This is a lovely novel. Rich writing and a great story. The first chapter is a bit boring, but you'll be glad if you read on.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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 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.

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.

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.

The beauty of belonging to a reading group is that everyone is exposed to books that they might not normally read. I don't think that I would have considered reading this book except that it was the choice of my book club.

Well, this story was not really what I expected at all. Constance, Lady Chatterley is a rather likeable person who is trapped in a sad and boring life. What happens to her and her lover is something neither really anticipated nor expected. The book starts in 1917 and at the time when it was first published, the subject matter of LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER was considered to be totally shocking and unacceptable.

Yes, a few parts of the book have rather crude passages, and language, but Lady Chatterley herself is a very sympathetic character. The style of writing used by D. H. Lawrence is very descriptive and the pace of the story is probably a little slower than modern readers are used to. Aside from some offensive language, I think that this was a rather interesting, but very depressing book. Many of the characters seemed to be lacking in any kind of a moral code and I found most of the men in the story to be rather despicable.

This was the first book by Lawrence that I ever read, and it made me want to read his other works. Something in Lawrence's style, whether it's his complete and almost unsettling way of capturing human thought and emotion, or his flawless way with language, makes you long to be 'subjected' to his words for another 300 pages.

Since Lady C's Lover was the first of his books that I read, I had the idea, not surprisingly, that all of his works would contain that purity and honesty of word choice (aka profanity) that this famous work is ripe with. Don't think this for a minute. When you read Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and The Rainbow, you will get the feeling that Lady C's Lover was Lawrence's great mental eruption. These other works *tremble* slightly with allusions; VERY subtle allusions. It's as though Lawrence's mind was building up and preparing itself with his other works for what would be Lady Chatterley's Lover. Because, if you haven't read anything by Lawrence and know little about him, you will receive a MASSIVE surprise with this book...either a very pleasant (my case) surprise, or an unpleasant one. If you took offence at Holden Caulfield's language, your mind will scream at the language of Lady C's Lover. What we call 'the F word' in our more self-conscious moments, is used surely more than 100 times in this work. I don't think I've ever seen more straight-out connotations, allusions, imagery, everything, than in this book. It's amazing! At times, you will catch yourself marvelling at how Lawrence must have written it in a white hot fever, unable to stop, but surely knowing just how hard it would be to get this puppy published in his day and age. The work, then, is a brutal piece of honesty written, I feel, for the author's sake more than for the public's. That makes it priceless. It's one of the rare moments when we can view a writer's 'literary soul,' the part of their mind that usually will not surface for fear of not being publishable.

Whether you'd describe it as beauty, art it would be a good idea to read Lady Chatterley's Lover so that you can know for yourself what you feel about what is probably one of the greatest books ever written.

Lawrence really lays bare his soul in this book. It is the story of a ripe, red blooded woman who needs a real man. As usual there doesn't seem enough to go around. Ladies! I hope you all meet a Mellor's in your lives. Gardening is indeed a great trade for aspiring lovers. And You'll love this tale - it was one of Lawrence's best.

Lawrence wanted to bring us back to our dynamic center; he hated this celebral world and head sex. His domain was the realm of the body ... And all of its pent up sexual dynamisms. If you read Fantasia of The Unconscious you will be able to access his views right from his teeming intelect. He was perhaps one of the finest writers Britain ever produced and his literary output was prodigious indeed!

Sons and Lovers, while a good book, is not, in my opinion, great. The ending left me unsatisfied. I don't know whether the reader is supposed to sympathize with Paul Morel, but I didn't. I found him to be - what did I find him to be? - he is arrogant and - what were his qualities? - I don't know, just arrogant. In fact, I did not find any characters that I liked. Although you don't have to like the characters to like the book, I didn't even like the plot. It was bland. You're probably wondering why I gave it three stars. There were some parts of the book that were excellent at showing human nature and how people relate to each other. For instance, Paul was attracted to Clara because at first she was indifferent to him. It just shows you that The Rules were at work even nearly a century ago! In conclusion, I like the book, I just don't loooove the book. I also did not quite feel the relationship between Paul and his mother.

In reading any novel you bring a certain amount of yourself and your experiences with others to the table, which helps you to understand the characters you meet. For me it was difficult to comprehend the relationship between Paul and his mother; it is unlike anything I've experienced before, and I can't imagine the feelings he had or how they affected his relationships with his lovers.

Paul and Miriam were a trifle difficult, as well, though I was closer to getting it with them. One fo my problems was that I kept projecting personality characteristics onto Miriam as I grew to know her (sometimes verging on stereotypes), only to understand later that that wasn't who she was, that she too was unlike anyone I had met before, though similar in some respects. I would like to read Lawrence's account of the real person whom Miriam was based on.

