Search results for "tag:"Author Geoff Dyer""

Book Synopsis''Moving, atmospheric, truthful, perceptive and hilariously funny - I loved it: a piece of our English history, the story of a vanished time, which feels close at hand but thoroughly gone. What a story. What a great story'' TESSA HADLEYIn Homework, Geoff Dyer reflects on his childhood and what it means to come of age in England in the 60s and 70s, in a country shaped by the aftermath of the Second World War but accelerating towards change. He was born in Cheltenham in the late fifties, the only child of a dinner lady and a planning engineer. Raised in a working-class area, Geoff and his mates found much joy recreating battles with their beloved Tommy guns, kicking a beachball around until its untimely death, and collecting anything and everything they could find; football cards, conkers and Action Man figures. When Geoff passes his 11-plus exams he gets in to a Cheltenham Grammar School, a school which drastically changes the trajectory of his life.

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Wide-ranging and eclectic' TLS'Seductively curious' Observer'A visual and intellectual journey' HeraldSee/Saw is an illuminating history of how photographs frame and change our perspectives. Starting from single images by the world's most important photographers - from Eugène Atget to Alex Webb - Geoff Dyer shows us how to read a photograph, as he takes us through a series of close readings that are by turns moving, funny, prescient and surprising.Trade ReviewIn these seductively curious essays, Dyer scrutinises images and photographers, unearthing hidden truths and a sense of the uncanny * * Observer, Book of the Day * *Fascinating . . . Dyer is not merely a fine prose stylist but a writer of knowingly stylish prose . . . This is both a beautifully written and a beautiful book -- Stuart Kelly * * Scotsman * *The acclaimed essayist and novelist is also one of the world's greatest writers on photography . . . Reading this book is, simply put, a pleasurable experience * * Irish Times * *Fascinating . . . The reader is taken on a visual and intellectual journey, so that once you have read Dyer's words, you return to the photograph he describes, seeing it afresh and in ways that you might never had considered . . . Compelling * * Herald * *A beautifully written book on photography * * Scotland on Sunday * *Wide-ranging and eclectic . . . Dyer is at his best when he stays close to the images, teasing out their meanings with astute observations or poetic readings . . . Fascinating . . . Insightful * * TLS * *Dyer turns his erudite eye on some of the most important photographers of the past 150 years in his latest collection of essays . . . Dyer follows in the footsteps of John Berger and Susan Sontag with this guide on how to "read a photograph", decoding and deciphering images by August Sander, Dayanita Singh, William Eggleston and Vivian Maier, among others * * Art Newspaper * *A marvel . . . There is a great chewy joy to reading Dyer - in See/Saw, cheeky stretched conceits are applied to tasty ideas as he operates surgically on the heart of a concept with an apposite quote from someone relevant or learned. He has a talent for contracting the long and insightful into the short and insightful . . . Fascinating * * Dublin Review of Books * *Dyer is a brilliant writer fascinated by photography and the ideas that pulse through it . . . What makes Dyer's prose so readable is not simply that he is a knowledgeable and astute critic, but that he is able to shape sophisticated ideas into engaging prose . . . Beautifully presented, this is an insightful collection of articles that deepens our understanding of the subtle power of photography * * Black and White Photography Review * *Thoroughly affecting . . . See/Saw is a collection best dipped into and savoured in short bursts . . . [A] diverse catalogue of pathos, humour and intrigue . . . Throughout this collection he proves to be a master weaver of information and stories . . . See/Saw demonstrates that words, much like the photographs they are describing, can lead to elongation and excavation of our own experiences. In Dyer's hands, short glances become deep gazes and snap encounters become lingering memories * * SOURCE Magazine * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisJohn Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912, and he went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1978 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death in 1982 he was awarded the National Medal for Literature.Trade ReviewOne of the most compelling and intimate books you'll ever read * Independent *Beautifully written, lyrically spiritual, sexually candid memoirs * Mail on Sunday *Cheever's journals include the struggle for recognition, the problem-drinking and covert homosexuality of a public figure and, finally, cancer. His intelligence and honesty powerfully communicate the sense of life as an urgent predicament * Sunday Times *These diaries are so painfully personal...that they were not published until after his death. But they also concentrate the true essence of what made his short stories great * Sunday Express *John Cheever understood fallibility and that made for the greatness in his writing * The Times *

Read more less

Book SynopsisExploring the decadence of Jazz Age New York through a fictionalised version of his own marriage to Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald''s The Beautiful and the Damned includes an introduction by Geoff Dyer in Penguin Modern Classics.Anthony Patch and his wife Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and lovely and they intend to inherit the earth. But as money becomes tight, their marriage becomes impossible. And with their inheritance still distant, Anthony and Gloria must face reality; they may be beautiful - but they are also damned.F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history, and his masterwork The Great Gatsby is considered by many to be the ''great American novel''. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed ''the first American Flapper'', and their traumatic marriage and Zelda''s gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night and, incomplete at the time of his death, The Last Tycoon. After his death The New York Times said of him that ''in fact and in the literary sense he created a generation ''.If you enjoyed The Beautiful and the Damned, you might like John Dos Passos'' Manhattan Transfer, also available in Penguin Classics.''A prose that has the tough delicacy of a garnet''New York Review of Books

Read more less

Book SynopsisThese sumptuous new hardback editions mark the 70th anniversary of Fitzgerald''s death.Anthony and Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and lovely and they intend to inherit the earth.But as money becomes tight, their marriage becomes impossible. And with their inheritance still distant, Anthony and Gloria must grow up and face reality; they may be beautiful but they are also damned.Trade Review“Full of precisely observed life.” —Arthur Mizener

Read more less

Book SynopsisJohn Berger''s writings on photography are some of the most original of the twentieth century. This selection contains many groundbreaking essays and previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions and catalogues in which Berger probes the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith - and the lives of those photographed - with fierce engagement, intensity and tenderness.The selection is made and introduced by Geoff Dyer, author of the award-winning The Ongoing Moment.How do we see the world around us? This is one of a number of pivotal works by creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision for ever.John Berger was born in London in 1926. His acclaimed works of both fiction and non-fiction include the seminal Ways of Seeing and the novel G., which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently, and he now lives in a small village in the French Alps.Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and several non-fiction books. Winner of the Lannan Literary Award, the International Centre of Photography''s 2006 Infinity Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters''s E. M. Forster Award, Dyer is also a regular contributor to many publications in the UK and the US. He lives in London.Trade ReviewOne of the most influential intellectuals of our time -- Observer

