Geoff Dyer Books

Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz is much more than an extended critical essay on a still-evolving, vital musical genre and a great deal more than fictional portrayals of Jazz legends. Here, Dyer focuses his considerable talents on creating a kind of Jazz-in-print, seeking to emulate the frenzied riffing, explosive spontaneity and creative interplay, which has given Jazz music so much more vitality than many other genres' created in the 20th century. Without question, one would have to agree that he has succeeded, totally to the readers' enrichment.

But Beautiful hits the reader on several levels; we are taken on a series of journeys into the lives, thoughts, conversations and seminal events of eight Jazz musicians. Between each chapter is inserted a fictional, road-tripping almost ghostly presence of Duke Ellington, a father figure of modern Jazz who may well have known, recorded and very likely influenced all eight men whom Dyer chose to write/riff about. What's real about the eight musicians are the bare-bones facts known to many Jazz fans; Lester Young court-martialed by the Army because of an inability to cope with a racist Drill Sergeant, Chet Baker's teeth knocked out by an angry drug dealer in a seedy, San Francisco diner, Art Pepper sentenced to five years in prison on a Heroin possession conviction and so on. What's possible, and perhaps no less real to the reader are the details of their lives, their anguish and the self-destructive passions which attend the day to day living of so many creative people. Dyer draws these details in part through listening to the music and inspiration gained by looking at photographs of some of the musicians. 'Not as they were but as they appear to me....' Dyer asks the reader to see the musicians as he sees them, to believe in the memory of what these photos inspired. The men and their lives are portrayed, much like Jazz itself, with a kind of heart-stopping intensity and a poignant, empathetic acknowledgement of lives spent creating and being swallowed whole by the gift that makes creation possible. On Thelonious Monk; "Whatever it was inside him was very delicate, he had to keep it very still, slow himself right down so that nothing affected it." On Ben Webster; "He carried his loneliness around with him like an instrument case. It never left his side."

Very little, insightful criticism or critical essays have been produced regarding Jazz and the people who play it and live it. Dyer has done more than write mere history or criticism in But Beautiful, he has written (and played) a genre-exploding, lyrical meditation on Jazz and on the terrifying, exhilarating possibilities of the music itself and what ought to be recognized as a new form of fictional riffing.

If you ever loved a jazz tune, you will love these pages. Not for anything else but for beauty in the art itself. Sobering, BUT BEAUTIFUL.

This book captures the essence of jazz. Every nuance from languid to livid, sad to sublime is etched out by Dyer's poetic and harmonious flow of prose. If you are familiar with these artists, his stories encourage you to say, put on your favorite album by Monk while you read about him -- or after you read about him, so you can reflect on how the writer has connected with the soul of the music. If you aren't familiar with the artists, this work will definitely urge you to acquire some of their music. This book is simply an extended poem, traced so delicately that it allows the experienced and the novice alike, the opportunity to peer through a window and into the soul of Jazz.

Picture this: "Onstage at Birdland, eyes shut, one arm hanging at his side....trumpet raised to his lips like a brandy bottle--not playing the horn but swigging from it, sipping it."

Geoff Dyer's employs his exquisite imagery as a starting point for his "imaginative criticism" of the celebrated and tragic lives of several iconic jazz musicians (including figures such as Chet Baker, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, and Bud Powell). While photographs are the inspiration, Dyer's writing is so precise and sensual that he need only describe the photographs (the book has only one small photo). And this is just right for a book about music, his writing is so lyrical that we almost hear the sounds while reading. (In fact. the least effective aspect of the book is the Duke Ellington "road trip" that introduces each chapter, perhaps because the narrative is not connected to any particular Ellington sound.)

Many of the scenes and dialogue (especially the inner dialogue) are necessarily fictions, "assume that what's here has been invented or altered rather than quoted." But Dyer's explains that while his version may veer from the truth, "it keeps faith with the improvisational prerogatives of the form." He mixes truth and fiction into portraits that illuminate what strictly factual history cannot always convey. (Think of Robert Graves' in his WWI memoir/fiction "Goodbye to All That."). Dyer explains that while a photo depicts only a "split second," its "felt duration" may include the unseen moments before and after that split second. "But Beautiful" invites us to improvise (as Dyer does) into that unseen time, and discover our own subjective relationship to the music.

Listen to this: "Chet put nothing of himself into his music and that's what lent his playing its pathos...Every time he played a note he waved it goodbye. Sometimes he didn't even wave."

The evocative word pictures are unusually perceptive and sensitive. Although personal and often imagined, it's really like an improvised solo that either feels "right" or not. I think "But Beautiful" hits the right notes and rhythms: his words evoke the music, and, after reading it, the music will evoke the words. Not without its flaws, it is still an astonishing feat.

This work, along with James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues," is as good as any I've read about the jazz life, its creators and innovators, and the high cost of such terrible beauty. I had the advantage of being present while Lester was lost on stage in an alcoholic stupor; Monk was dancing around the piano, knocking over cymbals, rather than playing the instrument; Chet Baker, unable to stand, was expending his last breaths on "The Thrill Is Gone"; and Duke was waiting for Harry Carney to swing by with the car to chauffeur him through the wintry night from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Kansas City. But how a young writer like Dyer managed to capture these moments before his time, freezing them unforgettably in a literary living moment, I can't imagine.

Dyer knows that the foremost responsibility of a music critic is not to critique but to verbalize his non-verbal subject, bringing it to life for the reader. He does so admirably, creating believable, recognizable, fascinating portraits in unlabored, unpretentious prose.

His portraits of the artist ring completely true to the ears of this fellow observer--penetrating glimpses of the creative child trapped in a man's body now reduced to fighting a losing battle against physical and mental entropy. Yet his faith in the living tradition of jazz is refreshing, as is his characterization of the jazz musician's struggle as a valiant contest with the precursor, not unlike that of the strong poet's.

