Books I've actually finished lately: 127

[S]pecialists possess the tremendous stupidity of the force of gravity.

- Friedrich Nietzsche (according to Geoff Dyer)

Books I've actually finished lately:113

The description [in Minima Moralia] of a short-order cook in a place like Teddy’s Cafe, as ‘a juggler with fried-eggs’ is Nabokovian, though in addition to seeing the cook as a juggler Nabokov would probably have put a spin on the eggs too. I thought of this as I made a note in my notebook...

- Geoff Dyer

Facebooks - III

Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence / Anglo-English      Attitudes - Geoff Dyer [I don't remember which came first. Most              probably read concurrently]
God Is Not Great: the case against religion - Christopher Hitchens
Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser
Chinaman: the Legend of Pradeep Mathew - Shehan Karunatilaka [in      manuscript]
Apocalypse Now (Redux) script - John Milius
Histories - Herodotus [partial]
John Clare: A Biography - Jonathan Bate [unfinished]
In Ethiopia with a Mule - Dervla Murphy
Collected Poems - Zbigniew Herbert
Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie

Books I've actually finished lately: 10

Shame!

Luke looked across at a young man busy writing in a notebook and felt sorry for him: he had only his book for company - even his coffee-cup was empty.

- Dyer, Paris Trance

Trajectory

Something very rare but a thing to take delight in: a man with a finely constituted intellect, who has the character, the inclinations, and also the experiences appropriate to such an intellect.

- Nietzsche*

The problem is to acquire that knowledge of life (or rather to have lived) which goes beyond the mere ability to write. So that in the last analysis the great artist is first and foremost a man who has lived greatly (it being understood that in this case living also implies thinking about life - that living is in fact precisely this subtle relationship between experience and our awareness of it).

- Camus, notebooks*

... Luke came to Paris with the intention of writing a book based on his experiences of living.... As far as I know, he made absolutely no progress with this book, abandoning it... in the instant that he began leading the life intended to serve as its research...

- Geoff Dyer, Paris Trance (p1)

--
* quoted in Dyer, intro to Selected Essays of John Berger

Parks vs Dyer (vs the academy)

Borderline personal (and misleading) piece on criticism and its discontents, by Tim Parks. Couple of viable comments from the voice-of-the-dog, though, of which my favourites are:

If every one in America with a Ph.D. in physics suddenly died, what would happen to physics in this country? Now consider what would happen to literature in this country if everyone with a Ph.D. in literature died?

and

Accepted into a Ph.D. program in literature many years, I decided to find a life outside the academy, thinking then, as I do now, I had no wish to write more and more about less and less for fewer and fewer.

and (brilliantly)

I was unable to comprehend at least half of the writing in the recent inaugural issue of the journal "Translation"

When, oh when

will editors (for it is surely they*) learn to resist the temptation to caption every article about Geoff Dyer with this obvious, time-battered title?

--
* This is what I'm talking about.

Dyer transcription

While writing up a recent interview with G Dyer, I stumble upon this classic typo

I can’t even decided whether it should be in the present or past tense

and this transcription dilemma

I had fun writing this – exclamation mark[!(?)]

Suggestions on a postcard, please.

OMFG

At a reading in the Ideas [?!!!!] section of New York's McNally Jackson bookstore last year, Geoff Dyer

was introduced by the novelist Sam Lipsyte, who described Mr. Dyer’s work as “gender-bending.” He meant genre. Their respective statures recalled Laurel and Hardy.

(From this otherwise very enjoyable piece by Emily Witt, in the New York Observer.*)


--
* Even if she does misspell 'Bernhard'.

When I want an automated book-dealer to do my thinking for me...

Tipped off by an interesting reference [in Zona] to David Markson's This Is Not a Novel, I went to Amazon and typed in 'Markson not a novel'.

Directing me, admittedly, straight away to the desired product, the Amazon sales-gnome rather grudgingly added:

Did you mean: maroon not a novel*

Try it. Just see what bloody happens.
--
* no question mark, either, you notice. Patronising spacktards.

Hmmm...

... having used that expression poet of the cinema, I realise that poets are the only people I want to be poets, that I want poets to be poets only of poetry.

- Geoff Dyer, Zona

That's showbiz!!!

Insofar as generic judgments are possible, the ghosted autobiography of a show business celebrity is the lowest form of literary life.

- Geoff Dyer, New York Times Book Review

[To wit...]

Non-fiction (cf. 'truth')

The supreme test of nonfiction is that it be interesting irrespective of the reader’s indifference to the subject under discussion.

- Geoff Dyer, New York Times Book Review

Why hyphens are important

A still [shot], it seemed, was not still at all, more like the aftermath of a more specific but still elusive tingle of déjà vu.

- Dyer, Zona

#GeoffDyer

Upon receipt of Geoff Dyer's latest*, Zona, I observe that on the back fly the publishers beseech us to 'Follow the conversation on Twitter #GeoffDyer'.

Not only is this a bit cheeky, since Geoff himself is not on Twitter, but adherents to Canongate's instructions will so far find themselves met with this:

 No Tweet results for #GeoffDyer.

Publicity clanggg!

--
*GET IN!

Who'd be a writer?

Another egregious incorrect, this time at the expense of Geoff Dyer, in a newspaper article in which he talks about the life of the writer (without reference to having your prose screwed over by ham-fisted subs).

To wit:

1) In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked". To see how Styron got away with it is the more interesting question in my and Martin Amis's view. (Styron's novel was, for Amis, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".) [submitted copy]

2) In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked" (Styron's novel was, for him, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".) [edit published]

In fairness, the Guardian editors admit to this shocker at the bottom of the piece (online edition). To their detriment, though, it looks suspiciously like the missing sentence was removed a) in accordance with a widespread editorial hatred of italics, and b) by someone who hasn't heard of Martin Amis.

Authors whose works I have read (almost) all of (almost) by accident

Bruce Chatwin
Geoff Dyer
WG Sebald

Words you don't want to hear from Geoff Dyer

Joking aside, though...

- Sunday sermon On Americans, School of Life

Classic line concerning asparagus

Impromptu, from Geoff Dyer (reading from his Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi), at Shoreditch House.

[All good, but if pressed for time start from about the three-minute mark.]