Read more less

Book SynopsisA Telegraph, Evening Standard and Daily Mail Book of the YearFrom the acclaimed writer and critic Geoff Dyer, an extremely funny scene-by-scene analysis of Where Eagles Dare - published as the film reaches its 50th anniversaryA thrilling Alpine adventure starring a magnificent, bleary-eyed Richard Burton and a coolly anachronistic Clint Eastwood, Where Eagles Dare is the apex of 1960s war movies, by turns enjoyable and preposterous. ''Broadsword Calling Danny Boy'' is Geoff Dyer''s tribute to the film he has loved since childhood: an analysis taking us from its snowy, Teutonic opening credits to its vertigo-inducing climax. For those who have not even seen Where Eagles Dare, this book is a comic tour-de-force of criticism. But for the film''s legions of fans, whose hearts will always belong to Ron Goodwin''s theme tune, it will be the fulfilment of a dream.''Geoff Dyer''s funniest book yet. Who else would work in Martha Gellhorn on the first page of a book on the film Where Eagles Dare?'' Michael Ondaatje''One of our greatest living critics, not of the arts but of life itself, and one of our most original writers'' Kathryn Schulz, New York MagazineTrade ReviewBroadsword Calling Danny Boy is a hilariously funny, freewheeling rule-breaking wholly original scene-by-scene sprint through the crazy action from Where Eagles Dare. I defy anyone not to laugh at Dyer's description of Clint Eastwood's talent for squinting or when face-to-face with armed Nazis, 'not just swinging but squinting in German'. -- Craig Brown * Daily Mail, Books of the Year *Blissfully funny * Guardian *

Read more less

Book SynopsisSee/Saw is an illuminating history of how photographs frame and change our perspectives. Starting from single images by the world's most important photographers - from Eugène Atget to Alex Webb - Geoff Dyer shows us how to read a photograph, as he takes us through a series of close readings that are by turns moving, funny, prescient and surprising.Following Dyer's previous books on photography, The Ongoing Moment and The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand, See/Saw brilliantly combines visual scrutiny and stylistic flair. It shows us how a photograph can simultaneously record and invent the world, and reveals a master seer at work.In the spirit of the intellectual curiosity of Berger, Sontag and Didion, Geoff Dyer helps us to see the world around us, and within us, afresh.Trade ReviewIn these seductively curious essays, Dyer scrutinises images and photographers, unearthing hidden truths and a sense of the uncanny * * Observer, Book of the Day * *Fascinating . . . Dyer is not merely a fine prose stylist but a writer of knowingly stylish prose . . . This is both a beautifully written and a beautiful book -- Stuart Kelly * * Scotsman * *The acclaimed essayist and novelist is also one of the world's greatest writers on photography . . . Reading this book is, simply put, a pleasurable experience * * Irish Times * *Fascinating . . . The reader is taken on a visual and intellectual journey, so that once you have read Dyer's words, you return to the photograph he describes, seeing it afresh and in ways that you might never had considered . . . Compelling * * Herald * *A beautifully written book on photography * * Scotland on Sunday * *Wide-ranging and eclectic . . . Dyer is at his best when he stays close to the images, teasing out their meanings with astute observations or poetic readings . . . Fascinating . . . Insightful * * TLS * *Dyer turns his erudite eye on some of the most important photographers of the past 150 years in his latest collection of essays . . . Dyer follows in the footsteps of John Berger and Susan Sontag with this guide on how to "read a photograph", decoding and deciphering images by August Sander, Dayanita Singh, William Eggleston and Vivian Maier, among others * * Art Newspaper * *A marvel . . . There is a great chewy joy to reading Dyer - in See/Saw, cheeky stretched conceits are applied to tasty ideas as he operates surgically on the heart of a concept with an apposite quote from someone relevant or learned. He has a talent for contracting the long and insightful into the short and insightful . . . Fascinating * * Dublin Review of Books * *Dyer is a brilliant writer fascinated by photography and the ideas that pulse through it . . . What makes Dyer's prose so readable is not simply that he is a knowledgeable and astute critic, but that he is able to shape sophisticated ideas into engaging prose . . . Beautifully presented, this is an insightful collection of articles that deepens our understanding of the subtle power of photography * * Black and White Photography Review * *Thoroughly affecting . . . See/Saw is a collection best dipped into and savoured in short bursts . . . [A] diverse catalogue of pathos, humour and intrigue . . . Throughout this collection he proves to be a master weaver of information and stories . . . See/Saw demonstrates that words, much like the photographs they are describing, can lead to elongation and excavation of our own experiences. In Dyer's hands, short glances become deep gazes and snap encounters become lingering memories * * SOURCE Magazine * *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA century after it began, we still struggle with the terrible reality of the First World War, often through republished photographs of its horrors: the muddy trenches, the devastated battlefields, the maimed survivors. Due to the crude film cameras used at the time, the look of the Great War has traditionally been grainy, blurred, and monochrome-until now. The First World War presents a startlingly different perspective, one based on rare glass plate photographs, that reveals the war with previously unseen, even uncanny, clarity. Scanned from the original plates, with scratches and other flaws expertly removed, these oversized reproductions offer a wealth of unusual moments, including scenes of men in training, pictures of African colonial troops on the Western front, landscapes of astonishing destruction, and postmortem portraits of Belgian soldiers killed in action. Readers previously familiar with only black-and-white or sepia-toned prints of the hostilities will be riveted by the book's many authentic color photographs, products of the early autochrome method. From children playing war games to a wrenching deathbed visit, these images are extraordinary not only for their subject matter, but also for the wide range of emotions they evoke. Accompanied by a preface from celebrated writer Geoff Dyer and an essay by historian David Van Reybrouck, the photographs here serve both as remarkable witnesses to the everyday life of warfare and as dramatic works of art in their own right. These images, taken by some of the conflict's most gifted photographers, will radically change how we visualize the First World War.

Read more less

Book SynopsisBooker wining novelist, playwright, essayist, poet and critic - even admirers rarely know John Berger in all his literary incarnations. This collection of essays takes a look at his career. Berger's wide-ranging essays emphasise the continuities that have underpinned more than 40 years of tireless intellectual inquiry and political engagement.

