essay topics: visuals /verbals/ Musicals / Variables / Personals. 1989 -2010

If Anglo-English Attitudes (1999) was the first collection of Dyer's essays and Working the room was the second (2010), this book is a mash-up of the the two previous efforts. If, like me, you already read one of the mentioned book, this third collection will offer half of its pleasures; if you're new to Dyer's essays, this is the right book to read (waiting for a new collection in the forthcoming years...). ( )

Geoff Dyer is a hard man to pin down. He (deliberately) spans pretty much every subject in his writing, and they're represented in this book as several different clusters: essays on photography, literature, music, history, and memoir. Sometimes this works against the reader; I went through the first 125 pages before I reached the first subject I was already familiar with, and had some grounds on which to understand Dyer's approach.

His writing is inescapably subjective and concerned with aesthetics alone. Dyer practically consigns himself to this niche as he discards traditional academic credentialing and enjoys writing as the motive for research rather than the other way around. There seems to only wisps of substance yet it's somehow pretty enjoyable. After all, I managed to read the whole thing in a single weekend. ( )

For those of us so hungry for more David Foster Wallace that we begin to believe that Jonathan Lethem might be a satisfactory replacement stop it right now. This fellow Dyer is the real deal, or if he is not the real deal, he is very very close. If good writing is what you are looking for then this is the guy. If personality in the writing matters, as it must for any DFW fan, then Dyer has it in spades. It simply comes down to if you like him or not. And I do. For a more thorough and honest look at the selected work of Geoff Dyer go here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/t/3146fb ( )

I am a Geoff Dyer fanboy and this volume was pure candy for me. Beyond the sheer joy and fireworks of Dyer riffing away at a glittering array of interesting subjects, these selections tend to create connections between many of is larger works and illuminate the everyday experiences and minor realizations that allowed the conception of those showcase pieces. Enjoy! ( )