Though there's an elegaic tone throughout the book, it's never ponderous or depressing. In fact, its human portraits are more likely to interest newcomers than the many text books that catalog styles and names.

This is not to say the book is without shortcomings. The author is much better at capturing the musicians for us than their music. And his appreciation and understanding of Duke Ellington's music seems somewhat limited. Too bad he didn't give at least as much attention to the colorful cast of characters on the band bus as to the private conveyance preferred by Duke.

Yet any listener who has the slightest interest in jazz and its makers simply cannot afford to pass this one up. And it goes a long way toward fleshing out some of the caricatures served up on the Ken Burns' television series.

What can you say of a book that starts with the line - "In August, it rained all the time."?

Literary connotations of rain, as in Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' immediately come to mind. It is safe to assume that Dyer is well aware of the build-up he is creating - indeed he draws on Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises) later in his book when one of his characters says "We are all a lost generation".

Within the first few pages after this remarkable line, the protagonist is thrown out of his 'rented' house, loses his job, and soon has his car stolen. In other words he is set up for re-entering the 'other life'. Through him, Dyer leads us into the 'other world', the 'other view' of life.

In a high-pitched discussion at a drunk party, one of his main characters, Steranko, makes a crisp speech about how he is involved in some of the most important political work of his time- "I don't eat at McDonalds.., I don't see [s**t] films, if someone is reading a tabloid-I try to make sure that I don't see it.., when people talk of house prices, I don't listen...!". This aversion to mass activities and interests is the underlying theme of the book.

The small group of friends that 'rides together' in Brixton is in a world of its own. They think their own thoughts, discuss the most important and most trivial issues of life amongst themselves,and play their own invented card games. Their perspective on life, though impractical at times, is fresh and often throws insights into life that 'normal' people 'who buy houses' miss.

Dyer's excellence at his craft keeps the book rolling at a perfect pace without any overt plot, moving from one snapshot of the city's life in the 1980s to another. The structure of the book is itself a rebellion against conventional forms of the novel. As Freddie, the wannabe author says about his own book "Oh no, there's no plot. Plots are what get people killed."! Maybe not as challenging as James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", but certainly a refreshing way to look at the concept and structure of a novel.

In many ways, the rebellion of his characters and their unacceptance of conventional wisdom, is reminiscent of J.D.Salinger's Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye). The issues change, the age group and geography is different, but the cynicism with which the protaganists in each book ragard accepted human occupations is similar.

There is a need to run away from it all. The book actually culminates with the break up of the group which starts with Freddie's sudden decision to leave the country.

In all a wonderful, painful book, that lets you in to life on the other side. A book to hold when you remember similar phases in your life, or are going through one. A book that raises several important questions, and probes us to think of answers.

Geoff Dyer's first novel begins like a first novel and develops into an accomplished work in its own right as the story progresses. The reader follows a small clique of twenty-somethings in the bohemian London enclave of Brixton. The novel is not plot-based, but is instead intended to paint a picture of a particular place at a particular time while encouraging the reader to see his or her own life reflected.

I had a few minor complaints: the introduction of the characters at the beginning is a little awkward and seemed forced. When Dyer waxes prolific, making statements about the "Lost Generation," his writing takes on the cynical self-indulgence of Martin Amis which seems out of place with characters who are warm, likable people.

But once past all of this, and it doesn't take long, the book segues into a series of loving vignettes, carefully crafted and simultaneously personal and universal in character. We all remember pieces of events and it is the details that make memories vivid and important to us. Geoff Dyer captures this in writing that is wispy and urban at the same time.

One can see his future writing ("Out of Sheer Rage" and "Paris Trance") foreshadowed in much of this and although I recommend starting with those two, in that order, any fan of Dyer's style will fall in love with this novel as well.

What can you say of a book that starts with the line - "In August, it rained all the time."? Literary connotations of rain, as in Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms' immediately come to mind. It is safe to assume that Dyer is well aware of the build-up he is creating - indeed he draws on Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises) later in his book when one of his characters says "We are all a lost generation".

Within the first few pages after this remarkable line, the protagonist is thrown out of his 'rented' house, loses his job, and soon has his car stolen. In other words he is set up for re-entering the 'other life'. Through him, Dyer leads us into the 'other world', the 'other view' of life.

In a high-pitched discussion at a drunk party, one of his main characters, Steranko, makes a crisp speech about how he is involved in some of the most important political work of his time- "I don't eat at McDonalds.., I don't see [s**t] films, if someone is reading a tabloid-I try to make sure that I don't see it.., when people talk of house prices, I don't listen...!". This aversion to mass activities and interests is the underlying theme of the book.

The small group of friends that 'rides together' in Brixton is in a world of its own. They think their own thoughts, discuss the most important and most trivial issues of life amongst themselves,and play their own invented card games. Their perspective on life, though impractical at times, is fresh and often throws insights into life that 'normal' people 'who buy houses' miss.

Dyer's excellence at his craft keeps the book rolling at a perfect pace without any overt plot, moving from one snapshot of the city's life in the 1980s to another. The structure of the book is itself a rebellion against conventional forms of the novel. As Freddie, the wannabe author says about his own book "Oh no, there's no plot. Plots are what get people killed."! Maybe not as challenging as James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", but certainly a refreshing way to look at the concept and structure of a novel.

In many ways, the rebellion of his characters and their unacceptance of conventional wisdom, is reminiscent of J.D.Salinger's Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye). The issues change, the age group and geography is different, but the cynicism with which the protaganists in each book regard accepted human occupations is similar.

There is a need to run away from it all. The book actually culminates with the break up of the group which starts with Freddie's sudden decision to leave the country.

In all a wonderful, painful book, that lets you in to life on the other side. A book to hold when you remember similar phases in your life, or are going through one. A book that raises several important questions, and probes us to think of answers.