Read more less

Book SynopsisLester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano... In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skilfully evokes the embattled lives of the players who shaped modern jazz. He draws on photos and anecdotes, but music is the driving force of But Beautiful and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician''s style.Trade ReviewRemarkable...there can be few books on jazz written with such tenderness and care. -- Adam Lively * * Times Literary Supplement * *But Beautiful is just that. A moving and highly original tribute to Black American Music. -- Bryan FerryAs intricate a mixture of biographical essay and make-believe as is likely to be written. * * New York Times * *The only book about jazz that i have recommended to my friends. It is a little gem. -- Keith Jarrett

Read more less

Book SynopsisGreat photographs change the way we see the world. The Ongoing Moment changes the way we look at both. With characteristic perversity and trademark originality, The Ongoing Moment is Dyer''s unique and idiosyncratic history of photography. Seeking to identify their signature styles Dyer looks at the ways canonical figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Kertesz, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus and William Eggleston have photographed the same scenes and objects (benches, hats, hands, roads). In doing so Dyer constructs a narrative in which those photographers, many of whom never met in their lives, constantly come into contact with each other. It is the most ambitious example to date of a form of writing that Dyer has made his own: the non-fiction work of art.Trade ReviewDyer is a master of the close-up, a hawk-eyed spotter of small coincidences * * Independent on Sunday * *Dyer's subtle, understated, unforgettable masterpiece deserves to join Susan Sontag's On Photography on our bookshelves * * Scotland on Sunday * *Enjoy a witty, incisive lesson in how to rescue cultural criticism from shuttered academia * * Independent * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisSitting down to write a book about his hero D.H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write. In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood to follow the great writer's footsteps; in Mexico he cannot get beyond a drug-induced erotic fantasy on a nudist beach . . . And yet, incredibly, this attempt to write a 'sober academic study' reveals the hold Lawrence and his work still exert on us today. Out of Sheer Rage is a complete one-off, a richly comic study of the combination of bad temper, procrastination and the uncanny power of obliquity.Trade ReviewAn intriguing, magnetic, genre-rattling book * * The Times * *Marvellous . . . a glorious truant from study . . . gives a better picture of (Lawrence) than any biography I know. -- James Wood * * Guardian * *The kind of book that gives literary criticism a bad name. Hilarious! -- John BergerA masterpiece * * Mail on Sunday * *If there was a prize for the year's funniest book then it would win hands down * * Independent on Sunday * *Quite possibly the best living writer in Britain * * Daily Telegraph * *A national treasure -- Zadie SmithOne of my favourite of all contemporary writers. I love his sense of the absurd, his pessimism mixed with robust good cheer, his beautifully crafted sentences, his jokes and his intelligence. -- Alain de BottonGeoff Dyer is a true original - one of those rare voices in contemporary literature that never ceases to surprise, disturb and delight. Risky, breathtakingly candid, intellectual, cool, outrageous, laconic and sometimes shocking, Geoff Dyer is a must-read for our confused and perplexing times. -- William Boyd[Out of Sheer Rage] gets the full Canongate Canons treatment from its new Edinburgh publishers this month; happy, happy news if ever there was any, O.O.S.R is vintage Dyer, and well worthy of this upgrade to 'modern classic' status. * * Dazed and Confused * *Reading this book is the very opposite of a waste of time. It is an education and a delight * * Guardian * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisJeff Atman, a journalist, is in Venice to cover the opening of the Biennale. He's expecting to see a load of art, go to a lot of parties and drink too many bellinis. He's not expecting to meet the spellbinding Laura, who will completely transform his few days in the city. So begins a story of erotic love and spiritual learning that will reach its conclusion amidst the ghats of Varanasi.Trade ReviewDazzling and peculiar . . . A prodigious display of virtuosity. -- Jan Morris * * Guardian * *Engaging and funny . . . Dyer is a witty and concise observer of landscapes: social, geographical and emotional . . . [his] eccentric charm and barbed perceptiveness will hook you to the end. -- Tim Teeman * * The Times * *Delivered with laconic wit and an evocative sense of place, Dyer's effortlessly readable prose is shot through with psychological insight, truth and an eye for travelogue detail. -- Alan Chadwick * * Metro * *Dyer is more than a cult writer; he's a virus, invading your system. You look at things differently, embracing the idiosyncratic, keeping the obvious at bay . . . vintage Dyer, painfully funny, slyly observant, brilliant, full of wild misery. -- Lee Langley * * Spectator * *Dyer is a smart, witty writer..., extraordinarily reflective, perceptive and funny...as well as a fine prose stylist. He's a keen commentator on the ironies of contemporary life from the very first page. -- Lionel Shriver * * Financial Times * *Geoff Dyer is a true original -- one of those rare voices in contemporary literature that never ceases to surprise, disturb and delight. Risky, breathtakingly candid, intellectual, cool, outrageous, laconic and sometimes shocking, Geoff Dyer is a must-read for our confused and perplexing times -- WILLIAM BOYDJeff in Venice is a love song to the pleasures of the phenomenal world, very fast and very funny . . . [Death in Varanasi] is Dyer at his very best: philosophical, astute, unstructured, oscillating between surface and depth, between the casual and the universal. -- Jonathan Gibbs * * Independent * *Jeff in Venice is serious fiction; learned travelogue; funny, arch and sad; a cynic's ascent into redemptive love and a stoner's descent into 'Gone-Native' madness. It drips with Geoff Dyer's derelict luminosity. -- DAVID MITCHELLGeoff Dyer is one of my favourite of all contemporary writers. I love his sense of the absurd, his pessimism mixed with robust good cheer, his beautifully crafted sentences, his jokes and his intelligence. Jeff in Venice is a sad, funny, lyrical, furious story of an ordinary man's momentary redemption and decline. Please take the time to read it and fall under Dyer's spell. -- ALAIN DE BOTTONDyer is very funny, in both senses - sort of like a post-modern Kingsley Amis. His writing is acute and bad tempered in the great British tradition, and his prose is the equal of anyone in the country. A national treasure. -- ZADIE SMITHA raucous delight. Jeff in Venice is truly surprising - very funny, full of nerve, gutsy and delicious. Venice will never be the same again! -- MICHAEL ONDAATJEA haunting, if frequently hilarious, meditation on love and art, life and music, death and bananas, all reflected and refracted in the twinned mirror pools of Venice and Varanasi. I loved this book. -- JOSHUA FERRISRiveting. I love this book. Moments of wit, humanity, and intelligence are to be found on every page here. Dyer can write as beautifully as Lawrence and Proust. I don't ever want to be without his brilliant mind to turn to. -- NADEEM ASLAMDyer's ingenious linking of these contrasting narratives is indicative of his intelligence and stylistic grace, and his ability to evoke atmosphere with impressive clarity is magical. Both novellas ask trenchant philosophical questions, include moments of irresistible humor and offer arresting observations about art and human nature. . . . A work of exceptional resonance. [Starred review.] * * Publishers Weekly * *A riddle of a novel wrapped in a two part travelogue about losing oneself . . . the writing is discursive and full of bleak, often funny observations about the more jaded intersections of art and life. -- Jennifer Higgie * * Frieze * *Entrancing . . . [Dyer] is a writer who resists categorization, who is constantly morphing from one thing to another...it takes talent to pull off a career like that, and Dyer has plenty of talent. His work is illusory yet real, funny but serious . . . [Jeff in Venice] is a haunted - and haunting - book. -- Alex Bilmes * * GQ * *Raw and descriptive - this is a truly original piece of writing. * * Tatler * *A haunted - and haunting - book. * * GQ * *Cleverly-penned . . . affirms Dyer's place as one of Britain's most witty and original writers; the lively prose, colourful characters and at times extremely poignant descriptions making for both a riveting and really quite brilliant read. -- Camilla Pia * * List * *Smart, provocative, often very funny, but ultimately deeply sobering, Jeff in Venice is an early contender for the most original, and the cleverest, novel of the year. -- Mick Brown * * Daiy Telegraph * *Dyer's prose always has a hint of intimacy...Memory, language and writing aare all intricately and emotionally woven. -- Mark Crees * * Times Literary Supplement * *You'll be hooked by a playful, fictive intelligence that flickers over every page. -- David Lovely * * Waterstone's Books Quarterly * *(T)he joy of his writing at its best lies in not knowing what's coming next, and in the fluent way it throws irreverence and transport together with a confessional ease that reflects the spirit of the age... In the weeks since I devoured Jeff in Venice, I don't think a day has passed without my thinking back to it. -- Pico Iyer * * The New York Times Book Review * *The last 20 pages approach magnificence: a virtuosic melding of style and repertoire that come together as a sort of yogic "one." -- Ted Weesner Jr. * * The Boston Globe * *The English writer Geoff Dyer delights in producing books that are unique, like keys. -- James Wood * * The New Yorker * *Beguiling. * * Metro * *Filled with shimmering apparitions. * * Observer * *Witty, observant, unexpected. * * Sunday Telegraph * *Quite mad, it can be read poolside, roadside or mountainside: wherever you are, you'll be Lake-side. * * The Observer * *Erudite and often very funny. * * The Telegraph * *Rarely less than brilliant. * * The Guardian * *Dyer is compared to Proust, Lawrence and Kingsley Amis. The praise is deserved . . . i hadn't read such a fully realised piece of fiction for ages. * * Evening Standard * *By marrying fiction with travelogue, serious confessional with comedy, Dyer produces a heady literary package. * * Independent * *Dyer at his very best . . . philosophical, astute, unstructured, oscillating between surface and depth, between the casual and the universal. -- Jonathan Gibb * * Independent * *A book about desire in all its manifestations: the desire for sensation and escape, to get out of one's own skin and to become somebody else, whether through love, intoxication or spiritual transformation. Smart, provocative, often very funny, but ultimately deeply sobering, Jeff in Venice is an early contender for the most original, and the cleverest, novel of the year * * Telegraph * *This is a bellini of a novel, sparkling and intoxicating, in which the hero concludes that something - maybe everything - has to give * * GQ * *Rarely less than brilliant * * Guardian * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisAnnie Dillard has spent a lifetime examining the world around her with eyes wide open, drinking in all things intensely and relentlessly. Whether observing a sublime lunar eclipse or a moth consumed in a candle flame, the trembling of lily pads on a pond or hundreds of red-winged blackbirds taking flight, Dillard's awe at the fragility of the natural world rejuvenates and inspires pleasure and heartache. Precise in language and deeply meditative in spirit, this is a landmark collection from one of America's masters.Trade ReviewWhat stays longest with the reader is the magnesium-flare intensity of her prose and her invincible joy at being alive * * New Statesman, 'Best Books of 2016' * *For Annie Dillard there's