The characters in Sons and Lovers are people that will ultimately expand your understanding of human nature, but for me, their motivations were so foreign that I didn't entirely grasp them the first time around. The best I could do was recognize that Lawrence was depicting very real people in a very detailed and compassionate way. I, however, remained out of the loop for most of the book.

The most I gained from Sons and Lovers was a detailed sketch of life in early 20th centurey England. It was interesting to note that, despite the stereotype of the proletariat during the industrial revolution, being a coal miners family did not automatically relegate you to a lifetime of poverty. Not only did the miners make decent enough wages to afford a house, furniture, good food and several pints of beer a week, but for a man (at least) of other talents, the sky was the limit as to how far he could go.

This is a perfect book for anyone who enjoys reading twentieth century British literature. I like the fact that D. H. Lawrence is able to realistically portray the emotions of the many characters in the book. I did not only learn Paul's side of the story, but I also gained insight into Gertrude's, Miriam's, and Clara's thoughts and feelings towards Paul and towards each other. This omniscient narration makes the story a more interesting study into human emotions. Lawrence deals very heavily with psychological motivations for each character's actions, making the characters more human and believable. This is a great story that goes far beneath the surface. Sons and Lovers is a thought-provoking tale of love, death, possession, vulnerability, and heartache. I would recomend it to anyone looking for a good book to read.

I usually cringe at the thought of writers writing about how hard it is to write, but Dyer pulls it off with frequently hilarious results.

Quotes frequently help me to decide whether or not to read a book, so here's one of my favorites:

I asked why a red light on the dashboard was flashing.

'Is to tell me I am not wearing seat belt,' Ciccio said. An EU ruling meant that all new cars were fitted with this warning device. A stupid and dangerous idea, he thought. The flashing distracted and could make you crash. But there was someone he knew who going to disconnect the wires so that he could ride in comfort without his seat belt and without this flashing light. Wouldn't it be easier just to wear the seat belt? I asked, but that was beside the point. The point was that there was a way around this edict. Italians enjoy exercising their ingenuity to trivial ends. To use ingenuity for some loftier purpose is somehow to diminish it. The more pointless the end the more vividly the means of achieving it is displayed. The further south you travel, the more extreme this tendency becomes. The ingenuity of the romans, for example, is as nothing compared to that of the Neapolitans. Ciccio even knew someone who sold T-shirts with a diagonal black band printed across the chest so that the police would be deceived into thinking you were wearing your seat belt.

Dyer is at his best at moments like this. When he starts dishing out actual insights into literature, he can occasionally get pretentious and windy, and most of ideas seem ripped of other thinkers - Barthes, especially. Whining about how hard it is to write his book would be insufferable if Dyer didn't have a lovely comic touch, and wasn't such a good writer (I recommend his book on jazz highly). His digressions about Rilke, Camus, and Nietzsche were occasionally interesting, but more often seemed unnecessary and (as is perhaps inevitable in such a book) pretentious.

If the book was any longer, it wouldn't work; you can't sustain such an exercise for very long. But as it is, it's worth a lot of a laughs, a couple of insights, a wonderful portrait of the author and a passable portrait of D.H. Lawrence.

