasing. Nonetheless, with Paris Trance he has painted a bleak landscape littered with wasted lives.

- Gail Cooke ... Read more

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When he became interested in literature at grammar school, it was D.H. Lawrence who fired Geoff Dyer's imagination, and it was the figure of Lawrence, the miner's son who spent his life travelling, living by his pen, who made it seem possible to him to become a writer. The work is as much a travel book as a biography, as Geoff Dyer retraces Lawrence's journeys and, using Lawrence's own writings, life, and crucially, photographs as clues, learns much about matters close to his own heart as he does about Lawrence himself. ... Read more

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Awesome Footie Stories
Awesome collection of 25 short stories and essays about soccer. My favorites were Stephen Baxter's "Clods," Tim Pears' "Ebony International" Nicholas Lezards' "The Beautiful Game," SteveGrant's "Casuals," Geoff Nicholson's "The WinningSide," Mark Morris's "The Shirt," and Mark Timlin's"Wonder Boy." That said, almost every story has somethingworthwhile about it, and for a soccer fan, this is a must read. ... Read more