no realm of knowledge without its accompanying gasp of wonder; she has a mystic's appreciation of the glory and plurality of the world, and a gift for communicating astonishment . . . Dillard is triumphantly awake, and these essays are magnificent and dramatic, illuminating and inspirational. Read them; they brim with abundance -- GAVIN FRANCIS * * Guardian * *Luminous, startling, mischievous . . . the memory is scalpel bright, and the imagination alchemical -- RICHARD MABEYAnnie Dillard is a brilliant American poet, novelist and essayist, a kind of philosophical nature writer in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir . . . [The Abundance] grips you with a real and painful sense of the natural world in all its mystery and cruelty * * Sunday Times * *Annie Dillard's books are like comets, like celestial events that remind us that the reality we inhabit is itself a celestial event -- MARILYNNE ROBINSONSpirited and gale-force. She raps out her opinions; lyrical, gleeful, cymbal-clashing, peppery. The best thing is her glee, a pied-piperish glee at being in the world, which she evokes better than anyone else -- ROBERT MACFARLANEAnnie Dillard is among the greatest nature writers who have ever lived. Like Thoreau, like Gilbert White, she combines a naturalist's sharp eye with a philosopher's curiosity and a poet's magical gift for language. Keen, urgent and impassioned, her subject is life itself, in all its teeming and marvellous forms -- OLIVIA LAINGAnnie Dillard is one of those people who seem to be more fully alive than most of us, more nearly wide-awake than human beings generally get to be * * New York Times * *A writer who never seems tired, who has never plodded her way through a page or sentence, Dillard can only be enjoyed by a wide-awake reader . . .She opens our eyes to the world and to new ways of articulating what we see -- GEOFF DYERThe trouble with hasty people like me is that we charge through our time on earth without noticing it. It was Annie Dillard who got me, before it was too late, to pay attention to where I was before I lost it. So I did. What abundance! -- RICHARD HOLLOWAYAnnie Dillard's words are the outpouring of a brilliant mind tempered by a pleading heart. Her distinctive voice and incandescent imagery lifts us to heights few writers can ever hope to aspire to. I came to Annie's work through her Pulitzer-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and have hung on every word she has written ever since. This anthology is the perfect introduction to her luminous prose, her insightful wisdom and her powerful engagement with nature and the human spirit -- JOHN LISTER KAYEDillard archingly transcends all other writers of our day in all the simple, intimate and beautiful ways of the natural master -- BUCKMINSTER FULLERThe pleasurable voyages of Dillard's prose are grounded in alert observation - but springing into levitations of surprise and lit by eruptions of discovery -- ROBERT PINSKYFew writers evoke better the emotion of awe and few have ever conveyed more graphically the weight of silence, the force of the immaterial * * Boston Globe * *Annie Dillard is, was, and always will be the very best at describing the landscapes in which we find ourselves * * Star Tribune (Minneapolis) * *This book, a writerly mashup of Dillard's best work, samples from an oeuvre forty years in the making. Ever a keen observer, Dillard hooks readers with unusual, often haunting, and yet precisely vivid descriptions. This collection is an excellent entry point into Dillard's writing and would especially appeal to new readers, although Dillard devotees will also enjoy this kaleidoscopic retrospective, this new way of 'seeing' her prose. That said, it will only whet their appetites, leave them hungering for and searching for her complete works * * Library Journal * *Annie Dillard has a tendency to write the literary equivalent of an earworm. She gets stuck in your head. The Abundance is a thoughtful introduction to her work - Annie Dillard 101. It's a great place to start * * Houston Chronicle * *Here is a distillation of a strange, powerful sensibility, unique in contemporary American letters . . . Annie Dillard is a brilliant and necessary writer who forces upon us the knowledge that we are not living as we should * * Chicago Tribune * *[S]he is, flagrantly, a consciousness - an abstract, all-encompassing energy field that inhabits a given piece of writing the way sunlight clings to a rock: delicately but with absolute force, always leaving a shadow behind. This is an essential part of what it means to be human, this shifting between the transcendent self and the contingent world, the ecstasy and the dental bill. We all do some version of it, all the time. But Dillard does it more insistently * * The St Louis Post Dispatch * *An adventure. It is like learning to read all over again. It is a reminder to see - to look and listen - more closely than ever before . . . To read Annie Dillard's latest collection of essays is to be a student of language and a student of the world - to look at everything, even the tiniest moments, with perpetual wonder * * Washington Independent Review of Books * *As observant as Thoreau, as thoughtful as Emerson, as all-embracing as Whitman, Annie Dillard is a great national treasure. Her nature writing is precise and irradiated with the spiritual -- EDMUND WHITEIn essay after essay, Annie Dillard demonstrates the mystical art of using exactitude, condensation, and clarity to intimate turbulence, rapture, and plenty. . . The landscape of nonfiction and American letters looks barren without her radiance -- MAGGIE NELSONLike a jar of fireflies, The Abundance dazzles both in its tiny, blinking specifics and in its cumulative glow. Annie Dillard's wise and funny essays remind us of what a profound blessing life can be if we do but one thing: Pay attention -- GARRY TRUDEAUThe clarity of Annie Dillard's forensic gaze is astonishing - she is one of the most brilliant essayists of the past half-century, and this is a tremendous selection -- KEVIN BARRYArresting, poetic and challenging . . . The Abundance grips and pinions the heart * * Country Life * *