I suppose one could only write a really decent, insightfulreview of Geoff Dyers' genre-defying Out of Sheer Rage by followingthe same wonderfully tortuous path taken by the author himself:procrastinate, delay, evade and travel to the far-flung places as Mr. Dyer once did, while constantly examining and re-examining one's own unique array of neuroses. Perhaps, like Geoff Dyer, by failing to write a solid review, one succeeds by taking a circular route, never diving straight to the heart of the matter and recognizing the triumph inherent in such a futile enterprise. Having said all that, one must keep ones' day job after all and what follows will have to pass for a circular route. Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence is a book within a book about trying, failing and succeeding at writing a biography of D.H. Lawrence (in a roundabout way) while simultaneously (quite by accident) employing one's personal and literary failures to gain access to one's own true self. Dyer leads the reader on a dizzying ride, we travel along with him and his long-suffering, multilingual girlfriend Laura in an effort to gain inspiration by way of the ritual of movement and a sense of place. We visit Italy,(Taormina, Rome)New Mexico, (Taos) Mexico (Oaxaca) and Oxford, all places where Lawrence once worked and lived. Nothing tangible realized there except some brilliant discoveries about the author's interior life. Observations usually unearthed by quoting Lawrence himself; "Freedom is a gift inside one's soul, Lawrence declared, you can't have it if it isn't in you." Dyer observes in a moment of self-awareness; "A gift it may be but it is not there for the taking. To realize this capacity in yourself is a struggle." And a further quote from Lawrence about getting to the core of one's own capabilities (or lack thereof) "Let a man fall to the bottom of himself, let him get to the bottom so that we can see who he really is." Dyer pulls us back into the past, then headlong into the present with beautifully written observations about the self, coping with depression, Nietzsche and the vagaries of his relationship with his girlfriend, Laura; " For Laura it is always 'together forever', for me it is always more like 'together whenever." (For arts' sake ? the reader can only guess). On falling in and getting out of depression; "All I felt was: I am depressed. I am depressed. And then, this depression generated its own flicker of recovery. I became interested in depression." And some Nietzschean philosopy to ameliorate despair; "Nietzshe wrote that the thought of suicide had got him through many a bad night, and thinking of giving up was probably the one thing that's kept me going." And inevitably, insights on the uselessness of giving up, of recognizing that what makes life so unbearable is that those things which seem so unbearable are in fact bearable; " The only way to give up totally is to kill yourself but that one act requires an assertion of will equal to the total amount that would be expanded in the rest of a normal lifetime. Killing yourself is not giving up, it's more like a catastrophic fast-forwarding." Out of Sheer Rage is an ultra-vivid mosaic whose parts can only be glimpsed whole from a distance; one could read, re-read and write endless reviews and still not quite grasp its' true essence on either an individual or general level (which may in fact be its' true essence). But a few stray thoughts may yet be relevant when considering Out of Sheer Rage; to paraphrase Dyer: "One is really one's true self when believing that one is not one's true self." And this final, uplifting endnote; "One way or another we all have to write our studies of D.H. Lawrence. Even if they will never be published, even if we will never complete them, even if all we are left with after years and years of effort is an unfinished, unfinishable record of how we failed to live up to our ambitions. The world over, from Taos to Taormina, from the places we have visited to countries we will never set foot in, the best we can do is to try to make some progress with our studies of D.H. Lawrence." Out of Sheer Rage is both a gift to the reader and a virus that needs to be spread; once read, it begs to be re-read and passed along to anyone with the ability for even momentary self-reflection. So please read this book, then give it to someone as a gift so that they too can spread what cannot or should not be cured. END

Dyer has written an entertaining, informative, imaginative, and philosophically-revealing view of his struggle to motivate himself to write a book about one of his idols, D. H. Lawrence.

I felt an immediate closeness with Dyer when he said on p. 16 that "The Complete Poems" was probably the single most important book of Lawrence's. I have always been drawn more to DHL's poems and essays than to his novels. And yet in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, DHL is referred to as a "British novelist," and not as a "British author."

As the work goes on, it becomes clear that Dyer's preferred source of material are DHL's Letter. The most positive aspect of the book is the nine-page index given at the end of the book, mostly to quotes from Lawrence's letters. Dyer's description of trying to pace himself through the seven volumes of letters is a minor masterpiece of hilarity. Also humerous are his descriptions of sitting across from a lady with a cold on the train, and his childhood health problems. I have never read a book when I burst out laughing as often as in reading this one.

Dyer likes to draw parallels between himself and DHL, physically as well as emotionally and spiritually, because DHL is one of his heroes. Or is he? How could he have made the statement on p.207 that "...once I have finished this book...Lawrence will become a closed book to me. That's what I look forward to: no longer having anything to do with Lawrence." Or is he, in the heat of his authorship, lost in one of his mazes of contradiction.

Dyer says his favorite photograph of DHL is one of him sitting under a tree "doing nothing." That is not the DHL of history; Lawrence was one of the most "do-something" authors in the history of the planet. His myriad works in his short lifetime attest to that.

This book is definitely a funny first read, especially to authors who have writer's block. Dyer's circuitous, contradictory analyses of the predicaments of life are amusingly original. But while I am grateful to Dyer for bringing the content of DHL's Letters to my attention, I grew weary of his constant wish to "do nothing." And I think Dyer is weary of it himself.

Since the early 1950's, John Berger has authored an almost dizzying number of works on art history, art criticism, fiction and politics, as well as a large body of writing that seems to defy categorization altogether. And that is why one can't help but feel a kind of admiration for Geoff Dyer's courage to take on, for his first full-length book, a difficult critical subject and author in Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger.