Geoff Dyer's The Colour Of Memory is an amazingly well-written first novel novel, perhaps more so for how it is written than for what actually takes place on the pages-more about this a bit later. The narrator of Colour Of Memory, plus five or six close friends are all young, university-educated and living a near-impoverished existence in a series of barely inhabitable South London, Council flats.

In Colour Of Memory, Dyer describes in beautifully vivid detail a series of intimate snapshots of life lived day to day on the margins of Thatcher's Britain in the mid-1980's. The novel begins with a kind of lost generation, Hemingway-esque line: "In August it rained all the time-heavy, corrosive rain from which only nettles and rusty metal derived refreshment". From this line onward, the tone is set with the narrator losing his low-paying, unengaging, government-sponsored job as well as being evicted from his Brixton apatment. Narrator and friends are all portrayed by the author with a wistful, near-biographical approach. Discussing the Darwinist, capitalist landscape of Tory-dominated Britain, listening to Maria Callas on a cloudy afternoon, arguing the merits of John Coltrane's sixties-era recordings, smoking strong dope on the roof of the narrator's flat, attending parties in dangerous neighborhoods and just scraping by while trying to nurture their separate, artistic ambitions. Without question, the characters of Colour Of Memory, narrator included, are all 1980's beatniks of one kind or another and the novel makes clear how quixotic a life this really is- living in a society and an atmosphere that values financial prowess and ordinary survival skills over creativity of any variety.

What takes place on the pages of Colour Of Memory is seemingly woven together with an invisible thread; there appears to be no obvious plot, rhyme or reason to the action. Yet, the reader is propelled forward through one shimmering vignette after another. One can't articulate why, one just seems to feel some connection to these people and therefore cares about what comes next, no matter the order of happenings. Colour Of Memory could be seen as self-indulgent and a tad mundane, but fortunately for the reader it easily escapes this fate by presenting itself as a compelling group of beautifully written recollections, sometimes sad, usually funny and certainly tracing the beginning of a great writer. Maybe Dyer summarized this novel before it even began with a quote from John Berger, probably his biggest influence: " What remains of our hopes is a long despair which will engender them again".

An unforgettable and beautifully written book that should not be overlooked by any student of the Great War. A work of personal impressions which left me in tears at times. Mr. Dyer touches the reader with cutting realism and deep emotion.

Geoff Dyer presents in this book a moving and multi-layered outcry against the slaughter and consequences of World War I -- the "Great War". The main theme is remembrance, private and public, and the manifestations of both in the post-war years in Great Britain. The role of well-known British poets who served and died in the War is woven throughout. This book is well written by a literate and talented author; however it may be difficult to follow for those not well steeped in the history of that period, and especially the fate of British Army units in various Western Front battles. The basic subject is well covered in printed literature; what Dyer adds here is yet another dissection of the far-reaching impacts of the cataclysmic years of 1914-1918.

If you've ever wondered why it is you have a particular empathy with the soldiers of the first World War, especially of Flanders, this book is for you. It goes a long way towards explaining that peculiar fascination we have with the bravery of those who died, and how the details of this war, almost a hundred years later, can touch our hearts today in a way that nothing else can.

I must confess that I bought this book only because Geoff Dyer wrote it and he is my favorite author and I am a completist. I figured it was an early novel, something to give me insight into his development.

Imagine my disappointment when it arrived and I discovered it was History. Mind you, I love history (check the other reviews I've written), but I tend to find a subject and read everything I can about before I burn out and move onto something else and I really couldn't be bothered to develop a new fascination for the Great War with so many others still going.

A year later, on a whim, I brought the book with me on vacation and found myself in Paris dining alone after marching against the war. It was the first book in my bag that I grabbed and by the end of dinner I was getting all choked up and teary-eyed. By chance sitting not so far from the Somme with this book in my hands, thinking of a war not yet started, at the table in the corner, it was very affecting. But I think anyone who is interested in this perspective will find it moving whether in peacetime or war, in Nebraska or Tokyo or Egypt.

The book itself succeeds because it's not about numbers and casualties, but how we remember these struggles and how we forget them at the same time. It succeeds by placing the reader not in the conflict, something he/she could never know, but in his/her own seat: remembering that which wasn't experienced. To say more would be to demean the book and Dyer's superb writing so just read it.

Most of us, most of the time, are satisfied to be awed, intrigued, excited, even enraptured by art without developing any critical understanding of it. John Berger takes an addional step. A thoughtful critic and an excellent writer, he has been sharing his understanding with readers for more than 40 years. This book collects in one place nearly 600 pages of his essays on painting, architecture, photography, drama, and literature.

Berger on Pollock: Imagine a man brought up from birth in a white cell. And then imagine that suddenly he is given some sticks and bright paints. He would want to express his ideas and feelings. He would have nothing more than the gestures he could discover through the act of applying his colored marks to his white walls.

Berger on Picasso: The romanticism of Toulouse-Lautrec, the classicism of Ingres, the crude energy of Negro sculpture, the heart-searchings of Cézanne towards the truth about structure, the exposures of Freud. All these he has recognized, welcomed, pushed to bizarre conclusions, improvised on, sung through in order to make us recognize ourselves in the parody of a distorting mirror.

Berger on Joyce: Deep down, beneath the words, beneath the pretenses, beneath the claims and the everlasting moralistic judgment, beneath the opinions and lessons and boasts and cant of everyday life, the lives of adult women and men were made up of such stuff as this book [Ulysses] was made of: offal with flecks in it of the divine. The first and last recipe!

Four decades of thoughts such as the above: the accreted insights and enthusiasms of a restless intellect steeped in the arts. Berger began commanding attention in the 1950s. With this book, he commands it still.