Read more less

Book Synopsis'Impossible to put down' Observer'One of the great books of the century' Times Literary SupplementRebecca West's epic masterpiece not only provides deep insight into the former country of Yugoslavia; it is a portrait of Europe on the brink of war. A heady cocktail of personal travelogue and historical insight, this product of an implacably inquisitive intelligence remains essential for anyone attempting to understand the history of the Balkan states, and the wider ongoing implications for a fractured Europe.Trade ReviewThe sheer quality and depth of the writing make it one of the great books of the century * * Times Literary Supplement * *Impossible to put down, both timeless and of its time - a travel book and epic narrative history brimming with passion, anger, scholarship and intuition, hatred and love * * Observer * *One of the supreme masterpieces of the twentieth century . . . As a book about Yugoslavia it's a kind of metaphysical Lonely Planet that never requires updating -- GEOFF DYERIt is hard to convey the flavour of a book so rich in observation, history, philosophy, political ideas and ironic humour * * The Times * *It is a brilliant antidote to the disease that would have us believe that these are faraway countries about which we know nothing * * Guardian * *Such incandescent writing - you find yourself wanting to mark every sentence in order to go back and relish it again -- BRIAN ENORebecca West's magnum opus . . . one of the great books of our time * * New Yorker * *You will search in vain for a more original, assured and companionable guide to former Yugoslavia * * Financial Times * *Dame Rebecca, the finest reporter of her generation, saw everything . . . A remarkably easy read * * Sunday Telegraph * *Written with a fierce intelligence that any journalist must envy and admire * * Daily Telegraph * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKIn this endlessly stimulating investigation into 'things coming to an end, artists' last works, time running out', Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who've mattered to him throughout his life. He examines Friedrich Nietzsche's breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan's reinventions of old songs, Beethoven's final quartets, Jean Rhys's return from the dead (while still alive) and much more.Trade ReviewThe Last Days of Roger Federer feels like what Martin Amis called "a transfusion from above", but one from your smartest and funniest friend . . . entertaining . . . wide-ranging, eye-opening . . . His desire to keep going is probably hastening the end, but as long as he keeps his eye sharp and his sense of humour (which is "about so much more than being funny; it's an entire relation to - and view of - the world"), we'll be laughing, and thinking, all the way * * The Times * *Finely crafted . . . The capaciousness of Dyer's themes allow him to roam widely. While he is a connoisseur of the humdrum details of failure - often skilfully crafted for humour with himself as the target - he also has a joyous appreciation of the transcendent and the triumphant . . . Age has come upon him, but youth has not gone. It is knee supports on both legs that now keep him on the tennis court, but like Federer, it is a reserve of flair, touch, timing and a keen eye that keeps him in the game * * Guardian * *Tennis, jazz, Dylan, movies, TV, drugs, Nietzsche, Beethoven. So, why am I laughing? Because Geoff Dyer once again melds commentary and observation with intellect and wit. Bouncing between criticism and memoir, Dyer is one of the few writers whose paragraphs I can immediately reread and get more from. The twists, turns, and delights abound, and when you finally put the book down you think, "Oh, yes, I've always been this smart, haven't I?" -- STEVE MARTINDyer writes amusingly and sometimes poignantly about the feeling of time running out, books he can't finish (other people's, and his own), the vicissitudes of artistic fame and the perversity of being invigorated by thoughts of quitting. Few contemporary prose writers are as abundantly quotable as Dyer * * Spectator * *What a capacious sensibility this cultural magpie has, chatting to the reader in warmly companionable fashion, his prose peppered with self-deprecatory humour and footnoted asides, his erudition never pompous or platitudinous . . . these may be last days for Dyer as they are for Federer, but there's always somewhere else to go, even if it's only inwards * * Daily Telegraph * *The Last Days of Roger Federer isn't about tennis. Rather, it is about endings, and what happens to the creative spirit when one enters the autumn of one's life . . . Impish, fun and endlessly fascinating . . . His skill is to write so vividly that his interests become the reader's, too, no matter how unlikely or esoteric. In other words, his enthusiasm is infectious * * i * *There is a peculiar double joy in reading Geoff Dyer's work. At the initial level, there is the sheer joy of reading his work. On a more rarefied level, there is the pleasure of re-reading it and wondering "just how the goodness did you pull that off?" Exceptionally funny . . . very witty . . . Dyer's work manages the trick of feeling spontaneous, free-wheeling and intimate, and such a feat is hard won and honed * * Scotsman * *Sweetly transcendental . . . a book that despite its gloomy subject, bulges with energy and sings with joy * * Sunday Times * *What a lot of fun this book is. Erudite without being patronising, amusing without being cloying, and thought-provoking without being too head-scratching . The Last Days of Roger Federer is already one of my books of the year * * Irish Independent * *Most authors use language to write about things. Dyer uses things to write about language. He's a clever clogs but he's one of us at the same time. Genius -- SIMON ARMITAGE