Although Dyer clearly sees Berger and his work as massively influential yet nearly always overlooked by his peers and contemporaries, it is obvious that Ways of Telling is a great deal more than a mere reaffirmation of, or a critical love letter to, an illustrious writer and his sometimes ground-breaking work. In Ways of Telling, Dyer looks carefully at the broad spectrum of Berger's career, from articles on politics and aesthetics during the early 1950's published in Socialist newspapers and magazines, to novels written in the mid-1980's. Perhaps because Dyer intended (one could plausibly surmise) Ways of Telling to be not only an academic critique but a work written for a slightly wider readership, we are invited to take a closer look at several of Berger's more universally known works. These include G, an historical novel influenced by Socialist Realism and according to Dyer, possibly inspired by the Cubist movement as well. We look at A Painter of Our Time, Berger's breakthrough novel about the struggle between the moral imperative of being true to one's creative gifts versus fidelity to one's political beliefs. Scrutiny is also given to the near-canonical Ways of Seeing, both the BBC television series and the widely-read 1972 book of the same name. Dyer is quick to acknowledge that although the polemical, class-based attack on consumer-driven capitalism and "the authority of property" by way of a beautifully written critique of Western Art is often crudely drawn in Ways of Seeing. One might miss the point entirely if one chooses to ignore the manner in which Berger's sharp sense of aesthetics and his critical eye opened the floodgates to what is now the standard method for looking at art for an ever-widening audience.

No doubt it is a tall order for any reader, or writer to separate John Berger's Democratic-Socialist and Humanist value systems from much of his work, Dyer reminds the reader that any attempt to do so is pointless and probably an unnecessary exercise. To quote Dyer " He is a great writer, but the quality of his work is important, finally, not for what it reveals of him but for what it enables us to glimpse of ourselves, of what we might become-and of the culture that might afford him the recognition that it is due."

I love Geoff Dyer, but this is not his best book. Consisting of stories that take place around the globe and which may or may not have happened or may not have happened quite as presented(the "genre-bending" the publishers are pushing, but anyone whose read autobiographical material... Spalding Gray, Bertrand Russell is aware of the may (not) have happened factor), the stories are Dyer's trademark style and sense of humor unevenly applied. Some of the stories ("Miss Cambodia") are simply excellent. Others are good stories peppered with far too much name checking of other authors ("Leptis Magna") and still others ("The Infinite Edge") are just simply mired in pretentious navel-gazing.

To take the latter, the author is in South-east Asia, but aside from the fact that it's ever-so-green (the first thing anyone notices about the region), there is nothing remotely remarkable about the setting. It is as though Dyer hopped half way around the world to hang around with Western backpackers (which is, I suppose, what all backpackers do, but I digress). Then, to top it off, he (rather, a character) quotes Rilke! So narrator-Geoff has traveled to the ends of the earth to quote Western authors with European backpackers? Ech. It's why people shudder at tourists. Even in "Miss Cambodia," narrator-Geoff admits that he can't distinguish between one temple and the next, but from all the Western quotes sprinkled throughout it becomes apparent that narrator-Geoff has no way to relate to his exotic settings because he knows nothing about them. He only knows a corpus of Occidental thought, DWEM's if you will.

One of the things that made "Out of Sheer Rage" so good was that every location imparted some meaning to narrator-Geoff, every event had an impact central to an intellectual development. Too often in "Yoga" the settings have no meaning whatsoever because they have no purpose for the narrator.

Having gotten my complaints out, I must say that many of the stories had me laughing out loud. The humor is quite self-deprecating in a very un-Bill Bryson way (thank goodness). "Leptis Magna" may lose its momentum navel gazing, but anyone who has ever travelled to a North African country can relate to the author's predicaments and culture barriers.

In short, it's worth reading after you've completed Dyer's better work. Just don't expect to have your Tevas knocked off.

Geoff Dyer is brilliant and hilarious. I couldn't put it down. One of the best things I've read in awhile. This is a collection of travel essays, and yet it's not. His approach to travel seems to be one of getting stoned so that one may enter the mundane. And he writes about the mundane as if it were the most fascinating place in the world. Forget travel guide books. Just go someplace and do nothing. And after awhile the nothing becomes something. I think you have to be a bit bent to enjoy this book. And if you are, you'll love Dyer's offbeat view of the world. I did.

I never write reviews of books, but I came to forward this book as a "recommend" to a number of friends after having picked it up in London on a recent business trip. I was intrigued by the book recommendation "quotes" which included one from Steve Martin---one of my favorite all time "people" encompassing a variety of categories--as well as the title as some one who occasionally gets around to doing yoga. I quickly became "hooked". This book has a great many levels. It would be easy to write Dyer off as a "stoner" who needs to get a life in order to stop whining about traveling around the world to exotic places. But a good meaningful reading of this book provokes wonder at the talent of the writer, the ideas and emotions put forth, and the breadth of knowledge involved. His descriptions of the music festival in Detroit is "on target" and one of the best descriptions/discussions of my hometown that I have ever read. I am now going to find and buy more of this truly talented and thought provoking writers' books. For those looking to think as well as be entertained, I can think of no better book.

