Bits of Dyer from the Web

On how war writing has developed into anti-war writing. source:...

blobbery — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:55:23 +0530

On how war writing has developed into anti-war writing.

source: Intelligence Squared, Tales from the War Zone

The greatest ‘possibly living’ writer in Britain,...

blobbery — Sat, 26 May 2012 10:43:06 +0530

The greatest ‘possibly living’ writer in Britain, Geoff Dyer, in conversation with Chip Rolley at the Sydney Writers’ Festival 2012

America's Team

blobbery — Sat, 19 May 2012 23:03:00 +0530

Dyer reviews Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain for the NYTRB:

The Billy Lynn of the title is a member of the Army’s Bravo Company, eight of whom come out physically unscathed from the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal, a fierce firefight in Iraq. Caught on film, the skirmish is shown on Fox News and turns the men — branded “Bravo squad” — into heroes overnight.

…

Back in the stadium, Bravo is introduced to the fictional owner of the Cowboys, Norman Oglesby, a “king of self-esteem” whose megawatt charm is betrayed by “a faint arthritic creak in every smile and gesture.” Norm and his Bush-adoring cronies make quite an impression on Bravo, but it’s the cheerleaders’ sculptured tummies and supple thighs that really get their blood racing. Billy thinks he might have made some special eye contact with one of them. He’s deluding himself, surely, but then she smiles again, “silently laughs and crinkles her eyes at him,” and he dares to hope.

This is brilliantly done; by now, in fact, everything is brilliantly done. Within the tight schedule of Bravo’s three or four remaining hours of liberty, and without leaving the gigantic confines of the stadium, Fountain keeps the reader’s plate piled high. It all happens in tandem; by the time Billy falls for his cheerleader we are in love with the book, and that love finds expression in more and wilder laughter. In an episode of devastating comedy — and mutual incomprehension — the squad is introduced to a weird strain of “industrial-sized humans” otherwise known as football players. Aghast at the sheer amount of food they consume, Billy gains new insight into America’s economic might: “Any other country would go broke trying to feed these mammoths.”

…

Tarkovsky Interruptus An evening screening and discussion of...

blobbery — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:51:02 +0530

Tarkovsky Interruptus

An evening screening and discussion of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film STALKER, with writers Geoff Dyer, Phillip Lopate, and Francine Prose; master film and sound editor Walter Murch; spaceprobe photo curator, filmmaker, and writer Michael Benson; and Slate film critic Dana Stevens; introduced by New York Institute for the Humanities director Lawrence Weschler.

Leave it to the Prose! Dyer talks about Zona and other things...

blobbery — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:43:00 +0530

Leave it to the Prose!

Dyer talks about Zona and other things for a Sydney Writers’ Centre interview

My Literary Allergy

blobbery — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:05:19 +0530

Old one, Dyer on DFW, from Prospect March 2011

I guess it’s a question of tone. I react against the variously contrived sloppinesses of all those “sort ofs” and “kind ofs” in tandem with, sometimes followed by, the magisterial flamboyant (“Existentiovoyeuristic conundra notwithstanding”). Or the grunge affectation of the double “though” in: “There are big differences between Agassi’s and Joyce’s games, though. Though Joyce…” It’s not that I dislike the extravagance, the excess, the beanie-baroque, the phat loquacity. They just bug the crap out of me. As do the obsessive parenthesising, insistent italicising, footnote-generating footnotes and typographical gimmickry that reaches a kind of apotheosis of unreadability in “Host,” from Consider the Lobster. And it bugs me, of course, that his style is catching, highly infectious.

Tirelessly using tireless

blobbery — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:40:54 +0530

Or Using tireless tirelessly

Next Time, Try ‘Unflagging’, the February 2012 NYTBR Reading Life column where Dyer takes on tireless

Were it not for the way my eye had started to snag on this word, I would not have paid it any attention — and that, in a way, is part of my point: “tireless” and “tirelessly” are words writers seem to use without paying them much attention. “Tireless” is a tired word that has somehow kept its place in the lexicon where others — less resilient but just as obviously over the hill or out of puff — would long ago have retired and bowed out gracefully.

A conversation with Jason Solomon about Stalker, the film and...

blobbery — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:29:10 +0530

A conversation with Jason Solomon about Stalker, the film and Zona, Dyer’s book length tribute to it

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

The Canongate Books channel for Geoff Dyer

blobbery — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:20:49 +0530

The Canongate Books channel for Geoff Dyer:

links to interviews and promos for Dyer’s books by Canongate

The Quiet Carriage… on consideration and the utter lack of...

blobbery — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:04:52 +0530

The Quiet Carriage…

on consideration and the utter lack of silence in trains

source: 5x15 stories

I am what I am

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:35:28 +0530

geoffdyer:

Interview from The Sunday Times, March 29, 2009

Asking if I wanted children would be like asking me if I’d had homosexual urges. Kids give your life meaning, but I’m at ease with the meaningless of life. The question “Why are we here?” is just kids’ stuff. The only big question to answer is how to live.

geoffdyer: Geoff Dyer at Cúirt 2011 (the audio is feeble)

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:35:13 +0530

geoffdyer:

Geoff Dyer at Cúirt 2011

(the audio is feeble)

geoffdyer: Elif Batuman & Geoff Dyer Q&A at Cúirt 2011...

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:35:05 +0530

geoffdyer:

Elif Batuman & Geoff Dyer Q&A at Cúirt 2011 - Part I

geoffdyer: Photo sourced from Writers’ Rooms: Geoff Dyer (The...

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:34:49 +0530

geoffdyer:

Photo sourced from Writers’ Rooms: Geoff Dyer (The Guardian’s Writers’ Rooms series)

geoffdyer: Dyer on But Beautiful, Out of Sheer Rage and Paris...

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:34:35 +0530

geoffdyer:

Dyer on But Beautiful, Out of Sheer Rage and Paris Trance. Probably a promo video for But Beautiful by Picador.

Geoff Dyer Collectibles: How We Experience Art

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:34:21 +0530

Geoff Dyer Collectibles: How We Experience Art:

geoffdyer:

Geoff Dyer speaks at Zócalo Public Square

A summary of the video linked above

Q&A In the Green Room:

Q. Where would we find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday?

A. I haven’t spent a Saturday in London for ages now. But we just moved into a new house, so looking ahead to…

geoffdyer: Dyer talks to Leonard Lopate on WNYC about the essay...

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:34:02 +0530

geoffdyer:

Dyer talks to Leonard Lopate on WNYC about the essay collection Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

Geoff Dyer Collectibles: On Being an Only Child

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:33:52 +0530

Geoff Dyer Collectibles: On Being an Only Child:

geoffdyer:

(photo sourced from Geoff Dyer’s official website)

Whatever form it takes, your childhood always seems perfectly normal. It took years for me to understand that I had grown up in relative poverty. If we had enough money for everything we needed, that was only because of the extent to which…

geoffdyer: “We just haven’t got the time to be late” -On...

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:33:45 +0530

geoffdyer:

“We just haven’t got the time to be late”

-On Punctuality, Geoff Dyer’s The School of Life Sermon

Related: this piece in The Guardian

Geoff Dyer Collectibles: An Academic Author's Unintentional Masterpiece

blobbery — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:33:36 +0530

Geoff Dyer Collectibles: An Academic Author's Unintentional Masterpiece:

geoffdyer:

Geoff Dyer begins a new column called Reading Life in The New York Times Book Review.

The first, An Academic Author’s Untentional Masterpiece:

In this column I want to look at a not uncommon way of writing and structuring books. This approach, I will argue, involves the writer…