Read more less

Book SynopsisAlive with insight, wit and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this collection of essays offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography and music. Besides exploring what it is that makes great art great, Working the Room ventures into more personal territory with extensive autobiographical pieces - 'On Being an Only Child', 'Sacked' and 'Reader's Block', among other gems. Dyer's breadth of vision and generosity of spirit combine to form a manual for ways of being in - and seeing - the world today.Trade ReviewShrewd, funny, original . . . very good company on the page. -- Andrew Motion * * Guardian * *A national treasure. -- Zadie SmithA seductively straightforward writer . . . like Orwell. Dyer writes engrossingly on everything from love of doughnuts to his sequestered working class childhood in Swindon. -- Will Self * * Financial Times * *One of my favourite of all contemporary writers. I love his sense of the absurd, his pessimism mixed with robust good cheer, his beautifully crafted sentences, his jokes and his intelligence. -- Alain de BottonLanguid, elegant, brilliantly conversational. -- Tim Adams * * Observer * *A true original - one of those rare voices in contemporary literature that never ceases to surprise, disturb and delight . . . Dyer is a must-read for our confused and perplexing times. * * William Boyd * *Dyer is becoming a character just as arch and seductive as that professional self-effacer from the previous generation, Alan Bennett. * * Observer * *Insightful, humorous, and . . . exemplifies his passion, wit and ability. -- Rob Sharp * * Independent * *An irresistibly funny storyteller, [Dyer] is adept at fiction, essay and reportage, but happiest when twisting all three into something entirely his own. * * New Yorker * *It's this ability to develop such passions that gives the literary flaneur his curious edge, a gift for turning both acute spasms of obsession and long-rumbling preoccupations into writing, a highly strung take on the journalistic necessity of burrowing into a subject like a worm in an apple, then moving on to a new fruit -- Victoria Segal * * Guardian * *Dyer's musings provide an intensely personal view of the world * * The Times * *It's this ability to develop such passions that gives the literary flaneur his curious edge, a gift for turning both acute spasms of obsession and long-rumbling preoccupations into writing, a highly strung take on the journalistic necessity of burrowing into a subject like a worm in an apple, then moving on to a new fruit. * * Guardian * *Essays and journalism, often very funny, from the author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. * * Sunday Telegraph * *Dyer's musings provide an intensely personal view of the world. * * Times * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEARFrom a trip to The Lightning Field in New Mexico, to chasing Gauguin's ghost in French Polynesia, White Sands is a creative exploration of why we travel. Episodic, wide-ranging and funny, Geoff Dyer blends travel writing, essay, criticism and fiction with a smart and cantankerous wit that is unmatched. From one of the most original writers in Britain, this is a book for armchair travellers and procrastinating philosophers everywhere.Trade ReviewBrilliant . . . Dyer's eyes miss nothing -- PETER CONRAD * * Observer * *An examination of some of the most fundamental questions of life . . . Inspiring and informing * * Guardian * *Even Chekhov might have envied Geoff Dyer's talent . . . Almost perfect -- JAN MORRIS * * Spectator * *[A] disregard for genre boundaries is a hallmark of his work, along with erudition, a brilliant use of language and irreverent humour . . . The nearest thing to White Sands in Dyer's back catalogue is Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It * * Daily Telegraph * *Surpassingly eloquent . . . there's no other writer quite like Dyer * * Time * *Illuminating . . . A collection unified by a focus on our impermanence. Why are we here? Dyer asks. With his customary elegance of thought, he sees that our attempts to transcend our situation through travel and art are motivated by our awareness of our final destination: "We are here to go somewhere else". -- LUKE BROWN * * Financial Times * *A national treasure -- ZADIE SMITHDyer's virtue is not the whole-hearted embrace of experience and exotic locales but the parsing of degrees of disappointment. He also doesn't pretend to be heading anywhere, but then White Sands turns into a memoir and becomes unexpectedly moving . . . Dyer's tone as he relates his frightening brush with tragedy is calm and full of curiosity, possibly as a result of eschewing drama for his entire life. -- JANE SMILEY * * Los Angeles Times * *White Sands isn't just a catalog of travel mishaps, with Mr. Dyer cast as an English-speaking Monsieur Hulot. It is also a rumination on the meanings we assign the strange destinations of our pilgrimages. * * New York Times * *Reading Dyer is akin to the sudden elation and optimism you feel when you make a new friend, someone as silly as you but cleverer too, in whose company you know you will travel through life more vagrantly, intensely, joyfully * * Daily Telegraph * *Geoff Dyer is a true original - one of those rare voices in contemporary literature that never ceases to surprise, disturb and delight -- William BoydQuite possibly the best living writer in Britain * * Daily Telegraph * *A collection of essays fusing travel writing and fiction . . . Dyer plays fast and loose with genre and category * * Telegraph * *The title essay, about picking up an ex-con hitchhiker on US Route 54 before passing a warning sign against doing exactly that, reads like a brilliant short story. It's electrifying - unlike the Northern Lights * * Tatler Magazine * *Cleverer, more self-deprecating and funnier in these essays, set all over the world and in his unique mind. Dyer's last travel book, Yoga for People Who Can't be Bothered to Do It, sold over 50,000 copies in the UK alone, and this is just as good: a travel title that asks not just where, but why, with Dyer's typical sardonic wit * * The Bookseller * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe city Fred Herzog documented over more than half a century has vanished—an early kind of urban flaneur, Herzog wandered the streets of Vancouver, creating an archive that encapsulates the essence of a bygone era. Considered today as one of the most important street photographers of the 20th century, he changed the international conversation about early color photography. However, it was only in the late 1950s that he decided to primarily shoot with Kodachrome color slides. Fred Herzog: Black and White is the first acknowledgement of a lesser-known facet of the photographers’ work. Complementing the seminal Modern Color, it encompasses almost graphical urban scenes of shadow and light, alongside travel photographs and depictions of rural life. Evoking notions of melancholy, this book reveals that Herzog’s appeal lies in his ability to seize a condensation of a psychological state.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDIn the spirit of Julian Barnes''s Flaubert''s Parrot and Alain de Botton''s How Proust Can Change Your Life, Mr. Dyer''s Out of Sheer Rage keeps circling its subject in widening loops and then darting at it when you least expect it . . . a wild book.--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York TimesGeoff Dyer was a talented young writer, full of energy and reverence for the craft, and determined to write a study of D. H. Lawrence. But he was also thinking about a novel, and about leaving Paris, and maybe moving in with his girlfriend in Rome, or perhaps traveling around for a while. Out of Sheer Rage is Dyer''s account of his struggle to write the Lawrence book--a portrait of a man tormented, exhilarated, and exhausted. Dyer travels all over the world, grappling not only with his fascinating subject but with all the glorious distractions and needling anxieties that define the life of a writer.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this spellbinding book, the man described by the Daily Telegraph as ''possibly the best living writer in Britain'' takes on his biggest challenge yet: unlocking the film that has obsessed him all his adult life. Like the film Stalker itself, it confronts the most mysterious and enduring questions of life and how to live.Trade ReviewOne of my favourite of all contemporary writers. -- Alain de BottonReading Dyer is akin to the sudden elation and optimism you feel when you make a new friend, someone as silly as you but cleverer too, in whose company you know you will travel through life more vagrantly, intensely, joyfully. * * Daily Telegraph * *There is no contemporary writer I admire more than Dyer, and in no book of his does he address his animating idea - The Only Way Not to Waste Time Is to Waste It - more overtly, urgently, emphatically and eloquently. -- David Shields, author of REALITY HUNGERFew books about film feel like watching a film, but this one does. We sit with Dyer as he writes about Stalker; he captures its mystery and burnish, he prises it open and gets its glum majesty. As a result of this book, I know the film better, and care about Tarkovsky even more. -- Mark Cousins, author of THE STORY OF FILMI loved this book. How can it possibly work - a book describing a film, more or less shot by shot? But it triumphantly does - i actually felt suspense, and revelation. And i'd never laugh at Stalker, but i did laugh all the way through this. -- Tessa Hadley, author of THE LONDON TRAINA restless polymath and an irresistibly funny storyteller, he is adept at fiction, essay and reportage, but happiest when twisting all three into something entirely his own. * * New Yorker * *A true original . . . [Dyer] never ceases to surprise, disturb and delight. -- William BoydA national treasure. -- Zadie SmithPerennially readable and wonderfully difficult to second-guess * * Bookseller * *Zona is penned with great linguistic flair, in a non-academic, conversational tone... It turns Zona from film criticism into a stranger, more amusing study and the section on why their journey is like the journey of writing a book is both intellectually neat and rather touching. * * Independent on Sunday * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisWalker 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 asks 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.Trade ReviewA short, brilliant novel, The Search offers more in 150 pages than most books twice that length * * Guardian * *As elegant as a mathematical theorem correctly expressed -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * * Sunday Times * *Dyer injects an almost magical randomness into what ought to be the most conventional of tales, and gives us Surrealism where we might have expected Dirty Realism... It is a vivid and puzzling alternative to the everyday, and its after-image is hard to erase -- Erica Wagner * * Spectator * *One of the best thriller scenarios I've ever read -- Tom Hiney * * Independent * *

Read more less

Book Synopsis''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 TimesTrade ReviewOf all the hyped novels about 1980s London, it remains one of the most genuine -- Peter Jukes * * New Statesman * *Captures the vigour and life of Brixton . . . There are vivid tableaux of street life, shot through a compassionate lens . . . sustained and powerful * * Sunday Times * *Dyer writes crisp Martin Amis-inflected prose, full of acute and neat phrases * * TLS * *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. 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 less