I happened to pick this book up in a store because I had read one novel of Berger's, Pig Earth, which I thought was very good. I knew he was an art critic, but I never had any particular urge to read art criticism; I didn't think visual art needed a lot of explaining. Just reading the three page essay on Jackson Pollock convinced me that, at least regarding the type of criticism that Berger writes, I was wrong. In a few sentences, he seems to capture the essence of what an artist has accomplished (or is trying to accomplish) in his or her work, and makes the work more vivid and meaningful than it was before. Here is clear proof that finding words for one's experience of a work of art doesn't devalue it but makes it richer.

One of the things that makes these essays so gripping is that Berger is interested in something that seems to have fallen out of fashion in criticism: using art to identify the predicament of a culture. I remember, even before I picked up Pig Earth, being worried by the fact that Berger is a lifelong Marxist. But there is nothing doctrinaire or repetitive about his explanations of phenomenon; he is a free intellect, and I would argue that just because Marx's solutions have been widely discounted does not necessarily mean that his diagnoses are also invalid. In any case, Berger's priorities are always first exploring his subject, not imposing an orthodox framework on them.

The book, also, is not just about art. Berger is a real man of letters; his essays range over every art form and subject, and in the space of a few pages he can marshall support for his points from a novelist, painter, poet, photographer, and historian. He is never pretentious, because his primary objective is always communicating his argument with urgency. I bought this essay on the strength of the Pollock essay alone, and I've discovered so many more that I could read again and again; this is really one of my treasured books (a good measure of which is the frequency with which it comes into the bathroom with me).

The tight construction of Berger's essays makes it hard to quote a section and have it make sense as an argument, but here are a few samples: "Nobody who has not painted himself can fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse's mastery of colour. it is comparitively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either by allowing one colour to dominate or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby."

Or, in the essay on our changing relationship with animals: "Public zoos came into existence at the beginning of the period which was the see the disappearance of animals from daily life. The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters. Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man." The essay on animals had a passage on nearly every page which made me want to put the book down and think for a few minutes, and I hope I'm not doing it a disservice by quoting a fragment. Buy the book and read it all; there are few other collections that contain such a breadth of knowledge and insight. Seriously, this is value for money.

This book is what politically engaged leftist art criticism should look like. This is what American art criticism WOULD look like if we could wrest it away from the academic theory cliques and their exclusionist jargon (in which they, without a hint of irony, frame a discourse of 'inclusion'). A left-wing pirate's treasure chest of golden ideas and silver sentences, this is a book to read, re-read, admire and argue with. Berger is the art critic other critics should learn from.

As Arthur Danto has written, Berger's essays are "always original and often inspired". If you've considered reading Berger's essays because his other works, such as "Ways of Seeing" or "G.", have intrigued you, this is the most thorough - and imaginable - collection to date.

This book offers insight into art and life informed by a sagacious and radical ethos almost totally lacking in the work of art critics and the culture industry they supply. Berger is unafraid to speak honestly about what he knows: art and life -- and he knows plenty about both.

(If the investment seems steep, but you still want a solid sampling of Berger's excellent prose, consider "Sense of Sight".)

this is by far one of the greatest photographers of all time.
this book is also one of the most inspirational books i own or have read.
the pages are some of the finest paper and the images all look like no others.
the text is written so well and executed perfectly.

a must for any photographer in any aspect at all.

According to photographer Anthony Snowdon, a viewer, when looking at a picture, should not be able to tell who the photographer was. That may be true about his own photographs; he was wrong, however, when it comes to the work of Richard Avedon. Many of his photographs are instantly recognizable as uniquely his or the shots of someone imitating him. Mr. Avedon gave the world the portrait where the subject, often powerful and famous-- although that is not the case in his series "In The American West" when he shot unknowns-- is photographed looking straight into the camera without flattering lighting or camera angles before a white background. These models rarely smile although Janis Joplin and Willem de Kooning are two exceptions.

This latest collection of approximately 200 of Avedon's photographs is the catalogue that accompanies a traveling exhibit of the master photographer, which began at Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and will close in San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. It must have been a difficult assignment to select the images that are reproduced (so beautifully) here. Many of Avedon's most famous photographs are included although there were some that I had never seen before and some I missed seeing. (For example, I would have included the magnificent shot of Tina Turner that usually fills a museum wall when it is exhibited.) The one color photograph by Avedon here is the famous or infamous, depending on your point of view, of Nastssja Kinski and the Serpent (1981). Several fashion shots are included. My favorites are the two of the model Dovima-- with the elephants in 1955 and in front of the pyramids in Eqypt in 1951.

The photograph of Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg, naked and embracing, that was-- I believe-- the cover for an issue of "Evergreen" magazine in 1963 made the cut, as did Andy Warhol and members of the Factory (1969). Some of my favorites, although I cannot always say why, are the shot of Bob Dylan taken in 1963 where he looks to be about 13, (I think it is the tilt of his head that intrigues me) W. H. Auden standing in the snow in New York in 1960 and The Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Photography doesn't get better than that shot.

Avedon always said that he just photographed the surface and that the viewer only gets whatever the photographer sees in a brief moment of time. He contended also that the photograph usually tells you more about the photographer than the subject. On the other hand, the writer Albert Camus said that we are all responsible for our faces after the age of forty. Some of these portraits cry out with Camus' message. I would nominate the image of Truman Capote (1974). The word "dissipated" comes to mind immediately. Contrast the Capote photograph with, say, those of the Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie, from whom a sense of peace emanates. It is poetic justice that the artist Francis Bacon's own face takes on the grotesque shape of many of the faces in his paintings. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (1957), looking into Avedon's lens, would make you believe that the rest of the Royals were right about them, that they were dreadful people.

Accompanying this great photography collection are essays by several writers and art and photography critics assessing Mr. Avedon's contribution to 20th century photography including Helle Crenzien, Geoff Dyer, Judith Thurman, Michael Juul Holm, Rune Gade, Jeffrey Fraenkel and Christoph Ribbat. If you do not read all the essays, do not miss Geoff Dyer's discussion on what has become Avedon's signature, the portraits where the models are in front of a stark white background where the people who posed for him, if not known to the public before they sat for him, were famous thereafter. The people included in In the American West series-- drifters, waitresses, coal miners, truckers-- are every bit as engaging as those of the rich and famous and are now just as immortal.

