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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By leigh hughes
Format:Paperback
I am a dedicated fan of EVERYTHING Dyer writes. He is a genius .HOWEVER ,this is an American edition which brings together 3 books already published in the UK --all of which I own. A little bit naughty that there is no information clarifying this on the Amazon website
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars
9 reviews
24 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I didn't know Dyer at all. Now I can't put him down.
1 Jun 2011
By Travis
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I don't normally write reviews on Amazon but for this book I simply had to. Dyer's essays are amazing! I'm only 50 or so pages into the book but I had to sit down and write this review right now. I know that my opinion will not change - it's a wonderful book! Being a Literature person in college and grad school, I've heard of a lot of the folks Geoff is writing about in the "Verbals" section, but as for the other sections, I'm mostly clueless. Sure I've heard of Avedon and Metinides and Rodin and Def Leppard. But do I know anything about them, really? Other than that they were photographers or sculptors or musicians? No! But that's the really great thing about this book: you don't need to know a thing about any of these people, or their work, to appreciate what Dyer is saying about them. It's all fairly philosophical and subjective and meandering....and beautiful. He mixes quick, torpedo-like statements of opinion with drifting and rambling thoughts. It feels like Dyer wrote the book with the intention of readers strolling through it slowly, as if they're walking along a winding path through a dense forest. The torpedoes are meant to shake you awake, but then, really, he just lets you keep meandering at your own pace, leisurely, pleasurably. I couldn't help but write all over the pages. Some parts go faster than others, some parts are more detailed, and some parts are more interesting. But as a whole, the entire forest is really quite beautiful. So far, reading Dyer's essays has been both fascinating and illuminating. I've learned more about photography from reading the first five essays in this book than I ever have before in my life.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Boy, Is This a Stinker
22 Dec 2011
By Serious Fun
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I love Geoff Dyer. He's brilliant. He's hilarious. He's smart as hell. But this collection is an utter failure. The pieces are too short and too occasional to be of interest. And, believe it or not, this is a revision of a former collection of his occasional essays! My god, this guy has an ego. But, repeat, I *love* this writer, so, presumably, I should love everything he writes. But I didn't and that, my friends, is the measure of how bad this collection is. Even the piece on sex in hotels is boring. It's all sad and boring. I wish I hadn't read it, as it has diminished my abundant enthusiasm for the author.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
I never knew something could be simultaneously fascinating and tiresome
5 Sep 2012
By J.L.
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I always thought that if someone cares about something deeply enough (and provided they are reasonably good at articulating it), then I will want to read it, no matter the subject. This book kind of overturned that.
Geoff Dyer is a special species of aesthete. Or maybe just an extreme example of an aesthete. The aesthete of all aesthetes. This is a man who cares more deeply about aesthetics and beauty than most of us care about our mother. It would be fair to use the term "obsessive." He speaks of jazz musician Don Cherry with a saintly if not creepy reverence. He will plead passersby to tell him where he can find a Doughnut Plant doughnut. He will organize his entire day around the right cup of cappuccino. The man can't help but to write essays examining the merits of chained-bicycle street memorials.
This all makes for a fascinating read, at least for a while. Geoff Dyer is the first person I would go to for an assessment of an object's aesthetic merits, but reading 415 pages of those assessments was for me - someone who could fairly be called an aesthete himself - sort of tiresome.
The troubling part is that Dyer's concern for aesthetics seems to supersede his concern for anything else, like, well, people. His concern is more for the chained-bicycle street memorials than for the people they memorialize. His concern is more for the immaculate fluffiness of hotel bathrobes than for the people who wear them. His concern is more for his mate's opinion of Burning Man than it is for the woman who will be attending Burning Man with him. He calls her "the woman that I had recently started sleeping with." (Notice he uses "that" instead of "who.")
If you don't share his deep passion for these things, the overall feeling from this book is one not of aesthetic appreciation but of profound loneliness.
Regardless, I'd recommend reading at least a couple of the essays/reviews because this man has such a depth of concern for aesthetics that he penetrates them to a level that we ordinary folks cannot fathom.
Geoff Dyer is a special species of aesthete. Or maybe just an extreme example of an aesthete. The aesthete of all aesthetes. This is a man who cares more deeply about aesthetics and beauty than most of us care about our mother. It would be fair to use the term "obsessive." He speaks of jazz musician Don Cherry with a saintly if not creepy reverence. He will plead passersby to tell him where he can find a Doughnut Plant doughnut. He will organize his entire day around the right cup of cappuccino. The man can't help but to write essays examining the merits of chained-bicycle street memorials.
This all makes for a fascinating read, at least for a while. Geoff Dyer is the first person I would go to for an assessment of an object's aesthetic merits, but reading 415 pages of those assessments was for me - someone who could fairly be called an aesthete himself - sort of tiresome.
The troubling part is that Dyer's concern for aesthetics seems to supersede his concern for anything else, like, well, people. His concern is more for the chained-bicycle street memorials than for the people they memorialize. His concern is more for the immaculate fluffiness of hotel bathrobes than for the people who wear them. His concern is more for his mate's opinion of Burning Man than it is for the woman who will be attending Burning Man with him. He calls her "the woman that I had recently started sleeping with." (Notice he uses "that" instead of "who.")
If you don't share his deep passion for these things, the overall feeling from this book is one not of aesthetic appreciation but of profound loneliness.
Regardless, I'd recommend reading at least a couple of the essays/reviews because this man has such a depth of concern for aesthetics that he penetrates them to a level that we ordinary folks cannot fathom.
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3.2 out of 5 stars
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