Book SynopsisAnglo-English Attitudes brings together Geoff Dyer''s best journalism and other writing from 1984-99. There are studied meditations on photographers (Robert Capa, William Gedney, Cartier-Bresson), painters (Bonnard, Gauguin), musicians (Coltrane, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), and close critical engagements with writers including Camus, Michael Ondaatje and Martin Amis. Also here are idiosyncratic reflections on boxing, comics, Airfix models and Action Man, and often hilarious accounts of his ''misadventures''.Trade ReviewDyer's books are among the most fresh and eclectic in contemporary letters... Because he has fought to preserve his own voice and style, never allowing them to become flattened into cliche; because he writes about his enthusiasms, Dyer's has long been a name to look out for amid the gossip, prurient interviews and celebrity trash of modern newspapers. That he exists at all, in such ruthlessly materialistic times - unattached to any newspaper, always on the move - is a celebration in itself. This book, a tribute to his persistence and originality, deserves to have a long after-life -- Jason Cowley * * The Times * *One of the most rewarding books to emerge from Britain in the last twelve months, 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' alike * * Modern Painters * *Pick up this book and you will find something interesting on every page * * Independent * *For the sheer diversity of his passions, his career is already hard to beat -- Simon Garfield * * Financial Times * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Paris, two couples form an intimacy that will change their lives forever. As they discover the clubs and cafés 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 - but the come-down is unexpected and devastating. Dyer fixes a dream of happiness - and its aftermath. Erotic and elegiac, funny and romantic, Paris Trance confirms Dyer as one of Britain''s most original and talented writers.Trade ReviewA Tender is the Night for the Ecstasy Age. -- Tim PearsA beautifully composed rave generation rhapsody . . . dripping with eroticism. -- Sunday TimesSexy, hopelessly romantic and almost sneakily meditative, Dyer's novel invokes the shades of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but as they might be imagined by Truffaut. * * New Yorker * *A skilfully crafted map of the human heart. * * Independent * *

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom Amsterdam to Cambodia, from Rome to Indonesia, from New Orleans to Libya, and from Detroit to Ko Pha-Ngan, Geoff Dyer finds himself both floundering about in a sea of grievances and finding moments of transcendental calm. This aberrant quest for peak experiences leads, ultimately, to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where, to quote Tarkovsky''s Stalker, ''your most cherished desire will come true''.Trade ReviewAmong the most original and talented writers of his generation. * * Independent on Sunday * *Refreshingly outlandish ... remarkable. * * Evening Standard * *He flits from one exotic location to another . . . meditating with frightening intelligence and laser-guided wit on the human comedy. At times i was reduced to helpless laughter, at others to impotent envy. * * Mail on Sunday * *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn November 2011, Geoff Dyer fulfilled a childhood dream of spending time on an aircraft carrier. Dyer's stay on the USS George Bush, on active service in the Arabian Gulf, proved even more intense, memorable, and frequently hilarious, than he could ever have hoped. In Dyer's hands, the warship becomes a microcosm for a stocktaking of modern Western life: religion, drugs, chauvinism, farting, gyms, steaks, prayer, parental death, relationships and how to have a beach party with 5000 people on a giant floating hunk of steel. Piercingly perceptive and gloriously funny, this is a unique book about work, war and entering other worlds.Trade ReviewReading Dyer is akin to the sudden elation and optimism you feel when you make a new friend, someone as silly as you but cleverer too, in whose company you know you will travel through life more vagrantly, intensely, joyfully * * Daily Telegraph * *Stuffed with wonderful anecdotes * * Independent * *One advantage of Dyer's attention to the minutiae of this strange world is the continual surprise of his descriptive powers; he approaches on-board rituals with an art critic's eye that sometimes renders Steele-Perkins's powerfully constructed photographs redundant * * Observer * *A hilarious account of life on board an aircraft carrier is filled with delights...If this is the new reality, I hunger for more * * Telegraph * *Quite possibly the best living writer in Britain * * Daily Telegraph * *I hope one day to meet the demented genius who decided to put Geoff Dyer aboard an American aircraft carrier. The result sounds in places as if Sterne en route to his sentimental journey had paused for a week's stint on HMS Victory . . . In the end one is forced to call it "a Dyer book," which luckily for him and us is a high compliment -- John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of PULPHEADA great day is any day you get to read Geoff Dyer, and this book is no exception. Witty, empathetic, and insatiably curious, Dyer is the perfect guide to the floating world of an American aircraft carrier. With Another Great Day at Sea he makes a perfect night landing on the "postage stamp, with élan to spare" -- Sam LipsyteAnother Great Day at Sea, Geoff Dyer's chronicle of his two weeks in residence aboard the USS George H. W. Bush, is a tale of routine, lyricism and terror, of long hours and hard work, and of camaraderie and conviction, which are a form of faith. Original, humane, and very funny, Another Great Day is another great book by an incomparable writer -- Brenda WineappleDyer stows himself away on an American aircraft carrier, fortunately, with all his hilarious tics in place. A rare kind of non-fiction, with sentences that keep on giving long after your eye has sailed on -- Steve MartinGeoff Dyer has managed to do again what he does best: insert himself into an exotic and demanding environment (sometimes, his own flat, but here, the violent wonders of an aircraft carrier) and file a report that mixes empathetic appreciation with dips into brilliant comic deflation. Welcome aboard the edifying and sometimes hilarious ship Dyer -- Billy CollinsThere is no contemporary writer I admire more than Dyer, and in no book of his does he address his animating idea - The Only Way Not to Waste Time Is to Waste It - more overtly, urgently, emphatically and eloquently -- David Shields, author of REALITY HUNGEROne of my favourite of all contemporary writers -- Alain de BottonI have read Geoff Dyer on World War I, jazz, photography, the Bienalle, and D. H. Lawrence, among many other subjects. It's as though his mind is slave to some unpredictable Internet browser inaccessible to the rest of us. His new book - an inimitably close study of life on an American aircraft carrier -is one of his best, funniest, and most humane yet. Geoff Dyer remains an unconventionally great writer - perhaps the most bafflingly great writer at work in the English language today -- Tom Bissell

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Missing of the Somme has become a classic meditation upon war and remembrance. It weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and films, poetry and sculptures, graveyards and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War.Trade ReviewThe great Great War book of our time * * Observer * *Articulates a response to the Great War which many feel, but no one has analysed so scrupulously * * Spectator * *A penetrating meditation upon war and remembrance * * Daily Telegraph * *Dyer is excellent on the different ambitions and effects of municipal memorials, and on photographs and paintings -- Sebastian Faulks * * Mail on Sunday * *A gentle, patient, loving book. It is about mourning and memory, about how the Great War has been represented - and our sense of it shaped and defined - by different artistic media * * Guardian * *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom 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.Trade ReviewOccasionally provocative and almost always infuriating ... America is filled with perceptive, almost poetic observations. * Rolling Stone *Since de Tocqueville, French thinkers have been fascinated with America. But when it comes to mysterious paradoxes and lyrical complexity no French intellectual matches Jean Baudrillard in contemplating the New World. * The New York Times *A mixture of crazy notions and dead-on insights, America is a valuable (and voluble) picture of what Mr. Baudrillard calls 'the only remaining primitive society' ... ours. * The New York Times Book Review *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less