Awesome collection of 25 short stories and essays about soccer. My favorites were Stephen Baxter's "Clods," Tim Pears' "Ebony International" Nicholas Lezards' "The Beautiful Game," Steve Grant's "Casuals," Geoff Nicholson's "The Winning Side," Mark Morris's "The Shirt," and Mark Timlin's "Wonder Boy." That said, almost every story has something worthwhile about it, and for a soccer fan, this is a must read.

It's been a while since I've read anything this flowery, and yet, it was a pleasant deviation. This book wasn't shocking for its sexual contact, but it was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't expecting such a robust sprinkling of f*ck and c*nt, but there it was, interspersed with social class distinction and haughtiness turned into naughtiness. It has the allure and staying power of liberal sex scenes, but also is the lovely picture of a love affair that transcends social mores.

A wonderful read, that explores human relationships. It is wonderfully descriptive and a pleasure to read. Highly recommend.

The use of comic strips lamely summarizing scenes from D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" came as an unwelcome surprise. The edition itself is excellent, with a fine introduction, authoritative text, maps, notes, and bibliography. But the cover (and a gratuitous list of women the author is alleged to have shagged) is more than disgraceful. What conceivable purpose does this serve? The marketing people at Penguin should think twice before defacing a classic text in this way.

I love the classics- I make sure to throw a few into my "to be read" pile just to cleanse the palette from my general fiction and genre reading. I've been wanting to read LCL for some time now, mostly because of it being censored and banned back in the day for it's explicit sex and language. In fact it was considered pornographic and, for a time, was not allowed to be mailed out into the US due to obscenity laws.

Because I do read romance and yes, even erotica, at times I have to defend my reading choices because it's considered illicit, so naturally I wanted to read LCL.

Ugh. I hated it.

Slow paced and tedious I wanted to give up on it so many times. But I'm stubborn so I couldn't let myself give up on it.

Whereas I'm sure this book was a shocker in the late 20's when it was published, to my modern eyes, it was no biggie. Yes it was graphic, but in no way could one consider this pornographic! Porn, to me, is something that is produced (visual or written) to enflame sexually. This book was far from stimulating in that way.

The first section bored me to tears, full of mind-numbing conversations that had no significance other than for the author to show how intellectual he was. I could barely read a page without my eyes drooping closed. Yes, I got that their conversations had a point- "The dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation." Yeah, I got it. But to stretch it out for the length of the entire book? Ugh.

When Lady Chatterley met Mellors, her soon to be lover- things got more interesting- for about 10 pages. Then back to the tedium. It back and forthed like that for the entire book. UGH!

I truly liked her lover Mellors. A vetern of the war and of the lower class, he seemed the most intelligent of the characters. Which was, of course, the most shocking part of the story back in the day- the fact that a member of the upper class, Lady Chatterley, cheated on her upper crust husband with a servant.

Connie (Lady Chatterley) I found wishy-washy, whiney, and downright annoying. NOT a heroine to love. BUT she knew how to find her sexual pleasure and wasn't ashamed of it. (Plus for her!) Clifford, her husband- Lord Chatterley to her Lady- I actually felt pity for, though the author did his best to make him seem unworthy of Connie.

Here's a short look at Lord and Lady Chatterley:

Cliffy, wounded and crippled during the war, was unable to perform his husbandly duties. Connie grew to loathe him and headed out for greener pastures. Now, I'll give that Cliffy was a snob and a control freak, but pitiful to be sure, and in the end didn't deserve Connie's selfishness.

(...)
... however, I am glad I read LCL. If only to say I have done so!

D.H. Lawrence daringly wrote about sexual mores in this novel, to an extent that his socioeconomic theme may have been lost by many of the readers.

Constance Chatterly - affectionately depicted as Connie or Lady Chatterly - is the highlight and nightmare to her husband, Lord Chatterly. After a whirlwind marriage and honeymoon, the lord returns to Word War I's catastrophe and is "shipped home smashed." He is a paraplegic for life, and someone who cannot provide an heir to his family's estate: Wragby.

While confined to the walls of the stately mansion, she is effectively a widow who will never know her sexuality. But she is not alone as one friend tells her, "You have to snivel and feel sinful or awful about your sex, before you're allowed to have any." Sex is a suppressed sin - not an appreciated act.

Her lover concedes women are no fun. ". . . the mass of women are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put up with it, as part of the bargain." In reflection, being married to a paraplegic may be a blessing to those very women.

But, her lover discovers fun with sex, and vice versa. They actually conjoin in orgasm. Lawrence writes about this, he writes about their propinquity of flesh, of cuddling and more. In return, England banned publication of this until 1960. Almost 32 years this book was shelved by the prurient aristocratic publishers who cringed when reading about the sex, and the details of the same.

But, Lawrence's statement is stronger. Lady Chatterly does not have sex with one of her class - no she opts for one of the servants of the manor. Oliver Mellors, a bloke who chooses to speak in Derby accent instead of proper English (which he is capable of doing) lights a flame to her inner hay stack. And, she goes wild.

Although married to be a Lady, Connie is not from such top-notch stock. But, she is still greater than a commoner, and her sister Hilda remarks about their tryst as ". . .how impossible it is to mix one's life with theirs. Not out of snobbery, but just because the whole rhythm is different."

Those people, the colliers or coal miners, are the people who work the colliery owned by Lord Chatterly. He effectively supplies income to every person's house - at least enough to keep them fed and housed, while they toil in the depths of his mines' bowels in disgusting filth and horrible conditions.

Lawrence saw his father in such mines, but saves us from learning too much of the daily toil - this is not a revelation of bad working conditions like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." But, this is a statement about social injustice, like Sinclair's "The Jungle."