4 characters. Luke. Alex. Sahra. Nicole. Living in Paris. In love. Having fun. Having sex. Taking drugs. Uh-huh. What else? Not much.

Reading this book was like eavesdropping on a conversation. At its best, the tale told was amusing, sometimes curious and I read with uncommitted interest. At its worst, it was as insipid as any conversation one might overhear between strangers. And, to me, these characters remained strangers - indistinct, faded strangers - from start to 300-page finish. What specific insights and traits a reader could glean from the characters, Dyer spoon-feeds us through direct narration and heavy-handed depictions instead of subtle guidance and gestures. I couldn't understand why any of these character would consider the others interesting or compelling. Moreover, there did not seem to be any ultimate truth or principle in the novel that was worth pondering over. (The theme of "living out one's destiny no matter the cost" was weak and, at least in the way Dyer developed it, not worth more than a few seconds thought.)

Oddly, the strength of this novel was that it *did* make me feel as if I were eavesdropping. As I read (listened to) their conversations, stories, and jokes, observed their interactions, I was vaguely curious about their lives and relationships with one another in the same remote way I'd be interested in 4 people sitting next to me in a cafe. In other words, from a distance, the interaction between the characters and the outward structure of the relationships seemed real. But, when I tried to become more interested in Luke, Alex, Sahra and Nicole as individuals, I realized that I couldn't. There just wasn't anything there.

I read this book not expecting much. It seemed to be an example of someone trying to recreate the books of the lost generation in post-modern dress. I thought it would fail to be something new. I was astounded at how wrong I was. This book has some major faults but they are sandwhiched between large segments of the novel that are amazingly brilliant. This is, perhaps, the best look at the feelings of early love Ive ever read. The book is a deep look at beauty and happiness, asnd the degree to which moments of happiness survive the passage of time. Dyer brilliantly uses a second person narrator who admitedly tells the reader mental thoughts of the characters that he could not know. He has decided that since the main character will not tell his story, he must do it for him and he must fill in the holes. He does so in brilliant fashion. He captures what it is like to be twentysomething and in love, he captures what it is like to be in love in Paris, and he manages to capture the spirit of lawrence, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Dos Passos WITHOUT it feeling like a retelling of modernism. The book is definitively post-modern both in style and message, but still manages to update the tropes founded by The Sun Also Rises. A must read for any fan of post-modernism OR the lost generation. Dyer may well be Britain's most promising young writer. This is a life-affirming novel.

Geoff Dyer's other books are mostly unclassifiable meditations on jazz (But Beautiful), the fascination of war (The Missing of the Somme) and the fear of failure (Out of Sheer Rage). His infrequent novels are pretty good, though. Paris Trance is about falling in love - I actually typed "failling" by mistake, but it was serendipity, because it's also about failing in love. Luke, the hero, is admired by the narrator Alex in much the same way that Fitzgerald's Gatsby is admired by Nick Carraway. (Hmmm, my name is Alex and my brother's name is Nick. Odd that.) What Luke is after, or thinks he's after, is a dream of perfection, and it's only when he achieves it that he lets it go. Drift is the order of Luke's universe. There's a terribly sad episode about half way through when Alex pays Luke a visit in the present (most of the book is a vast, quasi-nostalgic flashback) and speculates to himself about the loneliness of Luke's life; lines from that part have followed me around for months.

Some of the dialogue is uncomfortably Hip; there's some rather too-easy pop-culture riffing, inspired according to Dyer by his admiration for Don DeLillo's way with dialogue. But the book has the same sort of deeper ambiguities as "Gatsby"; Alex writes the book as part of a struggle with himself between his creeping discomfort with his own ordinariness and Luke's tragic appetite for living such grand abstractions as Destiny and Bliss. The sheen of the prose, when describing events like the characters walking through a French field high on acid, has the poignant lustre of remembered happiness. (Dyer's first novel was called The Colour of Memory and is, I think, quite a bit better than this one.)

I don't know if Dyer is a natural novelist and he isn't too sure himself. But Paris Trance is a beautiful book, if it isn't this writer at his best. And it has some wonderful bits: a spoof re-enactment of "Brief Encounter", brilliant accounts of what it's like to go to a pub in a foreign city and a couple of great sex scenes. His non-fiction is maybe more intellectually electric but his fiction is a quieter pleasure.

Five stars, not because I think the book is a flat-out masterpiece but because he's a fantastic writer and I wanted to bring the average up.