Working the Room: Essays
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More About the Author
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Review
A writer who resists categorization . . . His work is illusory yet real, funny but serious. --GQ
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. --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 Boyd
A national treasure.
--Zadie Smith
If i imagine Dyer's authorial voice thrown into my inner ear, it sounds calm and supremely well-mannered. In part this is what makes him such a good comic writer - his deadpan is effortless, he never corpses . . . I had no difficulty in lapping up page after paragraph of this fare; Dyer writes engagingly on everything from his love of doughnuts to his sequested working class childhood in Swindon, and so i found myself sitting up later than intended, keeping up a mantra of agreement - um, yes, i suppose so - punctuated by the occasional bray of laughter.
--Will Self
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. --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 Boyd
A national treasure.
--Zadie Smith
If i imagine Dyer's authorial voice thrown into my inner ear, it sounds calm and supremely well-mannered. In part this is what makes him such a good comic writer - his deadpan is effortless, he never corpses . . . I had no difficulty in lapping up page after paragraph of this fare; Dyer writes engagingly on everything from his love of doughnuts to his sequested working class childhood in Swindon, and so i found myself sitting up later than intended, keeping up a mantra of agreement - um, yes, i suppose so - punctuated by the occasional bray of laughter.
--Will Self
Product Description
Alive with insight, delight and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this book offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography, music. Across ten years' worth of essays, Working the Room spans the photography of Martin Parr and the paintings of Turner, the writing of Scott Fitzgerald and the criticism of Susan Sontag, and includes extensive personal pieces - 'On Being an Only Child', 'Sacked' and 'Reader's Block' among many others. Dyer's breadth of vision and generosity of spirit combine to form a manual for ways of being in - and seeing - the world today.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book (also beautifully bound by the way) confirms Dyer's nonchalant mastery of the essay form, managing to make his insights seem effortless and conversational, while also being profound, and more than in his previous books, deeply moving. I've been enjoying Dyer since one of his early columns in the mid-1990s about Paris, women, shirts, cigarettes, apple tarts and of course cappuccino had me crying with laughter such that I was physically unable to read it out to explain what was so funny.
As well as the gags, I think he has also shown a new way to respond to art that, not unlike his mentor John Berger, but in a way that is wholly his own, manages to find the universal and even timeless in what is subjective and particular.
So as Amazon would say "treat yourself!" and get Anglo-English Attitudes while you're at it. And thank you, Geoff.
As well as the gags, I think he has also shown a new way to respond to art that, not unlike his mentor John Berger, but in a way that is wholly his own, manages to find the universal and even timeless in what is subjective and particular.
So as Amazon would say "treat yourself!" and get Anglo-English Attitudes while you're at it. And thank you, Geoff.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A collection of essays, what's more - a serious collection of essays - is not going to waft its way up to the literary best-seller list, more's the pity, because this is a collection of treasurable writings. Not all of it will engage because Dyer's interests are multifarious and sometimes very specialist (I'm thinking of his writings on jazz music. You are either an aficionado or not. Or early American photography - again, maybe not). But from around 100 pages in, you will come across some marvellous writing about art, including Turner, Rodin, and early American pastoral art. Similarly with literature. His exposition of the significance of D H Lawrence's work is entirely satisfactory. Other literary interests include James Salter, Tobias Wolff and F Scott Fitzgerald. I was gratified to find one of my favourite unsung novels commented upon, Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke which is about the Vietnamese War bringing in so many perspectives from Viet-cong to CIA, and personalising these perspectives brilliantly. After reading what he has to say about Rebecca West, I want to read her seminal novel about the Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia.
Dyer's essay on The Moral Art of War name-checks many of the non-fiction works that have attempted to make sense of recent conflicts. It is a reading list and a summary, and I now want to read some of these books, especially Dexter Filkins, The Forever War: Dispatches from the War on Terror.
The more personal essays endorse much of the same kind of charming wastrelship as a way of life as in his fiction. I was depressed by the New York donut piece, I'm not completely sure why. It seemed empty of meaning - even if funny, it left me without the energy to laugh. I thought it might be about some kind of breakdown, but he left out rational explanation. I felt something in the background was being ignored. In fact, contrary to other books of his, I wanted more seriousness, less of a sense that life is hardly worth living, so absent are the saving moments, the joy and the love. Cappuccini? Donuts? Maybe it's me that's depressed? Still, I drag myself back to what I love in Dyer's writing. It's all done for the hell of it, even when it's serious.
Dyer's essay on The Moral Art of War name-checks many of the non-fiction works that have attempted to make sense of recent conflicts. It is a reading list and a summary, and I now want to read some of these books, especially Dexter Filkins, The Forever War: Dispatches from the War on Terror.
The more personal essays endorse much of the same kind of charming wastrelship as a way of life as in his fiction. I was depressed by the New York donut piece, I'm not completely sure why. It seemed empty of meaning - even if funny, it left me without the energy to laugh. I thought it might be about some kind of breakdown, but he left out rational explanation. I felt something in the background was being ignored. In fact, contrary to other books of his, I wanted more seriousness, less of a sense that life is hardly worth living, so absent are the saving moments, the joy and the love. Cappuccini? Donuts? Maybe it's me that's depressed? Still, I drag myself back to what I love in Dyer's writing. It's all done for the hell of it, even when it's serious.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It is not the sort of thing you will find in the airport shop but for someone who wants to think it is an engaging collection of occasional essays.'The Moral Art of War', is a reply to Martin Amis's claims in The Moronic Inferno that non-fiction lacks "moral imagination". It can be rather pretentious but if you go with the flow you will be rewarded with some interesting ideas and new points of view.
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