In the end, all good comes of a bad situation. The commoner is anything but common and Connie's daddy sits and drinks with this potential Gold Digger and leaves the pub slapping the man on the back and opening his heart and soul to the man who somehow managed to have his daughter leave the comforts and prestige of Magbry.

Scenes like that at the pub remind me that Lawrence obviously read Dickens - like probably all his peers did. And, his novel is comparably great as it hits the forefront of not only social injustice, but attacks Victorian restraints on sex, much like other great novelists of England - including Virginia Woolf. But, he attacked such social conservatism head on. This book is a leader of its time.

I attempted to read this book twice years ago. I failed to finish each time, finding the novel laborious. Now, married and with children, I have read through this book eagerly. It is perhaps a half-lifetime of experience that has allowed me to see this story in a different light. The examination of Paul Morel's emotionally incestuous relationship with his mother and the way it cripples his love for other women is insightful. My Barnes and Nobles version of this book (I put this review under this version since it is the most popular) has a contemporaneous review (Lascelles Abercrombie, Manchester Guardian, July 2, 1913) that assesses this book much better than I can:

"Indeed, you do not realize how astonishingly interesting the whole book is until you find yourself protesting that this thing or that bores you, and eagerly reading on in spite of your protestations...You think you are reading through an unimportant scene; and then find that it has burnt itself on your mind."

This book has truly burnt itself on my mind, and I am glad that I came back to it.

Gertrude Morel thought at first that she was getting into a good marriage. Walter Morel seemed happy and successful and was not a drinker. She thought he would make a good husband and a good father to their children. It was only after they were married for awhile that she found that he spent much of his time drunk and didn't own any of the property he'd told her he owned. A seed of resentment was planted.

Once their children, especially two sons, William and Paul, were born, Gertrude stopped caring much about her husband at all and concentrated on her offspring.

Paul ends up with his mother's undiluted attention and affection. His decisions are largely based on keeping her happy, and when his thoughts wander to other females, such as those he dates, his mother grows petulant and her pouting convinces her son to come back to her. Although Paul has a good job and a bright future as an artist, he finds himself unwilling to commit to the girls he dates, because nobody can quite match up to his mother in his mind.

This is a sad story of a mother ruining her son's life without meaning to. She really only wants to love him, but her love is so overbearing that she doesn't leave room for anyone else in his mind.

The characters in this story didn't grab me. They were all incredibly weak, from Walter with his drinking problem drifting farther and farther away from his family; to Paul, unable to break away from his mother; to Gertrude, unable to make a life for herself and clinging to her son instead; to Miriam, allowing herself to be hurt over and over instead of walking away from Paul once and for all. They all needed to have some sense shaken into them.

This book didn't seem to have the normal climactic format that I had expected, which is perhaps why it is considered a piece of literature and not popular fiction. The book as a whole read rather flatly, without much action or drama, a fact lending itself to its rather autobiographical nature. It was nonetheless, very beautifully written. The book seemed more poetic in composition and most certainly more emotionally intense than perhaps would be expected. In is in fact the poetic sentiments and composition of the book that keep the reader so engaged into what would otherwise be a rather depressing work. It is ironic that a work that seems to focus so much on the reality of life would at the same time evoke a romanticism of feeling and words which it would normally criticize. That too also seems to be the conflict Paul Morel finds within himself.

I enjoy reading the works of D.H. Lawrence. I believe no other author of his time explored the complexities of human sexuality, behavior, intimacy, and depth as poignantly as him. By far I loved Lady Chatterley's Lover, his most famous and controversial novel. SONS AND LOVERS is the second Lawrence book I've read. I can't really say if I truly liked the book or not. I believe that what this book explores is deeply interesting and even haunting, seeing how controlling and possessive a mother could be on her sons, and how deeply attached sons could be towards their mother. It was also interesting seeing the complexities of the characters grow and develop with each chapter. I can definitely see why SONS AND LOVERS is considered a classic. The only flaw i found with this novel was how annoying Paul Morel is. I just found his behavior to be pathetic and ridiculous. But other than that, this is a great read, but not necessarily Lawrence's BEST work.

"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not." James Joyce

"Mama's gonna check out all your girl friends for you... Mama won't let anyone dirty get through... Mama's gonna wait up till you get in... Mama will always find out where you've been... Mamma's gonna keep baby healthy and clean..." Lyrics from the song "Mother" by Roger Waters of "Pink Floyd"

This rather abstract, deeply affecting autobiographical novel by D.H. Lawrence is sure to unearth a myriad of emotions and conceptions for most readers as it did for me. In fact, one could easily scribe a terse, ten page thesis on this one. Talk about a complex story filled with a group of complicated, and yet captivating characters, especially the two main characters - Paul Morel (based on D.H. Lawrence himself) and his possessive, yet extremely endearing mother Mrs. Gertrude Morel. Yes, as you have probably read in the other reviews, Freud would have loved this one, for it's a prime example of his Oedipus complex theory. However, to focus solely on that aspect of this story would be doing this masterpiece a grave injustice, for it is so much more than that. The abnormal and imperfect relationships of Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" are among the most widely discussed and analyzed in English Literature. This is one of those novels that will keep you completely absorbed from the first chapter on to the very last page.

The story takes place right around the turn-of-the-century in the small, rather poor, mining village of Bestwood, England (Bestwood actually based on Eastwood where Lawrence was born). All of the main characters (with the exception of Clara Dawes, who was a composite) are based on real people in Lawrence's early life. Essentially, Paul Morel's early life story is the story of D.H. Lawrence. Paul is one of four children of Mr. and Mrs. Morel, two people who are complete opposites of one another, with the former being an uneducated, uncouth, and extremely unsophisticated mineworker. Estranged from her husband early on in their marriage, Mrs. Morel decides to take comfort in her four children, particularly (after a family catastrophe that I will refrain from disclosing) her middle son Paul: "Wherever he went she felt her soul went with him. Whatever he did she felt her soul stood by him..." And to young Paul, completely alienated from his ogre father, his mother is his whole existence, by far and away "the strongest tie in his life". However, trouble soon awaits the pair as Paul begins his slow ascent into manhood.

As Paul enters into his teens, and those hormones start kicking in, he soon falls deeply in love with the austere, esoteric, loner Miriam who lives on a farm not too far from Paul's home. For many years the two of them carry on an extremely intimate, but yet purely platonic relationship. An intimacy that leaves Paul confused and totally unfulfilled. His feelings for this all-consuming girl seesaw back and forth from love to hate. And of course, his mother far from approves, "she's not like an ordinary woman... she wants to absorb him... til there is nothing left of him, even for himself... she will suck him up." Of course, his mother's adverse opinion of Miriam proves to be one of the main reasons he chooses not to marry the girl.

Paul's second love affair is with Mrs. Clara Dawes, a suffragette, who is currently separated from her troubled husband. She is introduced to Paul through Miriam, and at first the two become close friends (it is her sage advice which soon helps him end his frustrating, platonic relationship with Miriam). However, despite her being married and Paul's heart belonging to someone else, the two of them begin a passionate love affair. Of course this affair also leaves his mother very despondent and discouraged to say the least. And in the end, of course... well... I'll refrain from disclosing anything more.

I know this is a rather long review, however I still think I could write for days about this one and even then not quite do it justice. D.H. writes with such detailed, flowery, and poignant prose. This novel is a unique, in-depth look inside of the artist himself. He very bravely sketches for us his true character, warts and all, and about all the events that made him what he was.

Lastly, I've read several reviews bashing Mrs. Morel, but all in all, with what she had to work with, she seemed to do a relatively good job in raising her children. The majority of 'mama boys' I have known in my life usually are self-centered, egotistical, under-achieving, pompous jackasses. They are the type of guys who think that it's their planet, and the rest of us here are just visiting. Thankfully so, D.H. Lawrence did not turn out that way! Ergo, his mother had to do something right.

In closing, all I have to say is - WHAT A MASTERPIECE! If this isn't deserving of five stars, then I don't know what is.

Not especially distinguished as a storyteller, or a travel expert, or a memoirist, what Mr Dyer is primarily is a writer - he has the rare quality of rendering anything he alights on into literature, no matter what the genre. His wide-ranging interests, reflected in his bibilography, are a result of his admitted indolence, his oft-stated desire to run away from any kind of graft and 'watch telly'. A curse for him perhaps, but a blessing for all who read him. Every sentence which isn't simply descriptive resonates and lingers; better to say that every sentence is a kaleidoscope, lighting on things half-remembered, half-known by us all. The biggest compliment you can pay him is that while reading, you wish he would tackle your own favorite subjects so that he could illuminate them in all the ways you would wish to. Midway though the book he quotes George Steiner as saying 'The best readings of art are art' going on to say that 'in such instances the distinction between imaginative and critical writing disappears'. He's not Lawrentian enough to claim this status for his own work, but most who read this would I think agree it fitting.

Read this book after Joyce Carol Oates mentioned it on CSPAN as a hilarious memoir. Hadn't read anything funnier in years and have been recommending the book since! Coincidentally, the June 4, 2007 issue of New York Magazine has an article titled, "The Best Novels You've Never Read - Sixty-one Critics Reveal Their Favorite Underrated Book of the Past Ten Years" and Out of Sheer Rage is mentioned. I couldn't agree more!

It is actually disturbing to think that I might have lived my entire life without knowing about Dyer and this book had not a friend recommended it to me. Dyer's memoir/rumination/travelogue/indictment/paean is one of the most brilliant, original and engaging books I've ever read. I'm amazed that it is so little known.

This is a funny, brilliantly written book about not being able to get on with writing a study of D.H.Lawrence. If you're a writer too you will groan and wince with recognition (unless you're a model of Trollopean industry)--though you're unlikely to take writerly procrastination to Dyer's wild extremes. The book is endlessly self-referential and yet--in spite of this or because of it?-- is interesting, compelling, compulsively readable, and laugh-out-loud funny. How does he get away with it? Well, it's not just about Dyer, but also about many many other things that he sees and experiences and reads as he travels the world with Laurentian rootlessness in the company of the longsuffering Laura (one's heart goes out to her). And it's about how to live; and how not to live; about hope, and despair. And much more; while also conveying a vivid sense of what DHL might have been like as a person, so the study of DHL is finally achieved in the end.
Is it memoir? literary biography? Travelogue? it's all of these and more.
In the end the pleasure of a book like this can't be conveyed in a review, because the brilliance of the book is in the writing.

Geoff Dyer's study of D.H. Lawrence was conceived as a distraction. Dyer wanted to read Lawrence with a purpose. Preparation postponed the task. The Lawrence project was supposed to take him out of himself. Lawrence wasn't too keen on islands and Geoff Dyer isn't either. Dyer and Rilke both had difficulty doing nothing but work. To Dyer it seemed that making a start on the Lawrence book seemed more boring than doing nothing. After a moped accident and on the mend Dyer began to believe again in his Lawrence project.

Huxley noted that Lawrence had a great responsiveness to the world. Dyer looked at pictures of Lawrence he had collected. The closer Lawrence came to dying, the more he looked like D.H. Lawrence. Dyer and his friend, Laura, traveled to Sicily, one of those touchy respect cultures. Geoff and Laura went to Villa Fontana Vecchia. There was a plaque. Dyer had driven to Eastwood. According to Lawrence the workers hungered for beauty. For Rilke the real work was to organize his existence, but not so for someone like John Updike who began his productive writing life early. Lawrence was untroubled by this sort of thing. His mature work was based upon his relationship with Frieda. Lawrence had found a home within himself as had Rodin.

Reading Lawrence's letters was a perfect excuse for not writing the book. 'The Ship of Death' was written in autumn, 1929. The first intimation, though, came in 1913 in a letter to Edward Garnett. What we want years later is a Lawrence in the midst of his sensations. SEA AND SARDINIA has a note-like immediacy. The essence of Lawrence's writing and life moves in the opposite direction of achieving serenity. Lawrence wanted to turn his emotions into a philosophy. He shows it takes a daily effort to be free. For the writer work means the suspension of life.

This postmodern treatment of Lawrence and the act of writing about him is very good.

This book may be more meaningful for the reader with some knowlege in the field. It's coversational tone and references to photographers
and their works already familiar to the reader promotes a feeling of intimacy.
I found the author's views on photography interesting. His views on the
works of well-known photographers,their similar subjects and their personal approaches to these like subjects proved illuminating as well.

"The Ongoing Moment" is an examination of the content of some famous modern photographs. This is by no means a history of photography. Instead, Dyer suggests that something may be learned about photography by examining photographs with similar content taken by different photographers. In doing so, the author organizes the photographs by subject matter into a taxonomy that is, by the author's own admission, idiosyncratic, and perhaps bizarre. For example, his categories include pictures of blind people, pictures with hats and pictures of barbershops.

He focuses (pardon the pun, but Dyer seems to love that kind of clever speech) on the documentary photographers of the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Frank, and mostly on photographers in America although there is reference to Atget and Brassai and other photographers not working in America. His method is to discuss individual pictures with the same subject, occasionally placing the picture in context by referring to some other art with a similar theme like a poem by Robert Frost or "The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy. But the discussion seems to be purely descriptive. It's said that a picture is worth 10,000 words and speaks for itself. If that's true, what are we to learn from Dyer?

Dyer says that he suspects that the book will be a source of irritation to many people, especially those who know more than him about photography. He gleefully acknowledges that he doesn't even own a camera but that he wrote the book in an attempt to comprehend photography. After reading the book, I don't know if Dyer comprehended photography, but I was certainly irritated.

Dyer's discussions sound like cocktail party conversation by a witty, cynical person. He includes lots of stories about the photographers, often scabrous, and is not above being sexually and scatologically vulgar, perhaps to impress us that he is a man of the world. But his examination of the photographs deals with the denotation of the subject, and seldom the connotation. This may be because of his insistence on examining content only. Yet it is the form of art that allows the artist to convey to us what is going on in the work beyond the simple subject.

I also have to complain about the photographs included and not included in the book. The included pictures were often too small. But in many cases Dyer makes reference to a picture that is not included, usually for the purpose of comparison. He is then forced to give a lengthy description of the non-illustration. I understand that the author may not have been able to get the rights to print a particular picture. However, if, as Dyer seems to suggest, there are a set of favorite subjects of photographers which in many ways are similar, it would have been better to select another photograph that we could see.

Dyer himself says that there are many great books available about the ideas of photography and seems to recommend them to the reader. This left me with the question "What is this book for?"

Dyer, a non-photographer has taken on the task of trying to catalog trends in photography. Its weaknesses are that it is limited as the author writes (he did have to get permission to use images) and is mainly American men and twentieth century. While it includes Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange and Nan Goldin extensively and two brief mentions of Imogen Cunningham. The absence of Margaret Bourke-White, Lisette Model, Sally Mann, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Tina Barney when they would have fit into what was studied created the typical boys club attitude.

That being said it is still a good introductory to thinking about what is going in your photographs. Without taking a photograph he illuminates the subject of subject matter.

By having no chapters but rather by slipping in and out of subject matter he does a very good job of introducing photographic history and theory to the beginner. He allows people to think about how they have been influenced by the images and social meanings of subject matter that goes into a photographer's decision to trip the shutter.

One of the greatest lessons for a photographer to learn is that you are not photographing a completely new idea. You as a photographer have been influenced by the society that you have grown up in and while you may not consciously recognize that an image is familiar to you that image has been seen before. Dyer indicates that quotation can sometimes create better images by the quoter than the quoted and allows the photographer to make a statement about the quoted.

Dyer as an Englishman can take an outsider's view of American photography and recognize cultural differences and preferences that an American inherently overlooks as natural. I think that this helps him understand Robert Frank even more than Americans think they do, however it also ignored William Klein's work that was always overshadowed by Frank's coming out a year or two later and grabbing the attention.

Overall he did a thorough examination within the limitations of the length of the book and images to use (images should be larger) and tied it altogether by the end. It is hard to write a cohesive book on such a wide subject so the author who hopes that his book can be read non-linearally did an excellent job of weaving an image into his tapestry.

This book is admittedly the first and only by Geoff Dyer that I have read but I have a feeling that will change for me. As an interested reader about photography, the book is a wonderful weaving of history and culture in the production of the "representative" photograph.

One need not have a deep knowledge of the history of photography to be amazed at the linkages and connections that Dyer proposes between photographers and their photographic products. Examples are presented in the book to facilitate Dyer's exposure (perhaps fabrication) of a long extended conversation amongst recognized photographers through the subjects they photographed. Whether by fact or fiction or insider knowledge, it turns out not to matter, for the wonderful thing about looking at such photographs is that the content can mean so many different things depending upon the life and experiences of the viewer - true of any art done well.

This book is not a history of photography--nor is it meant to be--though it does look at photography over a large span of time and so is by default a history of sorts. But the book is really one writer's meditation on photography. As such, much is left out, but the omissions in no way mar the book; being comprehensive is not the point. One reviewer above calls the book cynical, like cocktail chatter (not sure what the two have in common or how Dyer could in any way be construed as cynical), which seems preposterous. Simply put, Dyer writes as a person fascinated with and under the spell of photography (an approach he took to his book on jazz), and in doing so offers keen insights--the likes of which are not to be found in other books on the subject. His viewpoint as an outsider is actually a benefit. Beautifully written, this book is a classic, something a reader will return to again and again.